The Turbo 3500 F23 swap (Page 56/79)
ericjon262 APR 28, 01:48 AM
been a week since the last update... I've been hard at work on several avenues to get things back together.

I ripped apart the interior, and pulled the instrument cluster and dash out, and I picked up a microsquirt, which I am going to link to the MS3 Pro Via can bus, and use it to control the instrument cluster, thereby eliminating the need for separate, and redundant wiring in the car. I'll also use the microquirt to control the cooling fan relay, intercooler pump relay, and idiot lights. provided I have enough outputs capable.

in other less important, to most, but very important to me news, I hooked up with a guy local to me and I was able to acquire a nicer decklid, and while I was at it, I also picked up a hardtop roof, headliner, CHMSL, and an 87+ fuel tank expansion tank. the new roof was in pretty bad shape, but it was complete, and I decided I'd take a crack at it while the rest of the interior was out of the car. why put a new roof on? My car was a hardtop from the factory, and not that I care in any way about the car being original, the PO's cut a hole in the roof and installed a crappy sunroof that has leaked ever since I bought the car, and it's just plain ugly, so I figure that while I have the interior apart, it's easy to access the bolts to remove the roof, so I might as well get it done while the parts are available, and it's relatively easy. I'll also be installing a CHMSL, my car, being an '85, didn't have one factory, I'm hoping there's a spot for it in the space frame, as they add a nice bit of visibility, to the car, which helps add a safety factor.


The new roof skin was pretty gnarly...





and a small crack developed while removing it...




I sanded it down and cleaned it up as best as I could, I also roughed up the surfaces that needed filler, and applied SMC filler to clean up the damage. I still need to do a little more on the A pillars.

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The decklid was in much better shape, but the paint was trash, so I sanded almost all of it off. I'm hoping to get it in primer tomorrow mid morning.



I picked up a can of this, which appears to be a very close match to my car, it's more than close enough.





I also cleaned up the headliner board, it had a bunch of moldy looking fuzz on it, so I used a wire brush to gently knock it off. I'll get some fiberglass resin and coat the whole thing to make it a bit more rigid, then I'll glue on new headliner material, which will make the interior of the car so much nicer.

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I need to do some light repair work around the visor mounts, but I think I can handle it without too much effort.





other than that, I've been working on wiring, slowly but surely it's getting done.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/119122.html

ericjon262 APR 29, 01:45 AM
I did a ton of body work today, I got the first coat of paint applied to the decklid, and fixed the A pillar crack again. I didn't grind out the crack deep enough the first time, so this time, I ground it out deeper and wider, and applied the epoxy SMC filler to both sides, the area now feels like it's ready for little boy or fat man...

The new decklid was off of a 2M4, I scrapped the decals off, but the letters remained, it's amazing how the decals protect the paint to the degree that the paint it thicker under it to the degree that it needs to be sanded off. Another fun fact, gold fiero paint turns silver somehow...



Here you can see the crack came back...



The new surface is much nicer, but still needs a ton of work to be perfect, and I would like to make it as close to perfect as I can, so I don't have to do this again later.



a close up of some of the imperfections I need to fill and sand out still.



Here's the decklid in primer

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and here's the first coat of red. I plan to lightly sand it with 600 grit tomorrow, and throw on at least one more coat.

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I am however, starting to wish I had bought a gun and shot it with some good single stage, I think it would have been cheaper to do it that way, and damn sure faster.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/119122.html

ericjon262 MAY 05, 12:44 AM
I did a good bit of work this weekend, but you wouldn't know it by looking at anything... I spent all day friday and saturday painting the new roof, and removing the old one, unfortunately, I cracked my windshield pretty bad, but the plus side of cracking the windshield, I decided that I would remove the cracked windshield to hopefully reduce the cost of replacement, and I found a tiny rust spot that I can fix, that a windshield company would just cover with glue. it's not fixed yet, but it has been thoroughly wire wheeled to remove the existing rust.

I primered the new roof, and sanded it with 800 grit until I had a uniform finish.



then I sprayed on the red, it took a ton of paint to do it, but it appears to have turned out ok.

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then I broke out the 1500 grit, and wet sanded the whole roof skin, again, to a uniform finish, this picture was an in progress pic.

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unfortunately, some kind of debris got between the paper and the paint and put some mildly deep scratches in it, they don't show very well in the pictures, but in person, they're clear as day. after wetsanding, I got the buffer out, and buffed it out as best I could, again, it looks way better in pictures than it does in person, but it was also a rattle can job on a $1300 car...



I set it on the car to get an idea of how close the color matches, and it's pretty darn close, I expected way worse.



left is new, right is old, right is also dirty and not recently (ever?) buffed.



On to more important parts of the project!

I now got back to work on wiring... well, kinda... Since I am going to use a Microsquirt's outputs to run the factory gauge cluster, it meant I needed to mount the Microsquirt somewhere near the cluster... you might be surprised how hard it is to mount an object not much bigger than a cellphone somewhere mostly out of sight, yet still moderately easy to access.

