Ok, I've been working on this swap for awhile, been really slow going with work and everything. But now I have the license plates sitting in the living room... So I have to get the car done so I can drive it. I've been working on it mostly in secret with a couple pm's over this period to wftb and others. Anyway, been taking lots of pictures because I wanted to post a complete build thread after I was done. But I think I might need some pushing to keep me on track in my "off" time. And I thought, what better place to push someone to finish a Fiero build than here... Ok, so in 2006 I picked up the car from a fellow PFFer in Kingston, WA. It was a 1988 CJB coded T-top with a blown duke and 5spd. Since then, I have:
1. Front suspension: completely stripped and rebuilt the front suspension with Fiero Store 1" lowering springs, new Monroe Sensa-trax shocks, 1" Rodney Dickman lowering ball joints, changed bolt pattern to 5x114 from original 5x100 and widened front stance 1" per side
2. Rear suspension: made my own coilovers alla Fierohoho... thanks for the inspiration and write up so I actually had the courage to cut up brand new struts... added large GT type sway bar from another PFFer. Stiffened entire rearend with strut tower brace from the Fiero Store. Changed the bolt pattern and widened rear track by 1" per side.
3. Fuel: Cut original tank and installed higher pressure and flowing pump to supply fuel to the new Ecotec engine.
4. Engine: Made my own mounts and tied new L61 2.2L Ecotec to cradle via a series of solid and poly mounts.
5. Transmission: Ditched the old 5spd and cables which went to another PFFer for their car. Hope that it is still serving him alright.
6. Turbo: Almost have my handmade manifold done to mount TD-04 Turbocharger to the engine.
7. Interior: Installed some new seats, much improved over the moldy old ones.
Now I'm sitting here tonight with a mass of wiring to go through and cut up...
I'm going to try, uh, maybe I should make that more definite... I will be posting more frequently. Hopefully... I really want to get this on the road. I want to feel the difference between this and the '09 Solstice GXP. It should be pretty fun as the T-top has already lost over 400lbs since losing the old iron duke and the old transmission. Well, hope you enjoy. I'll be posting some pictures soon.
~John
*edit for pictures*:
When I went to look at it:

New Engine, this is why I love my Wagon...:

Old engine removal day... Lots of danger with jacks...:

The engine with the first turbo manifold I ordered on it:

Test fitting the engine the first time:

Some concept art:

And this is the fun I'm having tonight:

Hope you all enjoy and keep me focu... Oh look, a quarter!

[This message has been edited by FieroCustom (edited 03-07-2009).]

So what transmission are you using?

I'm using the F23 Transmission from a 2005 Cobalt. I suppose I should have noted that kind of info above. Ok, engine: 2005 Malibu 2.2L L61 with 1mile on it... Transmission: 2005 Cobalt F23 5spd with 16miles on it. Mating the two is a Spec Stage III clutch and Fidanza Aluminum Flywheel. This car should seriously have Ebay and PFF sponsorship for all the parts I've sourced for it. Big thanks to the user who posted about monsterpartsonline. I got a great deal on the exhaust flange for the custom manifold.

*edit to add*:
I won't be posting until at least Saturday night due to my job.

[This message has been edited by FieroCustom (edited 03-06-2009).]

Looks like a killer project..........But It loks lke you are up for the job. It's good to see people try new things.

Looks like it's gonna be great, can't wait to see the progress! I've heard Ecotec swaps can be a real challenge but I don't know much about them.


I have a question for you, I am interested in doing a 3800 II turbo swap one day (Probably 5+ years from now). Where exactly do you plan on putting the intercooler? I'm stumped on ideas with what to do.

