Building our Lemons/Chumpcar (Page 19/29)
DonP NOV 29, 10:57 PM
The next west coast race was scheduled for December 8, 2012 at Chuckwalla Valley Raceway in southern California. http://goracecvr.com/ We had planned on going to this race, but held off registering until we actually had another engine in the car and running. Given that we now had two engines with well over 100k miles, and a history of blowing up engines, we decided to roll in some new main bearings and at least look at the rings. After all, it would be a real pain to drive 692 miles just to have an engine let loose on us.

Luckily for Rich and me, my brother Doug started talking without thinking and volunteered to look over the engine. Doug is our fourth regular team member despite the fact that he lives some 450 miles away in Springfield, Oregon. He's a heavy equipment mechanic during regular hours. He and I had built and raced several cars from around '83 through '94. And he has been the crew/builder on a IMCA modified dirt car for the last 10-15 years. He's also been known to do some uh, over-the-top type stuff during his racing career. For example, he purchased an SB2 NASCAR racing engine to put into his teams IMCA Modified dirt car. If you aren't sure what a modified is, they are stock front clip, tube framed dirt cars with a $500 claimer rule engine. The SB2 may, possibly have exceeded the $500 claim value.

With all that in mind, in mid October I delivered our first engine to Doug in Springfield. It also gave me the opportunity to visit Mom and get trounced yet again in those cut-throat scrabble games. And who knows where all those new card games originate. All I know is that I'm no good at any of them. We figured that a month and a half was lots of time to be ready for the next race.

In the mean time, Rich got started on his... uh let's see, .. his 4th and 5th oil pans since starting this project. Since Doug was working on one engine, we used the second as a test mule. We already established that the '88 and '86 2.8 pans are different. So that was the first pair we made. Obviously the 3800 was different, so that was the third. And of course the Series I just has to be different than the series II pans. Since we had two engines, Rich started on two new pans. I bought a couple new pans to start with. It's just not a good idea to weld on a used oil pan and expect to get a good weld. This time, however Rich approached the whole project a little differently. One of his racing competitors had a real metal brake, something that did a somewhat better job than the kinda homemade unit he had. Rich laid out the new oil pan and created a couple cardboard templates to make up a couple modified pans.







He did three different changes to the overall design as opposed to how he built the Series I pan. The first change was to change the depth of the new pan. On the earlier Series I pan, Rich had added approximately 2 1/4" to the overall depth. It looked good when out of the car, but once it was in place it looked to just a bit too deep. Meaning it was just a bit too low. There was no doubt that the oil pan was the lowest part of the car. With that change in design, he had to make a shorter engine block to oil pick-up tube adapter. On the series I he made a 2 1/4" tall extension from a block of aluminum. Now he cut that block down to 1" and lost 1.25" of depth on the pan.







The Series II had some differences in how much the main cap extended or dropped down out of the block in relation to the pan rail. You can see how Rich had to notch the adapter to clear the main caps.

We were very surprised and pleased to see the changes to the oil pan gasket used by the Series II. In essence, Buick created a windage tray! Too cool! We did have to notch the tray to clear the new extension



The second change was to eliminate the forward extension to the sump. Rich elected to extend the sump only to the rear or trunk. At the same time he simplified the construction by eliminating any gates. The pickup in the 3800 is already pretty much centered in the pan. It's not to either end of the block and so we felt that the sloshing away from the pickup wasn't as bad as that found on the 2.8. Our biggest goal was mainly to increase capacity. So the design change seemed reasonable.





Our third design change was necessitated by our desire to do away with the stock dipstick. Because we really wanted to keep the coil packs attached to the engine for easy removal with the cradle, access to the dip stick is a real problem.




Our solution to moving the dipstick was mostly the result of a joke Doug commented that many heavy equipment oil tanks were hard to monitor. Often times all they had were sight glasses. Whoa. Could it be possible to use a sight glass on the side of our oil pan?

Short answer, yes.





Rich measured up the "full" mark on the stock dipstick in relation to the bottom of the block/pan rail. Using that measurement he determined where the center of a sight glass should be. He welded in a bung and screwed in a sight glass.








Okay, this might not be a solution that you use on your street car. But it seems to work well on our track car. We can peer under the car at every pit stop and quickly determine that we have oil showing at the proper level in the sight glass. As with most tasks in building a race car, it's about trouble solving. Once we had Doug drill and tap the stock dipstick hole and install a plug, it was problem solved.

