my austin metro project

[rems]

I was planning on keeping this project a secret but times change and its taking me a while to do due to not getting alot of time to do it and starting to lose interest in it which I don't want to do as I know the final product will be EPIC

this is strictly and on going project I have no deadline for this car as I have had it 2 years already and just havent had the time to crack on with it until recently

I will let the pictures do the talking and see if you can work out my plan....no doubt you will be able to

so heres all the pics I have upto where I have got to and how brian stands there is a story behind the name but I will save that for another day

so it was a complete car and then I stripped it







then I removed the doner engine from the subaru legacy



engine out





I then roughly lowered the metro shell above the engine to see how the engine would look and what sort of space I would be looking at under the bonnet





I removed the wings so I could lower the shell down more to get a better look at the situation





cut the front section of the floor out (blury pic sorry)



you can see from the previous pics that the engine is slightly wider the the arch lining so I cut the front end off completely







then temp fit the arches (tbh I cant remember why but I did it anyway lol) shows how much room it gives me to fit the engine



then it was time to start on cutting the front of the legacy off







however I had a slight mishap with the 9" cutter though, as the disc was slowing down the handle became lose and spun and the disc hit my arm so I flicked it back not thinking anything of it until 5 mins later and happened to look at my hoody and discovered this



so pulled my sleeve back and had done this..







was and inch long and about 2-3mm deep and full of crap basically cleaned it out with it of soap and carried..however the next day it did become and infected mess and had to get it seen to ..sadly no pics of that lol

but the front of the legacy was off



lined it up with the metro shell and looked like this....rather odd and abit long as you can see







fitted the wings with abit of tape to see how much longer the legacy front end is compared....quite abit tbh





sooo I got the 9" out again and got cutting abit more so that the legacy front end would sit exactly at the same wheel base as the metro and was the right width







then lined it back up again







fitted the engine back into the front end whilst it wasnt welded in place so it made life abit easier to roll it into place and line it up better





POKE FTMFW!!!



rolled the front end into place and placed a couple of blocks of wood under the front so it was at the right level





as you can see the legacy is abit wider this = GOOD



shows how close the wheel its to the A pillar, considering I'm now going to be running 15" rims and it was originally sitting on 12"



worked out I had to cut abit more off to get it ready to be tacked in place





got my boss to give me a hand













this is how it was held together with about 10 of them, this is just so I can use it as a template NOT FOR THE FINAL DESIGN!!



sadly I have lost some of the pics I have taken of the chassis rails I made from scaffhold tubing so will continue from the pics I have

the engine is now mounted in the chassis rails just need to make 2 more engine mounts, plan is to get it all tacked together then when its all in place remove it all then weld it all up properly then fit it all

so I mounted the wings and it all lines up woop woop





bit of an over hang at the rear but its best to be too long then too short





made a strut brace so that the struts will be the correct width apart



fitted it to the engine and go the struts in equal places either side and tacked it in place so it wouldnt move







and this is how its looking








as I have got everything sorted up the front its time to get started on getting the rear subframe in place

floor is already cut out but due to now running 15's instead of 12's have to cut the inside of the arches out and the lip off the outer edge

insides cut out



then it was a case of lining it up to how its sitting atm rear end raised up until I have cut the other arch out then a case of lowering it down taking measurements getting it square mocking up the frame and mounts for the subframe then on with building the prop housing and the floor then remove the shell front and rear subframes welding it up properly fitting a full cage and bolt it all back together then work on the wiring, piping for the radiator as its going in the rear, fitting fuel tank in the rear aswel, making the fire wall, fitting pedals steering ect and everything else that needs doing lol







and thats how its sitting at the moment

all comments welcome

[Dave Hedgehog]

6R4 the only way with a metro

[pacman1]

Flippin' 'eck, fair play to you, but it looks like a devil of a job to fit those two bits of different car together.

Those scaffolding tubes, do they, er, affect the NCAP safety rating at all?!

[snuffle]

Should prove to be interesting.

