So while I had everything apart, I ordered more parts, including a welder to install the new battery tray. But i was lucky that a few other parts came in including my fuel sender and brake lines and braided steel hoses. So I went to work on those.

One of the first things I noticed was that the front fuel tank strap was held up by zip ties

Luckily McMaster Carr is a few minutes from my house and was able to pick up a new T bolt for the strap when I put the tank back up. Once I got it down and the sending unit out, found the typical rusty tank problem.

I wasn’t looking to spend how many days trying to source a newer, better tank So I drained out the fuel and spend hours flushing it out with clean fuel and a pump (fuel safe lol) and I stocked up on fuel filters. This lead me to the decision that I was going to take the fuel rail and injectors out to clean, since I saw posts before about people having rust in the rail.

After cleaning and installing the new pump on the sending unit (I also delete the pulsator as well) Which, I’m not going’s to lie. I didn’t follow the directions that I might have to bend the float to clear the baffles that the fuel sending unit comes with and figured that “it’ll be fine!” Well that thinkin bit me in the a** later on.

I don’t have many pictures of the process of installing the Fiero Store brake lines. Though I would say two things. One: The rear lines did require some re-bending. Had one that the line was bent in the opposite direction it needed to. And no. It wasn’t one of the “shipping bends” that they use
Two. And this is on me. It would’ve been A LOT easier if I just removed the spare tire tub! Oh man did I fight with that. Just got lazy. I didn’t learn that until I converted the A/C O Rings for R-134...

[This message has been edited by Gunganking (edited 07-05-2020).]

OMG...that driveway appears to be on an incline plus everything else everybody else has mentioned. At lease here (see pic) the guy has half a chance of the vehicle rolling away from him or onto him.



Spoon

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"Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne." - Kurt Vonnegut

It’s been a few days but I can finally update the story while I wait for a bunch of 3800sc swap parts to arrive.

As stated before I just replaced the brake lines and installed braided steel hoses. I reinstalled the fuel tank (for the first time at this point) and started to convert the A/C to R-134.

This was actually a relatively easy job. Especially after I figured out how easy the spare tire tub was to remove. Made access to the fitting on the drivers front frame rail much easier. This discovery would have shaved probably an hour and a half off the time it took me to replace the brake lines
Along with replacing the O rings. I did the due diligence of replacing the accumulator because the system was open for so long. While there. I took the blower motor and resistor out to take a gander inside. Wow that was absolutely disgusting and packed with mouse nest. Thank god it got cleaned out.

After that job was completed I changed out the two switches mounted in the compressor. The Fiero Store sells one of the new style switches for $50... I actually did some research on the forum to find the part numbers and was able to find them both for ~$35 shipped to my house! Not bad. Fingerprints Workshop on YouTube has a video of him converting the compressor switches for clarification. I wired the switches up slightly different than him but either way does the job
(I also installed new front radiator hoses during this point that I got from the Fiero Store. I had to shorten the hoses to have them fit)

Now most of my parts arrived to start on the engine. Decided to tackle the most time consuming part, the broken exhaust manifold bolts. I had 2 initially, but one broke upon removal on the rear of the engine. I ordered Rodney Dickman’s Exhaust manifold bolt Jig to help.

Review time:
Rodney’s jig lined up perfect, and the various inserts used in junction with the drill bits worked amazing. Only issues I ran into were with the drill bits and thread tap themselves. I burnt through the two bits not even halfway through the first bolts. BUT I went out and bought more bits the same size and I burnt through them very quick as well. And I tried everything, lube, no lube, more pressure, less pressure, more speed, less speed. I guess I can’t use a drill correctly

As for the tap, which I do know how to use haha, it broke the first hole as well. I replaced with an Irwin tap that I had and had no trouble.
Overall 10/10 recommend Rodney’s jig. Just make sure you know how to drill metal haha


Reinstalled the exhaust manifolds and started with the intake manifold. I removed the upper intake manifold and of course, a lot of the vacuum lines cracked. I replaced those later with Dorman lines later. With the upper intake removed. The coolant lines to the throttle body were deleted, with the inlet and outlets just capped off with rubber caps and hose clamps for now