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 12-01-2013).]

DonP DEC 01, 05:52 PM
When we dropped the first engine off with Doug, we told him that we wanted to keep the engine stock, just check the rings and roll in the main bearings. Obviously that would mean new gaskets but we could pop for that. What made the whole thing work out was that Doug has been working with Tim Riel of Tim's Muscle Cars in Springfield for many years as well as Rod Riel, Tim's dad for a decade or two before that. These are the kind of guys that built the engines for , amongst other things, a nationally recognized boat racer who went undefeated for some unbelievably long time such as five years. We felt comfortable that the guys would handle such a simple project.

While they were responsible for dealing with the engine, Rich, Robert and myself were still chugging away with all the necessary fabrication work involved with changing over from a series I to a Series II 3800. We had a wiring harness that had been built for the '94 Series I. I do not recall all the changes needed to change over for the later engine. I think there was mostly changes to a couple sensors. After some consultation with Ryan at Sinister (http://www.gmtuners.com/ ) we pretty much chose which year sensors to use, maybe changed a connector or two and were pretty much good to go.

At the same time, we now had a couple '98 ECUs and decided to have Ryan flash them for use in the car. This gave use two identical ECUs, so we should always have a spare. That worked out with our intent to have a complete spare engine/transmission couple, mounted on a spare cradle and kept in the trailer. Having the entire setup assembled and ready to go would make sure we had all necessary spares. And we wanted to do the same at the front with a complete loaded front cradle.

But on to all the little things that kill so much time. On the exhaust system, we had eliminated the EGR. Welding the manifold was easy, but we had to deal with the inlet on the intake. We are too cheap to buy those real pretty block-off plates that a couple folks here offer. So I simple cut a piece of aluminum from a too-bent-to-reuse race car body and attached it to the intake manifold below the throttle body.



As anyone who has done the 3800 swap thing can tell you, filling the coolant system is a real sore point. We have not yet found a quick way to dealing with the process, but this is one solution we have now used for a year.



It's somewhat slow and painful, but works. Experience has led us to the decision that I am not allowed to touch this thing with a wrench. Ever. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

We had to change out the belts because, well they are different than the Series I. We were able to use our Series I based alternator mount. In addition, we changed out to the GTP idler pulley mount which is located just above the alternator. The GTP mount pulled the pulley in, towards the engine narrowing the whole package.

We also had to deal with that really weird casting that was used to feed the heating system from the 3800. There is a lot of discussion about that here in the forum. A few, such as ourselves are actually not running a heater core and have asked about how to handle the water flow. Several folks commented that simply threading and plugging the outlet in the lower intake manifold as well as the outlet which would feed the heater core would solve all the problems. For example, http://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...130314-2-119643.html Ultimately, Darth Fiero commented that they had actually measured temperatures and just plugging the holes created problems. So we drilled and tapped the appropriate holes to deal with them later.

Had I known it, looking at this next picture would have clearly shown the single point of failure in our next race. But we will discuss that later. (Is that a tease or what?)





Foolishly, we assumed that the exhaust from the Series I would just bolt up to the Series II. Will we ever learn? The Series I uses a exhaust donut/gasket. The Series II uses a flange to join the exhaust manifold to the exhaust pipe. The donut gives some flex to the system. Looking through the forum, I see that the majority of folks use some sort of flexible coupler, something like this http://www.summitracing.com...3gi7sCFRFhfgodRksAxA



But we had just bought a new muffler and had a nice welded system. And we are too cheap to buy that flex coupler. So, if you have an exhaust coupler that works and need to adapt, what to do?










You can see the exhaust donut in place on this next photo. We preferred the flex offered by this system over using the flex braided coupler.












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Fierofreak00 DEC 01, 08:38 PM
Looks great Don! Keep them updates coming..

If I may add to the coolant filling procedure, if you drill a small 1/8 sized hole in the thermostat, you can save yourself a lot of time in filing and bleeding the cooling system. I've done that on the last 3 L67 builds I've done with great success. -Jason
DonP DEC 02, 09:11 PM

quote
Originally posted by Fierofreak00:

Looks great Don! Keep them updates coming..