My first thought was above the gas pedal like this:



Problem with this location, is the lock on the connector for the Microsquirt is designed in a way that to get to it, I would have to remove the whole unit, and maybe the dash to add or change inputs to the Micro, so I needed something else.

I came up with this, it mounts the micro near the steering column, with the connector down, and easily accessed.



The problem with this, is that the wiring would be clearly visible, and possibly intrude into the already crowded footwell... now what??? I trimmed the bulk of the bracket off, and then traced the connector out on the bracket. I then made a large notch, and inverted the Micro... Bingo!



Now the entire thing fits under the dash, and crappy GM interior plastics in a way that 99% of people won't even know it's there!

The wiring will be routed through a pocket under the dashboard, here's a shot with the dash removed to show the proposed routing.



the whole unit is quickly and easily removed by 4 Phillips head screws, and the entire interior intact, making adding inputs to the micro extremely easy compared to the in dash option. The next step is to start terminating wires and get the can buss network setup. I have most of the wires routed, and there's even a power feed available at the mounted location, since my car doesn't have power windows, I can install a fuse in the WDO position in the fuse block, and use that wire to power the micro! I'm excited by the possibilities this brings for me, one of the particular projects I have in mind, is to have new gauge faces made for the "rally gauge pod" I pulled from a junkyard car, and make a stock appearing boost gauge, and maybe a air temp gauge or something for the other one.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/119122.html

ericjon262 MAY 22, 03:00 AM
I got the shift cables in, and a shifter built. in it's current condition, if functions more or less as desired, but the select cable is way to close to the strut tower, I'm going to take it back off and make some adjustments to it to move it off of the strut tower which should improve cable life and shift feel. Note, the "E" clip that holds the select lever in place isn't installed and the lever isn't fully seated in the picture.






in other news, I'm getting alot closer with the wiring nightmare. It may not look a whole lot different to the untrained eye, but it definitely is a huge improvement over the older stuff I had done, and MIGHT fit behind the console without chopping it up. the engine harness is able to be divorced from the chassis harness via 3 connectors, a 3 pin that holds the reverse light wiring, a 16 pin that holds the power, ground, and switched chassis inputs to the MS3, and a 5 pin connector on the MS3 that houses the CAN bus link.

------------------
"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/119122.html

ericjon262 MAY 26, 01:51 AM
The wiring to the new fuse panel is terminated, and the wires I had run to the C100 now extend into the front trunk. long term, I'll use these to power high demand loads like the headlights, cooling fan, and intercooler pump, for now, I think I'll cover the ends and leave the fuse in the engine compartment out.



I also removed the spare tire tub, at one point I installed a crappy remote battery tray in it, but now that I don't have a battery there, I don't want it in there, there's a guy local to me who is trading a stock tub for it, so everything works out well. I'm also getting a "new" set of AC lines from him that I'll install while the tub is out. I also took a minute to open up the HVAC hox and make sure there wasn't any debris in there that would want to catch fire when I power the car back up.

I also pulled apart another bulkhead passthough and installed it over the wires running through the firewall, it looks much cleaner, and will seal up the giant holes better. they aren't permanent yet, and I don't think I'll use glue to seal them like the factory did, so that if I need to run a new wire I can do so more easily.



Along with the new AC lines, I picked up a new to me passenger coolant tube, I had cut and welded mine to clear the 88 rear suspension. When I welded it I did a piss poor job and ended up with a leaky mess, so I went the redneck route and JB welded it. Please excuse some of the potato quality pictures...

The new tube was an 87, so the heater return tapped into the tube and didn't return directly to the engine, with my LX9, I can do the same thing because the engine doesn't use a recirculating cooling system like a Northstar, an LSx engine, or a later model VVT 60V6. Those engine need a dedicated return path or the heater will only work with the thermostat open. The tap for the heater return is on the back of the tube near the engine, which honestly doesn't make much sense to me. I did some calculations and determined the pressure drop across the tube from front to back, not accounting for the bends works out to about 2 PSI, this was assuming a 7500 GPH(125GPM) flowrate (obtained from ASE website linked below) that figure also assumes full flow through the tube, with no flow through the bypass line or heater lines. After seeing the math, I determined that there isn't a reason not to move the nipple forward on the tube to the front crossmember. I already had the front tub out, so I removed the existing tube.

the new tube is far, old is near

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The heater return nipple

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The proposed new location

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I installed the new tube, set the spare tire tub in, and marked the tube from above through the cowl drain.



with the tube marked, I pulled the tub and tube, cut the nipple off the back, drilled a hole and welded the tube up front. Somewhere along the line, I misinterpreted my mark, and put the nipple on at an angle that isn't exactly ideal, if I ever need to pull the tube again for some other reason, I'll consider welding it in more vertical like my finger is pointing.





I then attached a hose, and did another test fit, the hose is close to the spare tire tub, but I don't think it's close enough to warrant cutting it back apart.

