Hello. I am looking for any help that I can get. I am putting a sbc in my project fiero and am looking for some tips or advice on the cradle. I picked up a rust free cradle for a manual car and want to use it for my automatic swap. What changes need to be made to make this work? Also what mounts are used? (th 125) And if anyone knows what exhaust manifolds work good that would help a lot. I bought some center dump block hugger headers but the back one comes out on top of the inner cv joint. Thanks in advance. Steve. I[img]//images.fiero.nl/2012/rsz_1fiero_002.jpg">
Thanks fierosound for the tip, but I like the three speed, and I just went thru it with new frictions and steels and bushings and seals. It has the 3.03 ratio and a 2830 stall converter with woven carbon clutch. This is just going to be a parade car, not a daily driver.
There is no difference in the 84 to 87 cradles between the auto and manual cars they even use the same rubber mounts. The 88 is the only year with a difference and that is just the addition of a tranny mount at the end of the tranny and only the 4 cyl cars had this if I remember correctly.
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DARN Cars now open with Over 30 years wiring experience between cars and trade as an avionics technician in both Canadian Air Force and civilian aviation. Over 25 years experience building and modifying cars. Over 10 years of full Fiero engine swaps and harnesses building and still going.
There may be better headers now, but when I built my sbc car I used the stainless '98 Corvette with A.I.R. (1 5/8" pri / 3.0" col)(P/N 14087511) for both sides. They're center dump, but they don't hug the block like many other styles do. I wish I could tell you they'll clear the auto transmission, but I can't be certain. They do clear the CV joint on the manual with lots of space though. I apologize for the crappy quality of the photo, but here's what they look like:
Thanks fieroflyer. The cradle in my 86 auto has a transmission mount on the front and the rear of the 125 and the cradle that I picked up from an manual fiero has a large pad welded to the left side of the cradle where the manual transmission mount goes. The automatic cradle does not have this.You might be able to see the piece that I am talking about in the picture. I have not removed the original motor and trans from the car yet and am hoping to get the most of the work done to the v8 set up before I do pull the oe motor.
Some one most likely added that pad on the driver's side for a non Fiero tranny as that is where the extra tranny mount piece I mentioned on the 4 cyl 88 auto cradle was. The 88 4 cyl auto only had two mounts one engine one tranny on this pad where all others had one engine mount and two tranny mounts one on each side of the tranny which was a lot stronger. I would just cut it off and carry on.
Thanks again fieroflyer. I will remove that pad and also the one in the front for the original motor mount, It,s not needed with the v8. Have you done a v8 automatic swap before? It looks like the original trany mounts wont work. The motor needs to be shifted as far left as possible so the harmonic balancer will clear the right side frame rail I am looking for some general measurements to go by.Archie has a measurement on his site for the center of the crank shaft to the right front cradle mount but nothing for the transmission side to keep everything squared up.