If I may add to the coolant filling procedure, if you drill a small 1/8 sized hole in the thermostat, ..... -Jason



Hi Jason,

We have done the small hole in the thermostat flange thing. And we've gutted a thermostat, using it as a restriction as opposed to an actual thermostat. But even with that gaping hole, it just seems difficult to bleed properly. Since we drain the engine with such regularity, it becomes a real pain. If we were on the street where the engine really only gets drained once every few years it would be easier to live with. I'm now thinking of doing something coming off the lower intake manifold on the opposite end of the engine.

I guess it's an old story.
DonP DEC 03, 06:39 PM
Because we did not yet have the engine back by the registration deadline, we bowed out of the Chuckwalla race. That meant that the next race in our region was at Sears Point in March of 2013.
The Fiero Libre guys however really had their act together and put together a Class C winning drive in the 24 hour race. With 114 entries total, Peter's guys finished 23rd overall. The class winning car can be seen here. https://www.facebook.com/ph...39494&type=3&theater Their 23rd place finish was with 6 BS penalty laps. I have no idea what the BS judges found to fault Peter's car over. The finish results are here http://www.specialtytiming....%2014%20CVR12812.pdf

At about this same time, I made a return trip to Oregon. Mom thrashed me again at Scrabble. I dropped off the second 3800SC and brought back the first freshened engine. We put the accessory pieces back on and continued towards getting the car ready.







we stayed with the RAM clutch despite the earlier interference.

I found a ZZP stainless header on e-bay. But we just couldn't feel comfortable using it. It was too shiny and cool looking. So we just wrapped the stock manifold and left it at that.









We had to make a new dogbone. Actually, with 4 separate solid mounts, I don't think a dogbone is required. But we went ahead and set one up.



Doug couldn't resist and replaced the supercharger pulley. He purchased the ZZP 3.4" pulley. http://shop.zzperformance.c...charger-Pulleys.aspx and at the same time he picked up their puller. http://shop.zzperformance.c...r-Pulley-Puller.aspx That puller was pretty slick. They did a great job of engineering it. Luckily, Doug sent the puller back to Reno along with the engine. We elected to remove the aftermarket pulley and restore the original pulley. It just looked too much like a performance mod. We were already running a supercharger, we didn't need to attract too much more attention.







here's a shot of an ugly method we used to move water between the lower intake manifold and heater/pump housing.




Later I dressed it up with a much shorter hose using some fancy looking anodized fittings. At this point we were still pursuing the cobbled together look.

Truth be told, this next picture is exactly what it looks like. Rich installed a handle on the roof to aid in getting in and out of the car. We only have one regular driver under 50 and only one under 225 lbs. And they are both the same guy


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Enough of the truth. We told the competition it's a sneaky and possibly cheaty aero device.


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DonP JAN 09, 07:55 PM
In March of 2013, we took off for our next race. This time we were returning to Sears Point/Infineon/Sonoma or whatever. We are all old enough to prefer Sears Point. So that's what we'll call it.

Truth be told, we were pretty cocky about this race. We were probably the most prepared that we had ever been. Our somewhat freshened Series II was sounding good as we drove it around the block. And it definitely put out some torque. Good stuff that torque. We had an extra engine that would be making the trip from Oregon with brother Doug. We had an extra transmission. Heck, we had extra front and rear cradles. Bobby had put new tires on the tow rig. And, unlike our last Spring race at Sears, it didn't look like rain was going to mess with us.

Wednesday, Doug called. He might not be able to make the race. His boss had some sort of serious ailment that had put him in the hospital. Life threatening stuff. Doug had to cover the mill and wouldn't have a definitive answer about going racing until Thursday evening. We had hopes that he would be in town Thursday so we could mount the spare engine to the spare transmission and onto the spare cradle. Strike one on being doubly prepared. No matter, if he could make the race, he would bring the spare engine. If he couldn't make the race, no problem. We had a good engine to start the weekend with.

Because of the uncertainty regarding Doug, Rich and I delayed taking off until Friday. Doug couldn't make the race. His boss was still in the hospital and they couldn't both be gone. Bunner.

45 minutes later, as we were hitting Truckee Ca, we started thinking about a replacement driver. We called Bobby, who would be driving over the hill later in the day, and did some brainstorming. The most likely candidates were racing in other cars. We called the Swig, but he was working at the power plant, covering an entire other team - the Mustang boys.