I proceeded to remove the fuel rail and injectors to clean.
Went the route of deleting the cold start injector, just because of all the problems I’ve heard, and because I didn’t want to wait for a rebuild kit. I plugged the fuel rail with a drain plug of the same thread pitch and plugged the hole on the lower intake with a freeze plug mentioned in another thread I read on here. Later on I made the decision that I was going to reverse that and reinstall the cold start injector. I didn’t like the crank times later on being in the solid 6-7 second range just for the car the sputter the first time it fired after sitting. Once it started, it would fire up quickly.

I removed the fuel rail and injectors, injectors “Appeared fine” at this point in time, and found no traces of rust from the tank accumulated in the rail. That’s great! I still replaced the fuel pressure regulator, and cleaned the injectors in an ultrasonic cleaner. Took care not to completely submerge the injectors to prevent solvent from entering the injectors through the connector face.

Removed the middle intake plenum and replaced the valve cover gasket and PCV grommets. Reinstalled the middle plenum with new gaskets. Installed the fuel rail and injectors

Side note: 5/6 injector retaining clips were destroyed upon removal. I was able to reinstall the injectors without the retaining clips successfully without fuel leaks in the future. So a +1 to saying you don’t “need” them that there were a few discussions on the forum that I read on when my clips were destroyed.

Replaced all of the broken vacuum lines that ran under the intake and replaced the leaking EGR feed tube. And finally reinstalled the upper intake plenum. ( I also replaced the EGR valve stand off due to the feed tube nuts and studs being so rotted away so I got that from the Fiero Store as well)

This point it’s time to install the few little things left.
Replaced the broken alternator bracket, (but kept he same alternator for now) installed new belts for the a/c and alternator. Replaced the spark plugs, wires, cap, and rotor. Now time for the exhaust

Y Pipe was reinstalled with a New O2 sensor for good measure.
I also bought The Fiero Stores catalytic converter delete pipe due to my Cat being rotted out, and where I live you don’t have to do emissions testing on vehicles build before ‘96. And I gotta say. I either didn’t do enough research but the pipe didn’t fit well. The flange side that connects to the Y pipe is a different size, and didn’t like the stock doughnut gasket. I had to actually shave down the gasket to it to somewhat seal. Also the bends of the pipe didn’t match up well. It took a lot of man handling for it to fit



At this point the engine was ready to be reinstalled into the car!

[This message has been edited by Gunganking (edited 07-05-2020).]

On to the next one!

I got the engine installed pretty quickly. The only headache was the slave cylinder decided to seize while bleeding it. I had to order one but it didn’t stop me from firing it up!

Well. Needless to say she ran...... but not very well. Easing into the throttle helped her rev better, but wasn’t great. At this time it was getting late and would decide to mess with it the next day.

Next day came..... car decided that it didn’t even want to start that day I got really aggravated and let it sit for 2 days. Guess what? It fired right up that day I decided to mess with it again but one thing I did notice, it would die after about 5 minutes of running. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. I didn’t Check that out till later. First I decided to take care of the misfire it had.

I followed the service manual procedure for figuring out misfires. Disconnected the IAC and started unplugging spark plug wires one by one to notice a change. Boom. Found a dead miss on cylinder 4

I started to get worried at this point. Knew I had new plugs and wires, gapped correctly. With strong spark as well. So I ran a compression test on that cylinder to make sure everything was kosher, 135psi dry compression. Well. There’s only three things needed for fireworks Air, Fuel and Spark, so I went with fuel is my culprit. Even though I cleaned the injectors, I had one not working properly. Ordered 6 Bosch injectors off RockAuto for $100 shipped.

Popped in the new injectors, oh man! What a night and day difference! She ran great! When she ran.....

