Metro handling

[Kman1600]

Hi All,

I’m new to this forum but I’m a long time Motorsport competitor, road rallies for years but now Sprints and Hillclimbs. My chosen steed for the Northern Ireland Sprint championship is of all things a Rover Metro GTI (1600), not as odd a choice as you first imagine as the K-Series engine is a true peach. My problem is the car is probably quick enough to finish 2nd/3rd in the championship but if I want to start worrying the guy out at the front I need to get this thing to handle better!!! I’m therefore looking for any info out there on getting these things to handle. The road going regs. are quite tight so turrets at the back and the likes are out but I’ve seen so old articles showing a system developed by Haggispeed for the rear of the car, anyone know any more about it?

The season quickly approaches and I need to get my finger out if I’m going to quicker this coming year!!!

Thanks

Tim

[Peter Harding]

Presumable, as your thread is in this forum, it's a single seater Metro?

[heel'n'toe-no]

He's a tin top driver.....leave him alone.....At least he's able to use a pc.

[heel'n'toe-no]

I would like to see him using a real racing car.....ha ha ha ha ha

[ss_collins]

Porsche 917 is a real racing car.... this does belong in Nat N club though...

[heel'n'toe-no]

It is certainly not for club level single seaters that's for sure.

Perhaps MG/Rover have a forum for discussing metro's.........
.....Other than the 6R4, the metro shouldn't even be mentioned
on a motor racing website.

[Peter Mallett]

Perhaps if you'd read the post instead of trying to attack the poster you'll see he refers to something that Haggispeed developed. Forgive me if I'm wrong but Haggispeed built single seaters.

However when one of the relevant mods gets here they'll move it.

Incidently I'm giving you a neg feedback because you could have been more polite to a newcomer to the forums.

[Stephen Green]

Hi KMan, welcome to ten-tenths. As you are talking about a metro I will move this thread to National and Club Forum.

[Peter Mallett]

Thanks Stephen. Maybe Kman will get some sensible advice from here.

And of course welcome to our friendly forum Kman.

I don't know if the K Series Metro runs the old Hydrolastic suspension but one of the things we used to do was cut about 10mm off the ram and then pump the supension up to the required height.

You can also make each side act independantly by terminating the connecting pipework and fixing a bleed valve.For my sins I used to race an MG Metro.

[Stephen Green]

Ahhhh your dark secrets out Peter

[Peter Mallett]

It gets worse but we won't go there.

[Anuauto]

Standard 1400 Metro GTIs have surprised many people in that class in speed events. Unfortunately only the Midlandspeed regional championship has retained the std car class structure for 2005. Regions such as ASWMC have never run std classes and the 4 south east regional associations have just shot such competitors in the back (and themselves in the foot?) by deleting them. Cant really comment without full regs for NI championship. Nowhere in Britain has run a 1600 saloon class in speed events for many years. At 1400, in modified roadgoing, Minis have tended to dominate. Is your capacity split 1600? Sounds as if your regs are along the usual roadgoing lines of "original configuration and method of operation of the suspension"? If so, addding an arb, decent dampers and lowering and extra pressure in the hydragas may be about it?

[Wilbo]

Right mate your in for a lot of hard work! I used to race a 1400 GTi last year and your right the engines are great, very fast even in standard form but for handling...well not a strong point, problem: hydrogas. Your best line if action would be to speak to some Metro cup racers www.mgmetrocup.co.uk If turrets are out, are you allowed to the use the original mounting points? I investigated three solutions: 1) Replace the rear horizontal hydrogas unit with a spring and damper (with some fabrication work) in the horizontal plane 2) Adopt a modified mini rear suspension (mini sport) basically on rubber but would be a lot firmer or 3) just back the rear with rubber/big or hard bump stops between trailing arm and car. For definate you need to bolt the rear subframe solid to the car (makes a big difference), uprate the REAR anti roll bar and fit poly bushes.

I will also send you a private message.

[haggispeed]

Well since Kman mentioned Haggis thought I'd better respond Actually it was me that suggested he post here to get some advice so a little dismayed along with Peter on the initial responses however much in jest they were meant, anyway enough of that.
Actually Haggis did have something to do with Metro's, he spent a lot of time developing the cars for Hillclimb and I still have some of the Metro drawings and am going to see what I can dig up for Kman. Not sure if he had some connection with Richard Longman at the time.
Anyway looks like Wilbo has some constructive ideas - hope that puts you on the right track ('scuse pun )
Just to put you right on a minor point Pete, Haggis actually didn't build Single Seaters, he built Clubmans Cars which are Sports Racing cars, now I know they've got slicks 'n' wings 'n' stuff but still (technically) a two seater

[Anuauto]

As indicated above, speed event regs are fairly restrictive (for modprod as well as roadgoing) for suspension (but badly policed in britain...). Most newcomers waste a lot of time investigating things that are not permitted.