[This message has been edited by Samohtneas (edited 03-06-2009).]

quote Originally posted by FieroCustom:

I see you have a gun ready to shoot yourself when you can't figure out the wiring

Just got home from work, BLAH. Anyway, to answer some questions:

Samohtneas,
I was planning on making the side scoops on the quarter panels functional and mounting dual side inter coolers like the front of a 300ZX. A contingency plan is to mount my 24"x7"x3" inter cooler just forward and below the engine at an angle with a low scoop to grab air near the ground and bring it up through the inter cooler mounted at an angle up past the engine and out the deck lid vent. I don't know if I'll be dropping the engine today to show you what I mean with the contingency plan, but if I remember I'll snap some shots of the 300ZX style mounting that I'm planning on right now.

mrjohnishome,
I had just gotten done cleaning my gun on the space that the wiring was sitting, just kinda still had the gun near me. Ever since my house got broken into I try and keep it close by. The wiring is going to be ridiculous though. At least I have the COMPLETE wiring harness from the donor car. I just don't have the donor car... So I've got a lot of connectors that look the same, but are completely different. I've got GM's eSI program on my computer, so I can look up just about anything 2005 or older for service information and parts. That's the program that is running on my computer screen in the back ground actually. I'm going to try my best to get the wiring done. If need be I'll just hack up an old engine harness and try converting to MegaSquirt EFI.

Thanks for the interest all. I'll post more later today.
~John

Very cool build, John. Could you show us how you widened the front and rear suspension? Or did you use spacers??

Bob

RCR,
Glad you approve. Btw, thanks for the 3d Fiero drawings for cad, I've got a friend who is thinking about drawing my whole car up as a challenge. He is talking about racing, me actually building the body vs. him drawing it out in perfect detail. Anyway, onto your question. I don't have the suspension experience yet to feel comfortable cutting the original mounting points out and keeping them perfectly aligned while moving them out, so right now I am just using a nice spacer/adapter to change out the bolt pattern. I am gaining the experience on my t-top and getting plenty of ideas for my 88 coupe build when I get back to Colorado. I think actually widening the suspension might be on the list, thanks for nudging that idea.
~John

great looking start to your build .nice to see you are keeping at it , i love my ecotec , i dont even think of alternative engines any more .held motorsports makes wider upper and lower control arms in their sport front end and rear bumpsteer kits .street dreams by ross makes lowering front spindles with any bolt pattern you want .without drop spindles or lowering ball joints the held setup does not have enough travel .ditto for the RCC front end .i found some turbo manifolds on e bay by a company called vulcan but yours looks great .you are way more ambitious than me .

Thanks wftb. I was sold on the power of the ecotec awhile ago. I was bidding on a held motorsports suspension on ebay but got beat out. I might have to look into some of those widening options. As for the turbo manifold, yeah, this is actually the third one. The first came with the turbo, would have been great, but I needed to keep my trunk for the t-tops, so, sold it on ebay and ordered another one, it might have worked, but the workmanship was absolute garbage, I called that guy up and chewed him out like bad beef jerky. You could feel the thickness at the welds with your fingers, it was less than 1/16" in some places. And some of the runners partially blocked the ports, so I decided, guess I'll have to make it myself. About $600 later I have it nearly done, and I have a new welder too! Yay. Thanks for some of the info you passed to me awhile back about this swap too. When you started posting some of your build on your thread you really got me interested in the way that I'm doing mine. I know that yours has an actual throttle cable and you've had your share of turbo problems, so I'm learning from your problems with the turbo and trying to figure out my own way of making mine work with the fly by wire controls. I've never had a throttle pedal cost $175 before...

Very nice build. Personally I love the ecotecs myself and would love to put one in my car at some point in the future. Personally, I love to get my hands on a 2.0 supercharged (due to it's non direct injection) and turbo charge it. In another build thread, Joseph Upson has mounted an air to air intercooler up front by running the pipes inside the rocker panels. If 2.5 inch pipe can fit, my plan is to mount an air to air up front and run the 2.5 inch pipe in the same manner. I figure if I could get 300 reliable hp from it, I'd be very happy! Don't know how much lag having the air travel such distance would produce though but up front is the best place to get fresh air.

Regarding your build, is your engine going to be stock or are you planning on lowering the compression ratio?

Again, very nice build. Please keep the updates coming!