Once again she would start when she wanted. This time I noticed the fuel pump wasn’t turning on with the key.a buddy of mine was helping out with this as well. Checked the fuse, good. Checked for voltage at the test port on the diagnostic connector. Nothing. Applied 12v at the test port, fuel pump fired right up. I have a problem with the control system. Checked for power at the fuel pump relay pump side, 12v. Jumped the two terminals, fuel pump fired up. Okay. Checked power at the ECU side of the relay. 12v huh? Okay if everything has power when it needs to, and the pump works when supplied power, why doesn’t it work? I even Ohmed the relay to make sure it didn’t have excessive resistance when turned on. .5ohms. Swapped relays with the A/C. STILL THE SAME THING THE PUMP WOULD WORK WHEN IT WANTED TO!! I’m aggravated at this point. But managed to catch it in the act. I tugged on the wires at the relay and boom the pump would cycle demon the way the wires were moved, took it apart and found spread pins. Replaced the relay with a new updated style from Autozone and everything on the fuel pump side worked great.

Until she didn’t want to start again.....

[This message has been edited by Gunganking (edited 07-13-2020).]

So on my first test drive, I pretty much decided that the brakes needed to be replaced all the way around. Since I’m doing it, might as well upgrade...right?

I ordered brakes off a 1990 Grand Am. Made the mistake of ordering WS6 calipers/rotors/pads. Learned that the hard way and had to return all the parts. Reordered NON WS6 brake parts, as well as the S10 brake booster upgrade.

Part number for the booster is TUFF STUFF 2232NB. And ordered Rodney Dickman’s brake booster adapter. (Along with the clutch reinforcement bracket he has to reinforce the new clutch pedal I also ordered from The Fiero Store. Found my clutch pedal was completely wrecked when I replaced the clutch master and slave cylinders) I also ordered the 190° cooling fan switch from Rodney as well.

I followed the write up member AustinH had made to install the S10 Booster.

As for brakes. I removed the old front hub/rotor assembly and brought them to a friends shop where him and a few other guys graciously helped me out with machining down the hubs. We used a brake late and a drum brake lathe, with a LOT of time.



I believe I used Dorman P/N 610-323-1 for the new lug studs in the front. Installed new wheel bearings and seals. Made sure bearings were packed properly.



That’s a comparison between the old and new rotors
I clearanced the front knuckles for the calipers. And just removed and replaced the calipers and rotors on the rear and installed.

Next was to diagnose why the cooling fans would not come on with A/C command. Looked in the service manual for the symptoms of cooling fan operation with A/C command. First step is to jump pins K and H on the HVAC control head. If the cooling fans turn on. There’s a problem with the controls. If not you have power/ground problems on either circuit.
I jumped those two pins, boom cooling fans operate normally. I decided to take a peek inside the control head and found the circuit board burnt up on the controlling circuit



I was able to find a controller on eBay for $35. Although I had to swap the buttons over from my controller because the one I received had brown? Buttons. They seemed stained, so it would have irked be because the buttons didn’t match the rest of the interior.

While inside the dash. I decided to perform the coolant temp gauge peg mod. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of this process, but I removed the dashboard to gain easy access to the wiring behind the cluster. I followed the guidelines on a forum post on here and swapped the two pins in the clutter connectors and on the coolant temp sensor.

After all that work. I was thinking I would be able to drive it..... Until yet again. It didn’t want to start. It would backfire like crazy but not run. Verified spark. Verified fuel. It obviously had air. With it backfiring it seemed like it was timing. I had my same friend come over who helped with with the brake hubs figure it out.
We followed the book and verified firing order and base distributor timing. It didn’t make sense.... we started playing with the timing by leaving the distributor loose and changing timing while starting. Found out while cranking, we had to turn the distributor clockwise as FAR as it would let us until it fired. The quickly turn it back so it’ll idle!!! And when we revved the engine it wouldn’t advance the timing and we had to manually turn the distributor advanced while revving it to get it to run right!

Well we seemed it was a problem with the pickup or the ICM
So I ordered the A1 Cardone distributor upgrade and installed. She fired up every time after

Finally took her on the voyage to test out the brakes and everything else to the local Harbor Freight.



Next time is when you guys find out why I’m swapping the engine and where I’m currently at with it.

[This message has been edited by Gunganking (edited 07-13-2020).]