I will be putting it on the car probably next weekend if I have time to do the head swap. I will also be using stainless steel exhaust valves in the head so I should never have a problem with them going bad again. I will post the part numbers for the valves next week when I figure them out.

The crank scraper was also pretty easy to install. Just loosen the bolts on the caps on both sides, take off the bolts on the side you put the scraper on and bolt the scraper back down. I put the washers under the scraper to make it fit better and only needed to grind off two spots to make it fit without hitting anywhere.

As far as how much this helped I am not sure. I did this at the same time I shaved the head and went over the car fixing any problems I could find. If I had to guess I would say it might be worth 0.5MPG at higher RPMs. Anything under 2000 I can’t see this helping a lot. But I would say for anyone that has to take their oil pan off their metro for any reason it is worth doing since it is a very easy install and pretty cheap.

The Wiring is normally one of these colors. Make sure you only pick colors from one column. Things are much easier if you cut as much of the harness out of the junk car as you can to give you as much lead wire as possible. If not at least get the connector and a few inches of wire to splice into your existing harness. The connections should be pretty easy. The sensor ground should run by itself to a chassis ground and not just grounded to the engine in case the engine has a bad ground. The sensor output goes to the factory Oxygen sensor wire. The heater wires do not have a polarity so one wire should go to ground but not using the same wire as the sensor ground. The other wire should go to the ignition and only have power when the key is in the on position and not when the key is on accessory.

The advantage wit the new sensor is that the computer knows when the sensor is working and will use it to adjust the A/F ratio. The old sensor would cool off at idle and while coasting and take a few seconds to get back up to temperature. This left times when the computer could not adjust the A/F ratio. The new sensor has a heater so it will stay working at idle and as soon as you give it gas from coasting. It also heats up much quicker so it starts working much sooner when starting the car. The most obvious thing you will notice the idle is smoother and it doesn’t hesitate as much when going from coasting to accelerating. Overall this is a very simple and cheap mod so if you have some free time I would do it if your car has a 1 or 3 wire sensor in it now.

For this I used a standard AC Delco knock sensor and installed it on the block. The metro block has a small boss sticking out between the #1 and #2 cylinders on the back of the motor. It is right beside the alternator.The Delco sensor could be installed in the normal position but it would interfere with the alternator so I did it slightly different. I took the top bolt out of the alternator and took the top bolt off the plastic shield for the alternator so I could tilt it away from the motor. I then used a small drill bit and drilled a hole through the boss at an angle so the sensor would stick up at an angle and stay away from the alternator. I only drilled through half of the boss. When I hit the factory hole I stopped. I then went to a larger size bit and drilled it out the correct size and tapped it for the threads on the knock sensor. After that it was a simple matter to screw the sensor in and hook a wire up to it. I used some old speaker wire I had laying around. I grounded the second wire to a nearby bolt. I ran the wire into the car through the firewall and attached it to a 1/8 stereo jack. I can now plug in my tape adapter to that jack and insert it into my tape player to listen for knock.

The knock sound is pretty easy to recognize once you figure out what is what. First thing I did when I had it hooked up and working was  to retard the timing as far as it could go on the car. I twisted the distributor as far as it would go then snugged the top bolt to hold it in place. I took the car for a drive listening to the sounds the sensor picks up. Unless your car has some real problems none of those sounds are engine knock. After doing that for a minute I turned the distributor all the way advanced as far as it would turn. I then started out driving and immediately started hearing the sharp clicking sound of engine knock. I got the car up to about 45MPH before I had enough of that. I pulled over the side of the road and turned the distributor to about the middle and drove it accelerating back up to 60mph while listening for knock. I didn’t hear any so I advanced it a bit and tried again. I got knock so I went to the middle of the last two tries and got no knock. I turned it up a tiny bit more and more till I got knock then backed it down to where I didn’t have any knock. I then drove it home trying all kinds of different throttle loads and gears listening for knock. Once I was home I put the timing light on and checked my timing. I was at 8 degrees advanced. This was a pretty good indication that setting the timing by the stereo worked real well.

The car rides much better with the extra weight out of it. It is suprising how little weight it takes in this car to make a difference in the way it accelerates and handles. I will get a significant amount of weight out of it when I replace the front seats and seatbelts with something lighter but that is something that will be done in the future.