5 minutes later- RED wheel skirts

Rear wheel skirts mostly done

They still need a few finishing touches but they are at least functional. Wheel spats will be made and attached to the piece you see hanging down in front of the tire. I really wanted the skirts to extend all the way to the bottom of the part where the spats will be but it just turned out to be to complicated for now.

Curvature intersection method

A couple of pictures showing one method of to help determine how to cut a panel to match up with the complex curves on the side of a car. This is basically the intersection of a plane and the side of the car so as to minimize the bending of the applied panel. I used a cheap Black and Decker laser gimmick that projects a laser line as shown in the pictures.




I had already done the front by the time I thought about this and it won't work there now so I projected behind the front wheel well (same curvature) to see if it looked like what I already did, looks pretty close to me.

Kammback angle?

I'm in the planning stages for a kammback extension and this is to help visualize the angle and length. It will block much of the rear view so I plan on making at least the center portion from lexan or polycarbonate.

Beginning of rear wheel skirts

This is the start of my rear wheel skirts, this part is permanently attached to the car and does not get in the way when removing the tires. There will be a lower part that attaches to fully smooth the airflow over the rear wheel wells. These are made out of 18 ga. galvanized sheet metal and riveted to the car body.

Front tire deflectors

For some reason on this car the front tires aren't entirely behind the front fascia so I made some extensions. This increases the frontal area slightly but it keeps the airflow cleaner so the net effect should be positive.


Front view-no more tire peaking out into the airflow.


Rear view

Side view


Overall front view.

Rear dress up panels

Panels to beautify the newly exposed spare tire well, might even have some very small aero effect but not enough to amount to anything.

In progress

I did some more work to the Geo today but it got dark before I thought about pictures. I made some fairings to keep the front tires out of the airflow as well as some panels to make the newly exposed rear look a little better. I also started on the rear wheel well skirts, got the top part done but I'm still deciding how I want to do the bottoms so they are easily removable for servicing.

I'm thinking about adding a Kammback and maybe some wiper deflectors into the mix too. And eventually I'll go fully smooth on the wheel covers but for now the ones I have are pretty smooth so not a big priority.

I've been getting 42 MPG for the last several tanks so I'm really curious to see what all these changes can do. As far as I can tell I'm already doing pretty good for an automatic trans car but this stuff is fun, much more fun than engine or paint and body work.

The back aeromod

I noticed a big chunk of the rear fascia hung down lower than anything else at the rear of the car so I decided to remove the factory air brake. I'll make some sheet metal covers to dress it up a little so it doesn't look quite so bad.
That separate piece in the first pic is what I cut off.

Front aeromods

The front end so far.
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Front air dam, partial grill block and filled hood/ bumper gap. I anticipate some good mileage gains from these modifications.


All the parts added this far are metal, mostly some old 5V tin roofing I had laying around from another project. There are a few pieces of 18 ga. galvanized but not much because it's harder to work with and complete overkill for these kind of modifications. Lots of pop rivets and a few screws holding it all together.


A hinged section I made in the center of the air dam because I like to be able to jack the front of the car up in the middle and my jack won't fit under the new addition.


Here you can see the jack just fits in the opening, there is a neo magnet on each side to keep the door closed. The magnets are mostly just there for cosmetic reasons so the door doesn't show when the car is sitting still, I'm sure air pressure would keep it closed at speed.

Still gotta do something to get those front tires out of the air stream.

Aero mods to the Metro-1

Finally started on the aerodynamic modifications to the Metro this week. First I removed the side mirrors and made some covers, this reduces frontal area as well as improving the vehicles Cd. In Florida the law requires one mirror capable of seeing 200 feet behind the vehicle so my inside mirror still satisfies that all by itself.