Went to cars and coffee the other day, they took a picture of my car, it looked ok considering how dirty it actually was.



I drove the Fiero every day that my blue truck was down for repairs, it did well, but I still have a ton of stuff I would like to do, including install the line lock I bought 5 years ago... originally I was planning on installing it like this on the combination valve with a simple sheet metal bracket:



there's 2 problems with that idea,

1: if I get rid of the combination valve, I need to re-evaluate the line lock mount.

2: There isn't alot of real estate there, so I came up with another solution, that I may even be able to bring to market, I came up with a new bracket, I'm pretty happy with it.











This prototype was 10 ga steel, I'll probably make a final part out of something thinner. I may even do a production run of them, as it should fit literally dozens of other cars that aren't fieros.

I also have a couple background projects I'm working on as they come together, I'll post them.

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"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.

[This message has been edited by ericjon262 (edited 11-23-2023).]

I haven't updated this in a while...

A few months back, I bought a brake bias adjuster that I would like to install on the car when I install the line lock, not sure when that will be though.
I was planning on buying a Quaife, but when I was sent an ad for an OBX for $175 shipped, I decided I would give it a go, a buddy has one, and is running it in his DD Fiero with a 3.9 swap, and he seems to like it quite a bit, and claims it made a marked improvement on how the car drove.

I bought mine from one of my least favorite places, wal-mart.

This site has some details about the frequent failure of the preload washers in the units from the factory.

http://rbryant.freeshell.org/obx_washers.htm

There are nine M8 allen head bolts holding the two halves of the differential together, remove them, and you can split the case. Where the 10th bolt would go, there is a dowel pin.

I elected to flip mine before splitting, as this orientation is a little more stable.



The insides had a thick shipping oil on them. and quire frankly, it was dirty, if you buy one of these, at a minimum, take it apart and clean it.





I wiped it out with a rag and brake parts cleaner, and it blackened the rag, with what appears to me to be machine shop dust.



at this point, nothing holds the remaining parts together, if you flipped it over, everything would fall out. some noteworthy things, there are two sets of gears a left set, and a right set, these two sets of gears are cut opposite one another, but are otherwise capable of being interchanged. I do not have an answer as to what would happen if you swapped left for right, if anything, but I elected to keep then in the original places.



here's one of the preload washers, they were extremely dirty.



other significant findings outside of just being dirty, some of the gear teeth had what appeared to be weld spatter on them, it was pretty hard to get a picture of it, but here's the best one I could get.



these raised defects would eventually get tracked to the other gear teeth, and cause excessive wear, and possibly noise. it could also cause premature failure of bearings and gears in the transmission due to excessive where products in the oil.


for those that do not know, "tracking" is when a gear tooth defect is transferred to teeth that contact the defected tooth, eventually, it leads to all the teeth having the same defect, or a trace of the defect. in some instances, the defect won't get transferred to every tooth, due to the gear ratio not allowing every tooth to be contacted. this is why gear ratios are rarely evenly numbered IE 2:1, 3:1, 5:1 and instead are usually very odd numbers like 2.73:1, or 4.10:1.

here's an example of defects being tracked onto other teeth.



I very carefully filed/polished down the defects, there were a few, as well as deburred some openings in the case, after that, I loosely reassembled it, filled it with WD40, and put it back in it's box. I plan to get a washer kit for it, even though they didn't look bad, and I might spring for some ARP bolts for it, that said, I also don't have a transmission ready to receive it yet either.

For reference, this piece of pig mat was clean before I started... notice the metal bits? you really want to clean this thing prior to install.



overall? IDK, if I ever upgrade to an F40, I'll probably just spring for a Quaife, the gears in this thing look a little iffy, but maybe it's a non issue. If anyone has any questions about it before I put it in, feel free to ask.

I still need to finish the windage tray, I remember 15 years ago the machine shop that was putting together my engine said the stock one wouldn't work, I don't know why, so I went to the junkyard today and found a couple of windage tray, one of the great things about working on an engine nobody cars about, is that you can sometimes find them sitting on the ground and it's easy to get parts off, today, there were three sitting on the ground, two LZx engines, and one LX9. The LX9 was completely taken apart, down to a bare block, I looked all over, and didn't see the windage tray, on a whim, I opened the trunk of the car next to it, and there it was!

Then I pulled an LZx windage tray, the engine was pulled an upside down already, 5 minutes later, I have the tray!

I took them both home, and found why the shop who assembled the engine years ago "couldn't make it work", the stock windage tray attached via studs in the stock main cap bolts, these studs are smaller than the bolts. the studs, are the same diameter and don't fit through the holes in the tray... the LZx tray however, has the same setup, but the nuts for the tray are captured on the tray, and if you punch the washers that capture the off the tray, the tray slides right over the main studs, however, the LZx tray isn't a full length tray like the LX9 tray. in the picture below, you can see the tray doesn't cover the rear two cylinders, the oil pump also occupies this space to some degree.




I'm considering getting another tray cutting the front portion off, and welding it on where cylinders 5 and 6 go, but I'm not 100% set on that plan.

I like the LZx tray design better than the LX9 design, even if it's not a full length pan, the tray is louvered in several location for each pair of cylinders, unlike the earlier designs, which only have 1 louver per pair. I'm also giving some serious thought to further baffling the pan, the stock pan has almost no baffles, and there have been several people who have documented problems, or reduced oil pressure in high G cornering, will my car need all of that? good question, I hope to make it handle quite well under all conditions eventually, but for now, it would probably be overkill.

------------------
"I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."

I invited Lou Dias to trash me in my own thread, he refused. sorry. if he trashes your thread going after me. I tried.