The Best Engineered Lemons - #2 the MetroGnome

As a matter of fact, yes, it is loud in the car. Ear bleedingly loud. And a little warm.

The fuel-injected CBR-1000 required a little more trickery to install. Everything from the bike was transferred to the Metro, including the catalyst and even a little solenoid that's supposed to progressively open valves in the exhaust system to reduce restriction at high rpm. The valves are gone, but the ECU needs to see the solednoid (zip tied to the cage in the top-left of this photo) or else it will go into some kind of limp home mode.

Note the gash in the lower right of the case and the JB weld holding the oil in. This is how you get a CBR-1000 engine on a LeMons budget.

Getting drive to the rear wheels meant "simply" transplating metro front hubs to the rear. The stock rear control arm is still used, but the end of a front control arm is welded to it, providing a ball joint for the front hub to attach to. The car's original rear toe control link was cut and welded to a tie rod, which goes to the front hub's steering arm.

Now, if you were paying attention to the geometry discussion on the previous page, you'll immediately see the problem here. When the suspension compresses, the ball joint will swing outward slightly. The toe control link will swing inward. Wth the toe link on the back, this means massive toe-out when the suspension compresses.

This makes handling exactly as twitchy and terrifying as you might expect. The solution, after one exciting test day, is this hugely extended mount for the tie rod. Its difficult to see, but there is a gusset bracing this extention to the upright, so it's not as bendy as it looks.

 Connected to those uprights, of course, are struts, which have to go somewhere. The rear shock towers weren't anywhere close to the right location, so they were removed and cage extensions are now used to mount the struts.

Those small-diameter springs are trailer assist springs of some unknown spring rate. So, for the record, Stock Metro front struts at both ends, cut Metro springs up front, unknown trailer springs in the rear. So much for all that suspension tuning.

Putting the engine in the passenger's seat requires some packaging compromises. The differential couldn't be mounted as far left as necessary without the engine occupying space normally required for the driver's right arm. This eventually lead to an axle that was too short, and what appeared, at first, to be a pretty clean splice job to lengthen it.

The little details can eat your budget on a project like this, but not with an experienced bargain hunter in charge. Agricultrural hoses are much cheaper than automotive grade coolant hoses, and they're rated to 200 psi. They might be able to survive the heat. Or they might not...

The coolant path of a mid-engine car requires both radiator hoses to go low, through the tunnel, leaving a high point that can trap air bubbles on either end. The radiator cap solves the problem of the forward trap, but there is, as of now, no solution for the rear air trap. We expect a solution before the car's debut race at Thunderhill.