Hey I am a four year Fiero owner(86 SE) and I recently burned up a rod bearing on the Autobahn. I know several of you have built up your v-6 and I plan to do the same as finances allow. I recently went back to the states on business and had my heads rebuilt for about $225. I thought that was a good price. Anyways I'm back here in Germany and I haven't pulled the engine yet so I don't know what condition my crank is in. I would like to purchase a 3.1 and a set of rods but I don't want to spend an arm and a leg on them. Could anybody recomend where to locate a crank/rods set or would it be a better idea to purchase them in a master rebuild kit. I've been looking and I only seem to find 173CID rebuild kits through PAW. My other question is what four speed automatic will drop into the fiero? I've heard many people bash the idea of reto-fitting four speeds. I look at it like this...If they weren't a good idea then why are they in all the new cars? I don't think many of these people have ever driven on the Autobahn but it's pretty hard to keep up. As the old adage goes: 'RPM kills!' My plan with this car is reliability, practicality, and speed and not always in that order. Any help and guidance would be appreciated. Speady

part of the problem with 4auto is that many are ECM controlled. The Fiero ECM's cannot control anything but TCC lockup. If you can find one that bolts to a V6, and only needs TCC lockup, you'll have to then fool with shifters.

Several companies make a add on kit to retrofit an auto overdrive, like the 700r4 and 4l60e/80e into non computer controlled cars. Maybe one of these kits would work on the 8t60e tranny. A phone call to B-M might be a good thing to try.

When going from a 2.8 to a 3.1 you don't need new rods, you need new pistons the wrist pin holes were relocated

Whatever you wind up doing with the internals,have it fully,dynamically balanced,and get the HeavyDuty oil pump also.
Maybe there's an application that uses even taller gearing with the same type gears as the Fiero.

I know the rear cradle is modeled after the X body car (ie Citaion, 6000, Celebrity), is there a year where either of the cars mentioned above had a four speed auto. Hopefully they had just the TCC lock-up ECM contol. Cooter thanks for the info. LowGC how important is the dynamic balancing. I'm not real sure how to explain this to a german machinist. Unless I could get a crank/rods/piston/balancer/flywheel that was all balanced either together or in parts. Does anyone follow me. My resources are a little limited being overseas and I don't want to build it half-assed.
Speady

The stroker kit that Pisa sells is supposed to be balanced already, you just have to balance the rods which you can do in your garage if you have a very accurate scale.

Here are the trans gear ratios:
http://www.euronet.nl/users/fo_elmo/gearratios.htm

Speady, I don't really know if a 4 speed overdrive automatic will easily fit in a Fiero or if so, how much modification it would take to do so, or if they are even strong enough to take a high performance engine build up and handle Autobahn speeds, but you might email the tranny guy at the below URL and ask him. He seems to be quite knowledgeable. One easy thing you can do to drop high speed rpm a little is to install the tallest tires possible. Good luck.

http://www.thegrid.net/thedrivetrainpage/

A good balance job will actually give you a few horsepower at the top,but more important is the releiving of internal stresses from having moving engine parts with different masses attached to the same crankshaft.
When I balance rods,to one another,I find a point,somewhere in the middle of the rod,to serve as a balancing point.This,along with equalizing to the same weight(within 4 grams,or better)helps to maintain an effective balancing job.
All of the German cars I've owned have been balanced pretty well from the factory,should be able and find someone to work on your engine who knows about these things.