Now, you're probably wondering why go to the trouble? it's now one less line that has to be run underneath the car, I can also repurpose this line for the A2W intercooler which means I would only have to run one new line. it's also a DD friendly weight reduction mod. admittedly, the tube probably doesn't weigh enough to make a huge difference, but every little bit helps right?

now for the other half of the work, my old tube was mess up because it didn't clear the 88 rear suspension links, can you take a guess what also doesn't clear? yep, the new tube, I figured this would be the case, which is why I was ok with cutting the nipple off of the back of the tube, as I knew I would have to cut and weld the pipe to make it work.

here's the new pipe prior to any cutting, you can see the bolt for the longitudinal link is right up against the tube...



I cut the end off, and rotated the whole pipe up so it now make a turn into the wheelwell.



Next I took a cutting from the old pipe, and added a 90 to the end of the tube, pointing it into the engine bay.



The final step was to cut the rolled end off of the old pipe, and weld it on so the hose is less likely to fly off under pressure. now everything clears and points enough into the engine bay to make hose installation easy, but not so far that it makes engine removal or installation difficult.



Now, what if I decide to install a newer engine like an LZ9, with a recirculating cooling system? I came up with a very simple solution, do the came thing I did to the front, to the rear. add a nipple at the water pump suction connection and the heater will again function. the downside to this is that the engine may take slightly longer to warm up based on the much larger volume of cool water in the tube vice a dedicated line. I didn't do any math to prove or disprove this, but I don't think it would be anywhere near large enough of a difference to matter.


7500 GPH data source. note this describes a typical pump, my LX9 water pump could be more or less, and the number is an exageration either way based on multiple coolant flow paths that don't (didn't) go through the tube like the bypass line and heater core. I suspect this number is higher than the design flow of my LX9's pump.

http://asecertificationtrai...ine-coolant-systems/

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/119122.html

ericjon262 JUL 04, 02:15 AM
Been a hot minute since an update...

intercoolers don't fit where I wan them, or the way I want them, for now, I won't have one. I'll work something up to fix that after it's running.

I had a bunch of trouble connecting to the MS3 pro, turns out the main power fuse was blown, but because the IGN+ power fuse wasn't, it lit up and appeared to work, making it a troubleshooting nightmare...

I fabbed up a downpipe, and a new fuel level sending unit, and got the clutch and flywheel back in. the car is almost ready to crank, but I've been working an absurd amount of hours at work, so we'll see what happens.





The stock sending unit has an odd restriction built into the tube, I cut it off and connected the fuel pump at a part of the line that was a full 3/8"

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------------------
"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

https://joj2020.com/ <--- She isn't a sexual predator.

La fiera JUL 04, 09:01 PM
Beautifiul work but man, that decklid is going to melt with all the heat all that piping is going to radiate!
pmbrunelle JUL 04, 10:29 PM
Probably some metal heat shields or exhaust pipe wrap would be a good thing.

[This message has been edited by pmbrunelle (edited 07-04-2020).]

ericjon262 JUL 06, 02:18 AM

quote
Originally posted by La fiera:

Beautifiul work but man, that decklid is going to melt with all the heat all that piping is going to radiate!



Thanks. I don't think heat will be a huge deal, the hot parts are much further from the decklid than they appear. I'm considering making heat shields like suggested by PMBrunelle suggests, but for now, I want to get this heap running.

------------------
"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

https://joj2020.com/ <--- She isn't a sexual predator.

ericjon262 JUL 12, 03:09 AM
bleh! Last week, I was at work for about 110 hours, so as you can imagine, I haven't had much time at all to get anything done.

Today was a busy day, The intake is bolted down "permanently" as is the alternator, idlers, and the belt is installed. additionally, I put the 3# wastegate spring in, and got the ports clocked the way I want them. I was going to make and install all of the boost/vacuum lines, but I somehow never ordered the right fittings... DOH. They're on order now, and should be here Tuesday.

I needed a place to install my main power ground on the engine, and had been trying to some up with something acceptable for a while, with no real luck, then it hit me, use a longer bolt for the top idler, then use the overextended threads to install the ground on.




I also got the oil feed line plumbed and connected, the harness re-installed, and some other odds and ends sorted.

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the last thing I did was re-evaluate "the list"

To start the car:

heater/coolant hoses made/installed.
boost and vac lines (awaiting fittings)
Alternator charge wire
fix the flex fuel sender wires (they're a bit too short...)
Wire the other half of the fuel pump connector
install the axles
fill the transmission
prime the oiling system
set the ignition timing
add chafing protection to the wiring near the battery
wire in the O2 sensor LED


To drive the car:
new front right brake line/bleed brakes
bleed the clutch
finish the roof install
install a new windshield
reinstall the windshield wipers
install the decklid
install the front tub
install the upper front fender bolts
install the rear wheelwell liners
opcheck all of the lights

------------------
"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

cognita semper

https://joj2020.com/ <--- She isn't a sexual predator.