*Edit for picture*
Eau_Rouge,
Thank you for the compliment. I guess that means I'll start off tonight by answering your questions. I would not duct the air all the way to the front to be cooled. You want the charged pipes to be as direct a route to the intake as possible. You also want to minimize your bends and changes in diameter of the pipe. I've got some info on power losses transiting through the charge pipes, but if you're going to turbo charge anything I would DEFINITELY recommend the book "Maximum Boost." It is an absolute treasure trove of knowledge about turbo charging. Ok, enough of that, onto the question, the internals of my engine are stock for right now. I'm planning on not changing the compression ratio for quite some time. In the future (a ways into it) I'm thinking about building a high revving Ecotec. If I end up building that then I'll lower the compression ratio and do some upgrading to the internals.

Ok, for what I did today. I started off the day grocery shopping and cleaning out the garage a tad; but come on, how long can you pick up the garage before you start tinkering and make another mess? Sooo, once I had abandoned the picking up thing, I started off test fitting the turbo on the manifold. Before I knew it I was bolting it down and mocking up the exhaust. So I started with the outlet piece I had made for the turbo. After bolting it up, I'm disappointed that I paid the machine shop to build it. They're a machine shop and they didn't get the outlet matched properly. Argh, I'll end up grinding it up alittle to smooth the transition into the exhaust pipe. Anyway, then I had to figure out how to cut the 180* bend to orient the exhaust where I wanted. I've been doing a lot of this by eyeballing it, so I was sitting on top of the engine, looking straight down while I was marking the pipe for the cut with my soapstone. I don't have any pictures of that because before I knew it I had rough cut the pipe with my dremel and then ground it to match the angle I wanted it at with my grinder. So this is me holding downpipe A to the plate.
That looked decent, so I tack welded downpipe A to the plate and mocked it up. Wow, my shifter cables are pretty close to the exhaust. I'm planning on having the exhaust jet-hot coated and then wrapping the pipes to insulate them, but, dang, I might need to rethink the shifter routing.
One thing that I've been thinking about is wftb's swap. I definitely want to be prepared for a turbo mishap, so I give you the creation of downpipe B.
Now, if you've been paying attention you'd be like, "Wha, he made a turbo downpipe and a naturally aspirated downpipe?! What about mating them to the rest of the exhaust?" Well my friends, I'd already planned that out, check out where the NA downpipe B exits: Pretty much exactly where the turbo downpipe A exits. So I'm thinking, add a flexible coupler there to absorb all the movement of the engine revving and hard mount the rest of the exhaust right? The best part is swapping from NA to turbo and back without changing the entire exhaust. Pretty sweet huh?
The last thing I did before buttoning up the garage was test fit the alternator. Hope you all enjoyed today's progress.

[This message has been edited by FieroCustom (edited 03-08-2009).]

quote Originally posted by FieroCustom: RCR, Glad you approve. Btw, thanks for the 3d Fiero drawings for cad, I've got a friend who is thinking about drawing my whole car up as a challenge. He is talking about racing, me actually building the body vs. him drawing it out in perfect detail. Anyway, onto your question. I don't have the suspension experience yet to feel comfortable cutting the original mounting points out and keeping them perfectly aligned while moving them out, so right now I am just using a nice spacer/adapter to change out the bolt pattern. I am gaining the experience on my t-top and getting plenty of ideas for my 88 coupe build when I get back to Colorado. I think actually widening the suspension might be on the list, thanks for nudging that idea. ~John

You betcha ...I'm full of great ideas.

Bob

[This message has been edited by RCR (edited 03-09-2009).]