Finally we got hold of Jay Carpenter who had at one time started on building a LeMons car of his own. Jay works at a carbon-fiber type facility. Not only do they make parts, they teach people all around the world how to make parts. I think that about the time Jay finished making a carbon fiber hood to compliment the carbon-fiber splitter on his Scirocco, he figured he had blown completely past the LeMons spirit.


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Anyway, Rich called Jay at work and asked if he would like to race a Fiero with us.

"Sure. When?" replied Jay.


"Well, how fast can you pack? We are just now approaching Sacramento. It's about 9:15 now and we need to get teched-in by 5:00."

??


" Uh, . . .I'm at work now. But maybe I can leave early, say around 2-2:30ish."


"That'll work. You won't need to get your personal safety gear teched until Saturday morning. We have a hotel room already booked and we will see you then."
About 45 minutes later, Rich got a return call from Jay. His boss had told him that he was totally worthless around the shop after accepting our invite. "Go. Get out of here. See you Monday." Now that was an understanding supervisor. Oh, and his wife Rosa had his driving suit and toothbrush packed by the time he got home.
We got through tech that afternoon. But it was a bit of a struggle. At our last race, with the series I we had pretty much sailed through tech. We had been bumped from our traditional class-C straight to Class A. We had no additional penalty or BS laps, but surely we could do better than that. After all, we could say that we had not actually finished any laps on our maiden 3800 outing. We even had Judge Phil's residual value letter opening the way to getting a replacement engine. But I think that, because Doug and Tim's compulsion to paint the engine worked against us. It now looked a little too good. And the shiny new freeze plugs.

We were immediately hearing "class A sandbaggers" and "cheaty bastards" and other encouraging terms of endearment.

We were sunk.

After a couple minutes of this, Judge Phil piped in with one question.

"What transmission are you using?"

We told him that we were using the stock Fiero Getrag.

"The Fiero 5-speed?" he asked.

"Yup."

"Okay, this is just the type of idiocy we are looking for and want to promote. Stuff a large engine in an unreliable car and go racing. I can't let you stay in the C class. I have to bump you to the B class. But given what you are driving, I'll give you one penalty lap. Now getouttamysight."


The Mustang guys were not too amused. They got shoved straight into class-A and 3 BS penalty laps with a basically stock 4-cylinder, turbo-charged engine. It was out of a Turbo T-bird, but the car was an original turbo Mustang. I think that their team Captain actually made the tactical blunder of trying to argue the point and they just kept piling on penalty laps. His team mates hauled him out before he had to start the race from the highway outside the track.

Our biggest problem was that a new judge didn't like the numbers on our car. We had added a "1" to our existing "87" because another team had grabbed our number. The 1 wasn't to his liking. So we had to modify the decal. Paula had a bunch more patience for the task than any of the rest of us.




Jay got to the track with plenty of time to spare. He got his safety gear through tech and had enough time to learn where the controls were located in the Fiero. He had to borrow Robert's seat inserts.



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DonP JAN 14, 10:46 PM

Okay, I gave it away a couple posts ago when I mentioned the single point of failure on our new engine. So yes, we did have a catastrophic failure. It just took a bit of doing to get there.

The day started as usual. Jay Lamm, the originator of the whole 24 Hours of LeMons did his normal "behave or else" speech to all the participants, including the "other" Fiero team, Fiero Libre.





I drew the short straw and was the first driver out. Everyone tries to not be first. The reason being, that with over 170 cars being fed onto the track, it takes a while to actually start the race. Logistically, the operators have a whole bunch of stuff to take care of, including making sure each and every car has an operating transponder. So figure several laps of cruising around at a fairly temperate speed before getting the green flag. Truth be told, however, I prefer to be the starter. Those 20 or so minutes of slow driving allow you to remember what the track is all about. Everyone else has to jump in the car and go full out without any real re-orientation.






The car was obviously great! the new engine was strong and I felt that with the torque we would definitely be competitive coming off the corners. The green flag flew, we flew and all seemed good. about 2-3 laps in there was a yellow and I slowed coming off a left turn and noticed a small wisp smoke in the rear view mirror. Probably another car. Next big left and the smoke was back. Time to pull in.

I sat in the car while the guys checked out the problem.




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Okay. We obviously had a leak. It appeared to be at the front of the engine under the snout of the supercharger. But with the airflow making such a mess, it was impossible to tell exactly where it came from. So we used a can of brake clean, got it all dried off and went out for another lap. No joy, we still had a leak and oil was departing the engine.

