Red = Map sensor. The stock 4.9 bracket can be modified to work here. It just clears the throttle cable bracket. Makes the vacuum hose much shorter. Doesn't work well with stock 4.9 intake snorkel.

Yellow = EGR solenoid. Stock bracket modified. Shortening the vacuum hoses looks much nicer but also makes it harder to put them on.

Green = CTS coolant temp sender. This needs to be switched to a 3 wire unit if you want a working gauge.

Easy solutions for mounting of these sensors. The stock brackets can not be used in their stock form.

[This message has been edited by Fieroseverywhere (edited 08-31-2014).]

quote Originally posted by davylong86: Now that is one sweet looking engine!Great job.

Thanks! I was really trying to make it look good again.

While I'm here I'll post a small update.

Got the flywheel back from the machine shop today. Freshly resurfaced. They gave me all kinds of questions about it. They were impressed with the quality and knew immediately that it was billet steel but couldn't figure out which engine it was for. Like most places they were not familiar with the 4.9. They were quite interested in it though. They want me to bring the fiero in once its running again. Anyway, $45 dollars for the resurface. They do very nice work!



Also got the new mufflers in today. I am trying to quiet it down a little bit without changing the basic design of the exhaust. There isn't much out there in the size I was looking for. These fit the bill perfectly.


Flowmaster HP2 Laminar flow design mufflers in T409 stainless (painted). Straight through design but supposedly much quieter then a glass pack or such. Looking at the design I can see how they would be. We will see. These are the "shorties". 12" case length, 17" overall, 2" inlet/outlet, 4" thick, 5 1/2" wide at seam. They also come in an 18" case length and polished T304 stainless.
Flowmaster Super HP2

inlet side...


outlet side...


Engine is complete. All heat shields added to exhaust manifolds. I also added the seal for the new decklid intake.



Also got the new release bearing installed. Just waiting on the new flywheel bolts now and I can mount the engine/trans to the cradle. I also mounted the airbox to the decklid today. I forgot to get pics though. I'll try to get some tomorrow. More to come, hopefully soon. Later.

[This message has been edited by Fieroseverywhere (edited 09-04-2014).]

Air pan mounted to the deck lid. With adjuster bolt and knobs for removal.



Mounting back to the cradle.



One of the welds was broken so I decided to re-do the engine strut. I went a completely different way and used the Fiero Guru method. 88 suspension link with poly.




Reinforced engine mount. Raises the engine 1/4". It braces against the cradle also. Under hard acceleration it should act as a solid mount but under normal driving its still poly mounted. Its experimental. We'll see how it goes.




Mounted back on the cradle.




Zero lash end links.




New Rodney Getrag brackets.



Rear bracket.




First the old broken front bracket. It was completely split. hmmm.

New front bracket.


Starting work on the exhaust. I think these mufflers are going to work out great!





Continuing work on the decklid. Starting to see a finished product coming out. Still lots of sanding to go though.





Also got my fierostore order. Door panels, wall panels, window seals & felt guides, door insulation & water shield, floor mats, trunk seal, ect. Still waiting on headliner, visors, and door speakers. Also got in the subs and amp, slave cylinder rebuild kit, inner and outer tie rods, and Moates tuning hardware. Going to be busy on this for a while. Later

[This message has been edited by Fieroseverywhere (edited 09-19-2014).]

quote Originally posted by Fieroseverywhere: Going to be busy on this for a while. Later

My famous last words.

Time for an update. I should be posting a great update at this point but unfortunately that is not the case.

I guess I'll pick up where I left off last. The engine was just about ready to go back in and tuning and interior parts were coming in.

I finally got a free evening and a friend to help me out. So we decided to put the 4.9 back in the car. It went pretty smooth and we managed to do it in 3 hours while drinking some beers and catching up. A nice relaxed pace.






It was a couple more weeks before I could get back to it. I spent time where I could to slowly connect everything.
Me and the wife also took a trip to the beach for our anniversary. Cape lookout on the Oregon Coast. Its a 2 1/2 mile hike out to the point but totally worth it. This pic was taken about 1 mile into the hike.