Looking good,

coming from a fellow ecotec+fiero owner

Ok, it's been a couple days. So here's what's up, found the oxygen sensor bungs I had ordered, saved me from ordering new ones. So now I'm trying to plan out where to put them, have to take into account routing and wire length. Plus, I'm toying around with the idea of running around with a test pipe for a little while. Anybody running Ecotecs, have you only ran one oxygen sensor and had problems? I came up with the N/A and turbo downpipes after I ordered the bungs, so either I go with only one O2 sensor or I order two more bungs. As I'm looking at all the schematics it looks like the engine uses two O2 sensors, so I suppose I'd have drivability issues if I only used one O2 sensor. WFTB or Fosgatecavy98, did your Ecotecs have two O2 sensors or just one? You were running MS right Fosgate? I'm thinking about it doing that, even have most of the components to complete the V3 board, just want to break the engine in on the stock ECU.
I unpacked the headlights I ordered, and wouldn't you know it, the guy sent me two right headlights, argh, now I've got to find a good left headlight at the yards around here. That's going to have to wait a weekend or two though, so I guess no work on the hood yet. Well, I suppose I could start making some mounting points, the mounting is fairly symmetrical.
I picked up some foam, foam panel adhesive, some cheap spray adhesive, fiberglass supplies, and I already had some fleece sitting at home... Who can guess what I'm thinking about doing?
I'm going to continue working on unwrapping the donor wiring harness and snipping out what I don't need. I think I might need to pick up a new BCM though. Might have to see if I can snag one of those from a yard for cheap too. I doubt I'll get any of the parts I'm needing cheap. Not enough 2005s in the you-pull yards. I'll probably have to go to Best Auto Parts in Lynnwood. I'll try and get a good deal, but last time I went to buy the wire that connects to the fuel pump they made me buy the whole dang fuel pump. The guy at the counter refused to sell me just the little piece of wire with the connector at the end of it.
I would post pictures of the headlights and stuff, but my computer doesn't want to read my memory card, maybe it's time for a new one of those. I just thought I'd give an update before passing out.
~John

damn man thats nice!!

mine came with 2 O2 sensors .i use them both .the first one sits in the exhaust manifold in the stock bung .the second one came with a really long cable on it so i put an extra bung near the muffler and mounted it there .i have not run without both of them .if the second one isnt hooked up it will throw a code .

Thanks wftb,
That's what I thought, well, looks like I need to order another O2 bung.

Thanks for the vote of approval BabyVet, I need all the encouragement I can get to actually finish this thing.

I may be posting more tonight, right now it's off to run some errands.

~John

quote Originally posted by FieroCustom: Thanks wftb, That's what I thought, well, looks like I need to order another O2 bung. Thanks for the vote of approval BabyVet, I need all the encouragement I can get to actually finish this thing. I may be posting more tonight, right now it's off to run some errands. ~John

Encouragement is what is needed i know i have wanted to get ride of mine a couple of times but i got some help and encouragement and now i'm looking to fisnish it!!!

Ok, not much of an update today as I spent most of my afternoon replacing the alternator on my wagon and then repairing my garage... But I'm going to start off with this:

I've wanted to comment on Cliff's big screen comment for awhile now, lol. If you can't read the picture it says, "Be honest now - You don't really have a large screen. You just wanted to know if I had written something here." This has cracked me up for awhile now. And this is why:

No, I don't have a large screen... lol, oh well, now that that's out of my system, onto today's update:
Finally got pictures to upload to my pc, so here are the 2 Right headlights that the guy sent me... ARGH, now I've got to go buy a left one.
This is part of the excitement in my garage today. I utterly destroyed one of my shop lights. On accident of course. After the lighting was fixed I loaded the front suspension to get pictures:

Now, the rear is still on jacks, so I know that this is not the true ride height, but dang. I've got 1" lowering ball joints AND 1" lowering springs on the front. Boy, do 88's sit high in the front. That's about it for today, I'm just posting while I take a break from labeling the spaghetti mess of wires in my room... I'm starting to think about using that gun... Remember mrjohn, I'll use it on the wires first.

~John

FieroCustom can you private message your Vin# I may have alot more information on your t-top fiero.

Ok, been almost a week since I posted any progress. So, I've been working on the donor wiring harness for about a week now, man there are a lot of wires. My kitchen looks like it has been attacked by radioactive mutant spaghetti. I also found out the seller didn't ship all the wiring to me. Now I'm trying to scour around for the missing bits I need. You know, things like the underhood fuse box. At around $550 from gm and ~$350 from monster parts online, it is worth my while to try and find it on my own. There's a couple other things too, but I'm slowly finding them on Ebay. I'm shooting for trying to get this to work as much as GM intended as possible to get the break in of the engine complete before I finally bolt on the turbo, flash the ecu and let like 200 horses loose... Plus if I get it running the way GM designed the Ecotec to, I can do a baseline before and after turbo on a dyno. About the only other thing I've done is redo a picture of the rear end when I felt like shooting the mutant spaghetti monster in my kitchen. This is what I came up with, the changes are subtle and was mostly cleaning up the original body lines and shifting the license plate over a little so it looked right to me.