Is it going to be road legal?
If so, what is it going to be registered as?
Not many points left on the scale.

[grenpayne]

Dave Hedgehog said:

6R4 the only way with a metro

My thoughts too! I thought this was going to be some mid engined monster with the Legacy lump where the back seats used to be!

But anyway, looks bonkers!

[davepoth]

Looks awesome, but wouldn't it have been easier to make a chassis out of the scaff and then weld the metro on top? I guess this way is more fun though.

[anonymous-user]

jeez, what a deathtrap ! ;-)

[Disco You]

Completely fking mental... A cut and shut of two ,different cars with some scaffolding thrown in!

[P I Staker]

Why didnt you just shorten and narrow the Legacy floor pan and weld it on to the Metro shell?


Nice build though, always good to see something a bit crazy.

[rems]

cheers for the comments

me and the boss had many talks about what way to go with it i was going to cut the floor out of the legacy then put the metro shell on top but its not that easy when you dont have a plasma cutter so decided to go down the route of making a complete space frame to hold the legacy engine but which is the same dimensions as the metro

i know that there is most probably many different ways others would have done it but this was the best way at the time

as for it being road legal im not sure just seeing how it turns out, i dont see why i couldnt make it road legal as for registering it i would have to get and sva test and either use the metro reg or a new reg

[P I Staker]

You aren't actually using scaffold for the chassis are you? Its not really suitable.

[scoobydude]

Why didn't you just stick a pair of metro wings on the Subaru ?

[Jamirecluse]

Are you the guy who posted the monster truck Jetta on Retro rides?

This Metro is certainly an original idea for a project and regardless of the other comments it looks like you know what you're doing.

[rems]

why is scaffolding not suitable?

and as for putting the wings on the subaru that wouldnt work as the subaru front end is alot longer then the metro and its not the idea of the project

and yea im the guy that posted the jetta monster truck

cheers for the comment yea with the help of my boss i know what im doing he used to build 4x4 racers so gives me the help i need to do the project and its all a learning curve with it to be honest, if its not right remove it and change it to be better

[P I Staker]

rems said:

why is scaffolding not suitable?

As far as I understand the zinc content will give off dangerous fumes whilst you're welding it and the high carbon content will give weak and brittle welds.

[rems]

we remove the galvanised coating before we weld it

we have made ALOT or stuff with scaffolding before and never had a problem and the welds stay strong, it will all be welded properly once everything is lined up and tacked in place

[BoRED S2upid]

Impressive build you have going on there.

Why the choice of a Subaru for the powerplant? what kind of power do those put out?

Very similar to my mini build but being Mini there are lots of custom made parts to assist - fiberglass extended frontends being one that helps with the extra few inches required for most conversions. Most conversions done on Minis tend to use smaller squarer engines though that are an easier fit than the subaru looks. After all in something as light as a Mini / Metro you don't need stupid power to get a very quick little car.

Good luck with the rest of the build.

[rems]

i had many ideas i wanted to do conversion wise ie motorbike engine, rover v8, vtec lump and vvc rover engine but we had the legacy sitting in the yard not being used i knew that it run as i had driven it and being a flat four its not quite that large in size so asked how much they wanted for the hole car and got it for scrap value of £70 so i couldnt complain really

in the book it says they put out 120bhp in the legacy which is more then enough power and if the engine does blow i can go down the route of doing the legacy twin turbo lump as its near on almost straight swap, im going to keep all the fittings simple so that if anything does go wrong i can get to it no problem which is another good reason fro me to build it this way

yea i know with the mini's you get such a variety of parts available especially zcars and i have seen a 4wd space frame for a mini for sale a while ago just a shame theres nothing for the metro, maybe once i have made it i could blueprint the space frame for others and sell it on haha....i'll be lucky

[finlo]

How can he see what he's welding without a mask on?

[P I Staker]

finlo said:

How can he see what he's welding without a mask on?

By burning his retinas out whilst hes inhaling dangerous gasses.