[Kman1600]

Hi All,

Sorry for putting my original post in the wrong place, kind of new to this game.

I run my car in the Northern Ireland Hillclimb and Sprint Championship, this will be my third year in the car and progress has been quite rapid so far. The regs for this championship are quite loose and can be seen on the website www.anicc.co.uk Our capacity break for the road going class is at 1700, hence why I built a 1600 K-Series Metro, it has been argued that this bends the rules a wee bit but that arguement is pretty much put to bed now. The engine and I probably have as much if not more power that the Novas and XR2/3s that tend to populate the class. On a good day I'm running 2nd in class put the Nova in front is way in front so I need to do something to gain some more speed.

Suspension wize the Hydrogas units are all seperated and I run the fronts up at nearly 500psi and the rears around 380psi. I have AVO shocks on the front so I've been able to raise the Shocking rate as I've increased the spring rate (gas pressure), at the back is a problem. I can clearly add more pressure and cut more out of the hydro. spacer rods but the back gets very boncy above 400psi as I need to ad more shocking. To me the car just doesn't have the stiff enough anti-roll bars and I'm having to use droop stops at the back to create some (to much) weight transfer at the rear. Until I did this understeer would set in mid corner and I had to weight an age before putting my foot back in!!! It's better with the droop stops but the action is very sudden, the car switches into oversteer as soon as the inside rear wheel lifts.

Currently the front subframe is ridgedly mounted and I've rose joints on the lower wish bones, the rear is still rubber and must move about a far bit during runs as the wheel arches are getting all chewed up by the tyres!!!

I'm used to the jibs about using a Metro quite frankly it's part of the reason I did it, no fun in just following the masses. I know it makes my life harder as you have to make just about everything yourself but where's the fun in just buying stuff and bolting it on.

Again thanks for the pointers & keep the abuse coming, like water off a ducks back!!!

Tim

[Anuauto]

Hmm. "Suspension mounting points and the method of location must remain as standard". Nothing about type and method of operation of suspension. I'm afraid the British roadgoing (or modprod) saloon people are not going to be much help then!

[graham bahr]

i have heard of people successfully filling hydralas with citroen LHM fluid which stiffens the damping up a bit.

is the rear subframe solidly mounted? its front end is attached by two big rubber bushes but i guess would be quite easy to fabricate solid ones. while your doing that give thought to trying to reloate the rear subframe higher up in the body.

personally i would be trying to replace the hydralas unit with a spring and shock, how about a coil over rear shock mounted as per mini, or if you havn't room for the coilover shock, a 2.5/ 2.25 dia spring would probably fit inside the subframe wher the hydralas unit used to live then i'm sure you could squeeze a mini rear shock in the rear wheel arch.

ive seen metros with a spax coilover fitted in place of the front hydra unit, ok i know your fundamentally changing the suspension but in doing so you can play with the damping and spring rates to your hearts content.

[Kman1600]

Hi,

I've also heard about the LHM fluid trick, as yet I haven't tried it yet, I must buy some and compare viscositys.

I think the hydrogas is no great problem at the front of the car because it has a shock in parallel to it so I have control of spring rate (pressure) and damping rate with the shock. As I say the rear presents a greater challange. I have looked at the horzontal coil over shock suggestion in the passed but I'm a little concerned by the very high wheel movement to shock movement that this will create. The ratio is 5 to 1 if I use the standard points. I started this quest looking for info. on Haggispeed because from an old CCC article I had it looked like they (or he) had comeup with a lever system to address this.

The rule "Suspension mounting points and the method of location must remain as standard" has even created some heated discussion over the years. Some of us run with rose joints, some don't, the arguement being that although the intend of the rule was probably to outlaw rose joints the wording, if taken literally doesn't. A rose joint bolted into the standard suspension pick-up point with the standard 10mm bolt (for example) seems to satisfy the rule.

The rule that stops me fitting the turret to the back for shocks is the one about panels must remain standard, adding a turret to me clearly modifies the inner arch panel. There is a school of thought over here that says it should do it first and see if anyone complains rather than debate with myself for years if it's legal or not!!!! I've had a look at the Novas in the class and some of the things they've done are close to the limit.

There is also a constant debate over here over the rules as they are. Most feel they are too loose and the cars running in road going are too modified. However the counter arguement is that road going up to 1700 is far and away the most popular class, some of the others struggle to have more than 1 or 2 entries so the road class, as written, must be attractive to run to.