After a couple weeks I had everything hooked back up and I was ready to start the exhaust.



There ^^^^ is the 17x8 wheels. 16x7 225-50 front, 17x8 245-45 rear. I really like the way it came out.

New decklid hinge clearance. The motor was raised 1/4" to level it better.


Headlights by Projectorretrofit.com


This is a loner set while we work out a trade. I'm not going into the details yet.... Stay tuned on this one.

New mufflers. I had to do a bit of modification to make everything fit. I still have a full trunk. I also fired it up a few times to check the sound levels at different stages of the build. I was surprised how much those mufflers really did. Slightly quieter then the glass packs but the sound quality if drastically improved.





Since I wasn't very happy with my welding that day so I painted everything with VHT silver. Everything that can be seen from outside the car looks great. No leaks but not very nice looking welds at all. Oh well.

I also spent some time on the clutch again. The slave did not want to bleed for some reason. I took a few days as I ended up having the gravity bleed the master and slave both for a couple days. It did finally start working like it should. Still not exactly sure why I was having problems though.

Finally the big day arrives when I can start it up and pull it out of the garage. I'm really starting to go through withdraws. I really want to drive my car again. I even got some shots of the completed headlight install. Way better then the stock headlights. The quality is fantastic and Rick really knows his optics. I would highly recommend his products to anyone interested.


She fired right up. Not a second thought. Idle steadied, temp came up just as it should, no leaks, all fluid levels holding, basically perfect. All was good. I remembered that I needed to cure the exhaust paint and started following the directions on the can. Idle in neutral for 10 minutes, cool 10 minutes, idle 20, cool 20. Go for a test drive.

While the car was cooling for its second time I decided to break out the timing light and ran off to the garage to get it. Suddenly I heard a loud SNAP! !?!? What the hell was that? Why is the car suddenly leaking coolant from the #8 cylinder area? IT WASN'T EVEN RUNNING!!! Broken hose? No. Thermostat housing? No. Heater core hose? No. Time to jack it up and climb into the shower of coolant (that was still leaking). **** ! ... **** , **** , **** !! How did that happen?


Just what I needed. A crack in the block.

I spent the next couple weeks ignoring the car. I was not prepared to deal with this particular problem.

I finally got around to pulling the engine again (17 times now?). At least it goes quick with the right tools. It was out in 1hour 45 minutes this time. No beers, no playing around.



There's the culprit..




Absolutely nothing wrong on the head side or with the gasket or dowel pin. The head is straight and true still

Well, that thoroughly sucks! Since this is a family forum I will not tell you what I really said... repeatedly.

So I redoubled my efforts on the decklid. I really need a win here. I finally got it home and back on the car. Still quite a bit of fit & finish to go but at least its making good progress.





That seems like an odd place to crack to me. What do you think?


I'm open to options on a fix/replacement. At the moment I'm leaning towards welding the block and re surfacing. I know a fantastic welder that basically Tig's aluminum all day long. With the design of this engine that is not actually the combustion chamber as it would be in other engines. But I'm still hesitant.

I'm not usually one for this type of thing but I need help. Anyone have any opinions and/or advise?

EDIT: Here is a reference pic before the heads went back on...

Definitely no cracks there. I inspected everything thoroughly. What would cause a crack to happen like this?

[This message has been edited by Fieroseverywhere (edited 11-06-2014).]

Nice method using the jigger. I used the same thing back in 2001 putting back
the engine in my old 86GT. It was a great tool to lift in place the cradle to its
mounting points.

Good thinking on Rodney's getrag tranny bracket mounts. His web-site
says they are made thicker...I guess that's a plus with your engine swap.

------------------

fierogt28

88 GT, Loaded, 5-speed.
88 GT, 5-speed. Beechwood interior, All original.

Don't know if you caught this, but in these photos of the front suspension, you have the front upper control arms installed on the wrong sides. They should be installed with both of the holes (the ones where the bracket of the brake hose bolts to the control arm) to the rear (shock side). The car will have no caster, which can be a disaster (pun intended)! That caster has to be there for the wheel to recenter, and for high speed stability. Just wanted to make sure you caught that before driving that bad boy. Oh, and I'm sorry about the block man, you've put a LOT of work into the engine alone. I know a break will do you good, and I hope you all are doing well.

