Hello everybody,
I have a Metro, she's called Rita.
I thought I'd make a thread for recent progress on Rita because Simon is away and has no signal and thus I am very bored and very lonely! He's only been away since this morning 
In my defence, It is the weekend of 24 hours of Le Mans and so I am currently on 41 hours of no sleep, and feeling fine... 
I want to share this first, because I think it's beautiful.
Anything else from here on is going to be an anti-climax because that's just better than any car could ever be
I bought her as a 1.4 Automatic single point injection. She's now manual and Multi point injection.
Here she is being pretty
And then this happened
More recently this!
Clearly she needed a lot of work! and preferbly a donor car.
Me and Simon used to park next to Metros when we had easy opportunities in his Mini, and take photos. Mainly for fun
Anyway, heres a picture of it happening in a Morrisons car park at the start of last yearish!
A nice tidy 5 door in Nightfire red, just like Rita.
After a frantic day of refreshing the page all day long and vomiting all over my walls through nerves, I won the bidding thank god!
And here is one of the photos from said advert
So the day came to pick up my donor car.
I gathered up some friends for a weekend since I only have a single garage I couldnt really keep the donor car anywhere, so it had to come home and be stripped within days ready for the shell to be scrapped. The team were Erik from Holland (Bartje), Josh (MiniJosh92) and Simon 
We set about collecting the car on Saturday morning. The battery was flat so we had to push start it in the rain, bargain.
The battery was new as was the starter motor
After the fun drive home it turns out Lucy, as she is now known (She's fixing a hole where the rain gets in... to Rita, lovely Rita, meter maid) ran very well and the mechanicals were all good 
Josh set about removing some of the parts that would get in the way when we lifted the engine, whilst Erik sorted out Ritas gearbox mount since my arm muscle strength did not suffice
Josh in action
I started on the bodywork, and after about half an hour we had the loom disconnected, everything out of the way that needed to be, the front wings, bumper, grill and bonnet removed, and the engine was ready to come out!
Out came the hoist and with a little jiggling the engine was free.
We then rolled the shell out and spent the next couple of hours installing the manual gear linkage and other parts into Rita. 
We had to change the pedal box, although I already had a manual one, it was different to lucys! and we had to swap the baulkhead mounting plate for the brake master cylinder over since mine didn't have a hole for the clutch cable. Either way, with the new one on it didnt line up so we ended up drilling it anyway.
So Rita then had her engine and gearbox all in, after some faffing with the driveshafts and hubs trying to remove the engine from the donor car. We ended up splitting the lower ball joints so that we could pull the hub out to allow for some extra room on the shafts, but the shell needed to be moving to come out of the garage so we then had to bolt it all back together again! the tension was far to much to get it back together so we had to drain the hydragas fluid in order to lower the arm to get it rolling again!
Then we did a few more jobs and picked Simon up to stay in a hotel for the night since he'd been away with his family for the day.
The next day we turned up again and completely stripped Lucy of all of her goodness, she was just a bare shell by the time we had finished, nothing left at all. I did feel bad for her, but she was very rusty
Anyway, heres how we left Lucy over night
It was only whilst reviewing the photos that I realised that she is actually the car that we parked next to in Morrisons! what are the chances of that? it was clearly meant to be
I have to get the rest of the photos from my phone soon and then I'll update! But basically Rita should be running soon, I just have to fit the fuel tank and then finish some of the interior loom and she'll be good to go I need to fit the headlining, full interior, although Simon has done a lot of it already! THANKS SIMON I need to rub the door jambs back where the hinges mount for the doors because Rover didn't paint them for me and left them bare! the tailgate is also the same.
I need a small bit of welding in the drivers door jamb and the right rear arch needs two patches, and then the scuttle needs painting, as does the rear right quarter and roof and then she's DONE!!!
Anybody that has followed my smut I call project threads in the past will know what my plans are wheel wise, and for those who dont I will be converting to Mini hubs since the Rover Metro from Mk3 onwards is 95.25 PCD, which leaves you limited for choice.
Once the Mini drums are on the back and the front hubs are redrilled, I will either be fitting Simons old Superlites or something like ATS Classics, I havn't decided yet! so many options. The offset is also very different to the Mini which could cause issues but if I'm determined enough It'll happen!
Stay tuned for more updates
Edited by Mini-Mad-Craig, 24 June 2013 - 12:47 AM.
had something of a soft spot for the 100's since my 2-year stint with the 114SLi. My god it was an awful car. But, it got me through 2 years of 14000 mile commuting. Can't complain.
haha
