legacycentral bbs

My daily driver is a 98 metro hatchback. It's got the 3 cylinder throttle body injector engine in it. It's got a distributor too.

Anyways, I got into it tonight to drive down the street a few blocks to a friend's house and when I got there I saw there was no room to park in the driveway so I put it in reverse and tried backing up to park across the street(backing uphill)and I pushed the gas in but it didn't go. Instead it nearly died. Stumbled and bogged down and I had to push the clutch and brake in to keep it from dieing on me. It wasn't warmed up all the way since it was such a short drive but it's never done this before. After it warmed up it seemed fine.

Is this normal? Anybody got any ideas as to what would cause this to happen? It's about 45-50 degrees outside.

I checked the timing and it was running around 9 degrees advanced. But I don't know how to disable the timing advance on this car. I have a haynes and chilton manual but one says to find this electrical connector which I can't find at all and jump a couple pins. The other book says you can't adjust the timing and that's it's controlled by the computer. I hate those damn books.

I smelled the exhaust and it smelled fine. Took the air filter out and that made no difference so it's getting enough air.

kimokalihi wrote:My daily driver is a 98 metro hatchback. It's got the 3 cylinder throttle body injector engine in it. It's got a distributor too.

I put it in reverse and tried backing up to park across the street(backing uphill)and I pushed the gas in but it didn't go. Instead it nearly died.

I smelled the exhaust and it smelled fine. Took the air filter out and that made no difference so it's getting enough air.

I see 3 possible issues here:

!. 3 cylinder engine
2. Trying to move said 3 cylinder backwards uphill
3. Sniffing exhaust?? If done regularly may contribute to other issues...

Seriously though could it have caught reverse and one of the forward gears? I had a Ford and a Pontiac that would do that on occasion. I'd just shift back out of revers, and wiggle the shifter until I got the other gear bac into neutral, then it's be fine again for a while, or until I got sloppy with the shift again.

Haha! Responds over a month later. No it wasn't the gears. It's still doing it. Now the clutch is going out I think. The last few days it's gotten worse. Half the time I try to shift it won't go into gear and then sometimes when it does it pops back out.

I think that's the clutch. I hope it is anyways. Hopefully tomorrow I can finish the taking the tranny out and put in the brand new clutch, flywheel and throw out bearing.

Then I'll go from there. I think it's probably something to do with the fuel filter, the pump, or the oxygen sensor or something.

I just saw this thread for the first time tonight... Thought I'd poke a little well meaninig fun at you.

Seriously though, I've got a buddy with a Geo, and he is looking for a trans as his is hard to shift and it kicks out of gear. He has to hold it in gear in either 2nd or 3rd (can't remember which). He said that is a common problem once the miles get up there. something to do with the synchro's in the trans.

Sounds like yours is getting to the same point.

Definately possible. Mine has over 120,000 miles and I'm hoping it's just the clutch but it very well may be the tranny. First problem I noticed was the second gear synchro wouldn't engage until really low mph like 20 mph. Now it won't work at all. It just slowly got worse and worse and not I have to push it into 1st halfway and then push it into 2nd which I think means the 1st gear synchro is slowing down the shaft and then it's able to go into 2nd. Which would mean that now I'm wearing out the 1st gear synchro as well.

Where would you get a NEW transmission though? I don't want to buy a used one just to find out it's got the same problem or it's going to soon.

I've put a lot of time into this little car and I don't want to get rid of it. It gets good milage and saves me a lot of money.

I've done hours and hours of sound deadening. The floor has 3 layers of deadener along with a layer of luxry liner from cascade and ensolite closed cell foam. The sidewalls have 3 layers as well and ensolite. The rear hatch has it too and the firewall. The doors have 2 layers outside and 2 layers inside and ensolite. That alone was many hours and a lot of work and money. The car also has all the ground wires upgraded with new wire 4gauge and the power wires as well to everything including the starter and alternator.