Thanks again for the continued advice and help on this one, I did try a similar discussion on the performance metro site. Unfortunately most on there seem to be more worried about the size of sub woffers and the colour of the neon lights under the car, each to there own I suppose!!!!

Thanks again,

Tim

[Anuauto]

The rose joint point occurred to me reading the regs and I agree that the actual attachment is still the same whether through a rubber bush or R/J.
Britain (but not the UK it seems!) was well on the way to standardising roadgoing speed regs nationally and the remaining differences were largely down to non-list1a tyres and capacity classes used in the South West. The MSA roadgoing regs were getting there too (after 14 years!) but the 1000 quantity is open to different interpretations when homologation quantities of some older cars are taken into account. Inadequate consultation (contrary to the MSC's own declared timetable for changes) and lack of relevant experience on the MSC committee meant alternative proposals were not properly considered. Now it seems to all be unravelling with the latest S East changes. The Metro GTI in the 1400 std car class gave some people good cheap fun and success recently. All very sad.
In areas of the UK where speed events cannot command adequate numbers of venues and the wide competitor base that goes with it, using MSA stage rally vehicle regs for the modified roadgoing classes may be the only long term solution to eliminate the silly differences between regions (which all have borders and people who live next to them and face different regs depending on which direction they travel).

[Kman1600]

Hi,

We have also have a "rally car" class again with a capacity break at 1700 and this indeed offers greater flexability. In the rally car class I could run heavily modified suspension, coil overs all round, big arches, molded "slicks" etc.... Strangely enough the class isn't as heavily subscribed as the road going class and in many cases the cars are not any quicker than the road going class, there are a couple of very quick exceptions to this. I'd like to stick to our definition of road going if possible, even though I know it makes little sense from a standisation point of view.

The added freedom has lead to quicker cars with low expence, making people run with full interiors, working heaters etc.... changes the economics very little but slows the cars up. The same arguement for rose joints, changing to rose joints was quite cheap and easy, I could have gone with making off-set nylon bushes etc.... this would have cost the same but been nothing like as good. In road going, I think, it's improtant to try and keep the big bucks out but allow enough freedom to keep it interesting from an engineering point of view.

I learnt the hard way that "our" current crop of road going cars are very much quicker than "standard" cars. I turned up to my first event with a lowered Metro GTI, with the powerful 1600 fitted, on normal road tires and standard but Superflex bushed suspension. I think I was just about last in class, god knows how slow a completely standard Metro 1400 GTI would have been in the class. This does present a barrier to anyone hoping to buy a cheap Metro, Nova, XR2 etc.... out of the autotrader on a Thursday night and be competative at a Sprint on Saturday, sorry not going to happen in N.Ireland mate!!! I've seen them turn up on occations and go away again never to be seen again. Could be evedance that there is a need for a true ROAD going class, but then where to the current competitors go? I realise this post is full of contradictions but I guess that's way the debate rages on!!!

Tim

[Wilbo]

Forgot to mention, there is another mod you can do to the Standard hydrogas. What you have to do is drill a hole in the top ofthe hydrogas unit letting out all the sealed nitrogen? then drill the hole out to around 10mm/11mm and weld in a schrieder valve (like a car/bike air valve). This way you can LOWER the pressure in the top which dramtically stiffens the unit/suspension. As you will have relised don't go drilling holes until you have located some metal bodied shrieder valves. It really does work though, very very good and apperantley the works MG team used to do it when racing them.

At the end of the day for competition use on a FWD car the back needs to be really stiff. You just want it to follow the front! thats all. So packing it all up with rubber is one way to go but presents a problem when it s raining and you need to soften everything off!

You also need to find somewhere to bend you/manufacture an uprated rear anti roll bar about 28mm diameter and solid mount it. Probably leave the front standard size but try to solid mount it to then at least they both start to work for you.

Keep going with the Metty, and beat that Nova!

[Kman1600]

Hi,

28mm at the back is a massive increase is stiffness, standard bar is only 15mm. I was going to try both bars at 22mm (7/8") this would be 2X the standard stiffness at the front and 3X at the back. I did however have a notion of making a 25 (1") bar for the back at the same time, but I thought it might be pushing it a little, so maybe not!!!

I'll also try and find some metal valves, a motor factors that works with big truck type stuff would probably be a good place to start.

Thanks again,

Tim

[Anuauto]

One further point - an "ultimate" set up optimised for sprints (which appears to be what several people have addressed, based on racing experience) is unlikely to work for hill climbs.

[Kman1600]

Hi,

Excellent point, I'm fairly serious about my Sprinting and I have a laugh or two on the Hills. So I'll try and make the car as quick as I can at the Sprints and take the Hills as they come. The two disciplines are often mentioned in the same breath but in reality they are very different.

Tim