Hope to post more on Monday
~John

Ok,
I'm taking a break from the wiring to ask about A/C hoses. I've been around and not one machine shop or auto shop in the area can tell me who can make some hoses for me. I have the lines that connect to the Fiero chassis and the part that connects to the A/C compressor of the new engine. So basically all I'm looking for is a cut and splice kind of operation. I don't see what is so difficult about it, but no one around my area seems willing to touch something completely custom like this. So, is there any PFFer around that would be willing to do the job if I sent the hoses to them, or does anybody know of a shop in Washington or Oregon that would do it?
Wftb or Fosgatecavy98, how did you guys solve your A/C issue on your installs?

Sincerely,

~John

quote Originally posted by FieroCustom: here are the 2 Right headlights that the guy sent me.. ~John

I have never seen projectors with specific right and left hand sides. Most of the time they are marked but if you fire them up there really isn't a visible difference between them. If you can make mounting brackets work you should be set unless the seller is making everything correct for ya.

I have since taken the lights apart and realized that, but, one of the plastic connectors that the bulb attaches to is broken off of the metal housing. I'll see about posting pictures later. Just thought I'd take another break from wiring, whew, got a big pile of throw away going now that I'm getting into the swing of it... Don't know if I'd ever want to do this for others though, a lot of man-hours in unwrapping all the wires, determining what parts you want to keep functional in the donor, and then cutting the rest out. Next time I do a swap I need to just buy a wrecked car so I have everything already and don't have to rely on ebay.

i havent attempted getting my AC going yet .my compressor was damaged during shipping .i have the same set of hoses you do sitting on a shelf .i think 3800 swappers do a similar splice job though .try skitimes build thread , might be some info there .

Ok, well, I almost joined the ranks of those who have had a car fall on them. Luckily, A) the car didn't have to far to shift and B) my garage bench and the wall stopped the car from going into the house. I stopped, got the car off of its precarious perch, finished dropping the engine out, and now I'm going to call it a night. Only so many close calls I can take in a day. Everybody try and be safe out there, watch out for shifting weight when lifting...
~John

Ok, I suppose it's time to update everyone for the week. Finally got my computer to sync and upload my pictures, so here goes. Over the week I got my hands on a clutch alignment tool, yay! Time to drop the engine again:

This was the night my Fiero decided it wanted to move while I was lifting it, good thing my work table and the wall was there to stop it. After it tried to run off I spent the rest of the night stabilizing it and re-chalking it so it wouldn't get any ideas about running away.
The next nice day I split the engine and tranny apart to put on the new clutch and flywheel, a stage 3 Spec, yes I know, you all hate them...

and an aluminum Fidanza flywheel weighing in at an amazing 7lbs.


Here's the two flywheels side by side for comparison, there is a major difference in weight between the two.

For some reason, just getting the clutch on was a very accomplished feeling. Too bad it didn't last, I felt lost as to what to do next the rest of the night.

So the other night I get to thinking about a new dash, after all, I'm planning on using the Malibu cluster, so I would like a curvy dash. This is what I started thinking:

Make a little fiberglass copy of this, take the HVAC/Radio center and kind of wrap it around the driver, and put the Malibu cluster in the center. So today after I got off work I started making the second piece of fiberglass work that I've ever done:

I used duct tape as a barrier/release layer. After that I added a layer of fiberglass tape, the kind that you use to seam together two pieces of drywall. Then I cut a bunch of fiberglass cloth and mixed up some resin. I ended up mixing too much resin, it set about a quarter of the way through the project, so when it warms up tomorrow I'll go out there and finish the dash copy and retrieve my plastic rock that I made. Have to get it done so I can drive my Saturn Saturday night.
After the fiberglass fiasco I still wanted to get something done, so why not set the car on fire? I attempted to mount the adjustable pedal with screws and bolts, but the pedal is just too long. It would contact the floor and the whole assembly is so tall it doesn't fit well under the dash. So I decided to weld it in.
Preparing the surface under the dash:

The half of the $174 accelerator pedal that I cut off:

The actual pedal part with the pedal position sensor and the mounting plate I left uncut:

And immediately following my weld job, note the smoke...