It's also got a kickass Oddyssey battery that I've listened to for about 8-10 hours without starting the car up once and afterwards I started it up and it had no problem cranking the engine over. With an amp running a couple 6.5" midbasses at 150watts RMS @ 2ohms each.

It's a great little car and I've also replaced a lot on the engine to keep it running tip top shape and this saddens me.

I may need a new tranny but I don't really want to mess around with used ones. Wonder how much it would be to get new synchros put in?

That's exactly what my buddies does, has to slow almost to a stop to get it into 2nd unless he double clutches it (and it doesn't like that very much). Not sure what it would cost to rebuild, might check with a tranny shop while it's out, but probably not going to be cheap due to parts availability.

We have one in the wreckingy ard I part time at that shows 85K miles but it is earmarked for him once I get it out from the bottom back corner of the crusher stack.

We do have one with an automatic trans that was good, but talk about making a sows ear out of a silk purse....

I believe the biggest problem with the Metro's (and Geo's in general) is that they were built to go about 100K miles and be thrown away. Basically another Yugo with a little better body styling...

Sounds like you've done a lot of work and have a clean little car, sorry you are having to fight the trans issues.

Yeah it sucks. I guess the upside is that the money I've saved in gas in the last year and a half or so of owning this car that I paid $1,250 for has more than paid for itself.

When I bought it.






Had a smashed fender and hood. Replaced those and had them painted. Tinted the windows, got rid of nasty hub caps, new timing belt, ac belt, alt belt, EGR, plugs, wires, battery, oil pump, water pump, oil change and new tires.

My mom backed into my car with her big diesel dodge pickup recently and ruined the hood I replaced already.

I see an Apache pop up trailer in the background... Those are the shit... Had an 18' one for about 2 weeks, got it cleaned up and looking good and someone stopped and made me an offer I couldn't refuse...

That's a good color on a Geo, I can see why you like it... Have you check with any trans shops yet?

Nope not yet. I've run into a new problem actually. The last two days I spent removing the tranny to put a new clutch and flywheel in it. Got it all back together last night and started filling up the coolant and heard it dripping on the floor. I looked under the car and it's leaking, badly, from the back of the thermostat housing behind the water pump where this long metal coolant pipe comes from the top of th radiator.

I noticed it wasn't in all the way and the reason for the was because it's bolted to the end of the tranny and I had to bend the mounting tab out of my way to lower the tranny. When I bent it back it was all bent out of shape and the pipe wasn't in all the way. So I tried bending it back better with little success and then beat on the pipe until it was in all the way and it still leaks. Without the engine on so it's gotta be worse with the engine running.

I think I need a new pipe that doesn't have a bent bracket and the people over on the suzuki swift forums suggested replacing the o ring. I couldn't find an o ring listed on the gm parts distributor site but I ordered a new pipe $55 shipped.


The pipe is number 17.





Here's the bent mounting tab.





Here's the leak. You can see a small tab on top of that black pipe that is up against the thermostat housing. That tab was probably a cm away from the thermostat housing before I beat on the pipe and wrestled it back in as far as it would go. Still leaking..



As if the transmission job wasn't frustrating enough by itself...Solid 10 hours replacing the clutch and flywheel by myself. After 10 hours my battery finally died listening to the stereo.

any word on the trans yet??

Negative. The coolant leak is preventing me from driving the car. I'm waiting on the stupid GMpartsdirect website I bought the new pipe on to ship it and I don't think they've shipped it yet and I ordered the stupid pipe a week ago. Making me pretty pissed off too because I need my car to go to work. I'm tired of borrowing my moms car.

I got the new o ring from the dealership yesterday though. Got the pipe out yesterday too. It was a real bitch. There was a stuipd bolt holding the pipe on directly under the intake manifold which you cannot get your hand under and there's not enough room to turn a ratched or wrench...at all. You can barely get it onto the bolt head. I happened to have a cordless ratchet and the bolt was loose enough that it came out.