Best,
Dave

quote Originally posted by Fieroseverywhere: Ok update time again. I think this is getting repetitive. First off I thought this was a good pic. Twin black 88GT's (one auto one manual) and a Gold 86SE V6 auto. And here are those pics of the top of the strut towers that I promised so long ago. It just took forever to get decent pics of them. Ok now for the actual update. First off I removed the front crossmember as the begining of the work. In order to do what I had planed there was not other way. I had never done it before and although it wasn't too bad I hope I never have to do it again. I started by puting the car on jackstands and removing the wheels. Next I removed the front spare tub and unbolting all of the brake lines and coolant tubes from the crossmember. I then unbolted the shocks, seperated the brake hoses from the hard lines, and removed the rear lower control arm bolt. Next up I unbolted the braces that go from the crossmember to the lower radiator support. All that was left now was the 10 bolts that actually hold in the crossmember. There are 3 on each side above the upper control arm and 4 under the car just behind the front lower control arm bolt. I positioned a jack under the center of the crossmember so that I could easily lower the crossmember after the bolts were removed. I then realized that I forgot to remove the bolt that connects the steering arm to the steering rack. OOPS. If you ever have to do this make sure you remove this bolt before unbolting the crossmember. What a PITA. After that it dropped right out with no problems. We took the crossmember next door to the real shop so I could get to work on it. Dad worked on pressing out the ball joints and replacing them with new ones from Rodney. Next up we pulled the old rubber bushings our the the control arms so they could be replaced with poly. You can tell from looking at the lower control arms that the previous owner had not raised the bump stops. I'm sure they hated the ride. I know I would have. Before While we had everything in the shop we raised the bumpstops. I figured you guys might get a kick out of how we did this... Gas power chop saw! Gotta love power tools. Bumpstops cut and about 1 inch of metal removed, now we weld them back together followed by zinc primer (sound familiar?) and paint. We finished up the poly install and I took the spindles to the glass beader. One thing to note is anytime you glass bead something you must remove the moisture before you paint it. We do this with a propane torche. After paint I was pretty impressed with how they turned out. Almost like new. That was about it for friday. We took the parts back accross the street to they could be put back into the car. Saturday morning I got started on reassembling the crossmember. It went back together very well. Its so much easier to do this stuff while the crossmember is out of the car. Just not worth the time to remove it. With the crossmember ready to go back into the car I started working on replacing the clutch line and adding the auto radiator to tranny cooler lines which I am using as an oil cooler. I removed the clutch line and found that someone had cut about 6 inches off of it and reattached the fitting. Guess thats why it looked so funny in there. I replaced the line with the one I pulled out of the parts car. With that out of the way I took a look under the car to see if I would run into problems installing the auto trans cooler lines. With a little grinding and bending of the little mounting brackets I was able to get them to fit right next to the clutch line. I was even able to re-use the original bolts that hold it all in place. Sorry about the pics, the lighting in this part of the shop is almost non existant. With that done I also replaced the bent coolant tubes with better ones from the parts car. The pics didn't turn out at all for those though. Then It was time to bolt the crossmember back in. It went in much easier then it came out but again I forgot to attach the bolt from the steering column. Doh! Finally got it back together by taking the steering column loose from the inside of the car. Good thing the interior is not back together yet. Dispite the self inflicted frustration I think everything came out well. Looks like shite now but soon the new 12" rotors will show up to replace these ugly things. That was it for this trip. I will be doing a couple things to this car this weekend on top of installing the new tires on my daily driver. Since I had about 4 choices for a 215/60-14 I went with these. Yokohama AVID T4 http://www.tirerack.com/tir...Compare1=yes&place=1 Car is coming together. I'l should be driving her in a couple months. More to come as time allows.

[This message has been edited by DaveC (edited 12-29-2014).]

[This message has been edited by Fieroseverywhere (edited 03-18-2015).]