So I spent quite awhile waiting to see if it would go up because that insulation can smolder for quite some time. Glad I stuck around too, looked up to see a bunch of smoke rolling up the windshield. Oh, still smoldering... So I finished off the fire, found all the smoldering bits and shifted through the imaginary gears now that the car has all three pedals.
Good night all,
~John
*edit*
Forgot to add the instrument cluster modification I'm working on. I started with a scan of the Malibu Cluster like so:

And then did a little tweaking to it. How do you guys like this one:

Deleted the "Malibu" on the temp/fuel side. I took out the regular RPM and replaced it with a more Fiero like RPM. Added a touch of flare with the bold and aggressive Fiero GXP in the center. Denoted the engine's prowess where the "Malibu" used to be. And as a final little detail, modified the fuel gauge so the fill pointed now points to the driver's side. Let me know how you all like it. Now I'll have to save it and take it to someplace to print out in vinyl or something.

[This message has been edited by FieroCustom (edited 03-28-2009).]

I have the 1" lowering ball joints and WCF 1.5" lowering springs, and I can almost tuck my 225-45-17's on my Formula. I'll have to upload a pic later, I dont' have any on my comp right now.


Word of caution though... I also have the 12" Corvette brake kit, and the rotors DON't clear the lower control arm (where the ball joint goes through) without a lot of grinding and hammering in. Just a word of advice if you decide to upgrade the brakes. Looks good so far! I've been considering an Ecotec turbo for a while now for the power and weight savings....

------------------
1988 Fiero Formula 4-spd- 3400sfi intercooled turbo Haltech ECU. Here comes 350+whp
1991 Galant VR4 - Summit White 2.3L, SCM61 powered Slammed Sedan
1990 Eclipse GSX - parted out
1992 S10 4x4 - lowered, bike/quad hauler, dd
1995 Kawi Ninja zx7r
2004 Honda TRX450R #33W MX

1987 Yamaha Warrior - for sale

EMX,
Yes, the weight savings is ridiculous. The old engine was a PITA to move around on my cherry picker. The new engine AND transmission are easy to move around on the cherry picker. I definitely want to weigh my car after I'm mostly done to find out what the weight savings are.

quote Originally posted by FieroCustom: Ok, I'm taking a break from the wiring to ask about A/C hoses. I've been around and not one machine shop or auto shop in the area can tell me who can make some hoses for me. Sincerely, ~John

I can't remember who it was from our JetcityFieros club, but they know a shop that can create custom A/C hoses and for very reasonable prices. If you are a member, send a shoutbox question on the www.jetcityfieros.com webpage.

[This message has been edited by sricka01 (edited 03-28-2009).]

sricka01, thanks for the advice, a shout out around the Seattle area has been given.
In other news, guess what I got finished with...
I was able to complete fiberglassing a shell of my Saturn's dash for use in the Fiero. Good thing the temp got up to 48 today so I could work on it. Here's a couple mock ups of the shell in the T-top:
Much better than the square look of the stock dash. Now I've got to add reinforcement to the backside of it and figure out how it's going to mount in the car. And I've got to stop procrastinating and start working on blending the Fiero and Malibu/Cobalt harness together. Still awaiting parts on that though. Well that's pretty much it for now. No comments on the GXP modified cluster yet? I must have a boring build going on here. Goodnight all,

~John

the build looks great .a new dash too .are you covering it yourself ?.

That seems to be the plan. I try and do as much myself to a) save money and b) learn as many new skills as possible.
Well, time to go to work. *yawn*
~John

Well, I wanted to post some pictures, but it looks like I need to get a new card reader for my computer. Anyway, I've finally got the donor harness all CHOPPED up, now comes the fun part... melding it to the Fiero harness. I also am in the process of fixing the brakes. The one pad I took off was worn all the way through the brake pad to the metal backing... I really wanted to post the picture of that. Well, time for a couple hours of shut eye before taking off to work again. Toodles!

I just read your build for the first time and I'll have to say it's looking good. Have you considered using an aftermarket computer to control the motor?