To shorten the story, we spent the entire day chasing this leak. We changed valve cover gaskets. We smeared silicone all over the lower intake manifold at every joint. We replaced the oil filter in case it was a leaky gasket. We did everything. Even some stuff that didn't seem likely.












On top of the oil leak, the master cylinder started to leak that nasty brake fluid everywhere. I ran to NAPA and very close by auto shop looking for a new master cylinder. We also created a run on brake cleaner at the local parts houses. Did you know that California has different rules on what brake cleaner can be? The biggest thing we could determine is that it was weaker.

Okay, cut to 5:00. We now had like 9 laps in the books and still had no solution. 522 miles and 9 1/2 hours away was a fresh engine in Doug's garage. Something was wrong with our engine. Sooo, I called Doug, who had literally just got off work and told him I was on my way to get the engine. The guys would drop the cradle and I would get a new engine. If Doug would meet me at the Oregon border I would be back in 12 or so hours. Time to hit the shower and head out.

Thank goodness for cel phones. As I was leaving the hotel, I got a call from Rich. Doug had taken the time to look at the second engine before loading up. And he spotted something. If you recall a couple posts up I showed a picture that included "the single point of failure" on our new engine.



That hole that I have circled looks to be a blind hole in the block. In fact, that hole actually goes through the block and opens into the central galley inside the block. A galley where a lot of oil flies around. A hole that will only leak when driving hard in a left hand turn. But will never leak when test driving around the block at home.

That hole is also not visible from anywhere outside of the Fiero. You cannot see it at all. I had smeared silicone around the hole while attempting to seal the LIM.

Doug spotted the hole on the new engine and recognized what our problem was. Yea Doug. I didn't really want to do the drive.

Home Depot was outside the hotel. I picked up a complete selection of metric bolts anywhere near the right size and headed back to the track. We found the correct bolt and sealed the hole. With a bit more clean-up we were ready for Sunday.



Sunday was going to be fun. We were too far out of the race to do anything but have fun. Game on.




Let me get right to it. Our diagnosis is that all the brake cleaner softened up a hose. Said hose came in contact with the alternator pulley. A small hole ensued. Water left. Our new drive, Jay saw the temperature gauge doing funny stuff. Obviously it was a problem with an electric gauge. Our gauges are mechanical.

I put a couple laps onto Youtube. You can hear the engine going south on us. http://youtu.be/RKXCpTu09yw I think the other thing that was definitely off was the rev limiter. When we had the computer programmed, we decided to leave the rev limiter at whatever was stock. We had some discussion whether that meant 5800 or 6000 rpm. In any case, it was just a touch too low for sears point. We did hit the rev limiter quite often. We decided that, whatever engine we came back with, we needed maybe 300 more RPM to hit the sweet spot.
aaronkoch JAN 16, 10:12 AM
Man, that stupid bolt hole. The wierd thing about that is it only slings oil out at high RPM. I had this same problem 2 years ago, and thought my motor was toast.
The "Bolt"


Also, wanted to give you a nice idea for a coolant filler on the cheap: I use a 2001 dodge durango 1 1/4" inline filler T. Available anywhere, and I installed it about 3" to the drivers' side of the factory thermostat. It does have a vented cap, so you can use that to feed a reservoir in the rear if you want to get rid of the factory one, but I put a 20# cap on it and used a rubber plug on the vent line to prevent sucking air back on cooldown. Makes filling a breeze, is an OEM part, and since I have a couple of 1/8" holes drilled in the Tstat, it's the perfect high spot to fill the coolant after the radiator is full and closed.

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Build thread for my 88 + 3800NA swap

DonP JAN 16, 11:30 AM
"The Bolt" That says it all. The hard part is that no matter how clearly it shows in the picture, there's no way to see it once it's in the Fiero. Your right about the high RPMs. Absolutely nothing showed doing slow test runs around the neighborhood.

Once we found that problem, we put bolts into every hole we could find at the track. I have to laugh, but now, every time the engine is out, I notice everybody at one time or another will check that bolt.

I'll have to look at the Dodge connector. Sounds like a tip of the day to me.
aaronkoch JAN 16, 12:28 PM
I'll take a pic for ya at lunch.. had to drive the boring car today as we have frozen white crap falling from the sky.