I also drove Fiero38SC’s supercharged during the PA Gathering at the Gilberts. I was very impressed with the power this car had.

I also drove FieroF1’s turbo 2.8 GT at the fall club meeting. I could tell the extra power seriously changed the personality of the Fiero.

I had visited Rockcrawl to check out his 4.9 Caddy setup. Jon had convinced me into doing the 4.9 swap.

The install looked like it had a lot of potential. Therefore I decided to do a 4.9 Caddy engine swap and even visited several junkyards trying to find one.

One evening, I was surfing Ebay and found a new crate 3800 supercharged engine. I emailed the seller and he called me back to discuss the engine. Here is one of 32 pictures he sent me of the engine.

After the phone call I asked around what it would be worth and found out it was worth a lot more than the “Buy Now” price. So I did the “buy now” for $1400. Yikes! Just like that I had two major projects going at once so I decided to finish the hood before starting the engine swap.

The previous summer, Fleabit had found a wrecked 88 GT and asked me if there were anything I would want. It was a complete car. I was able to buy the engine, 5 speed Getrag, cradle, suspension, shifter, shifter cables and anything I needed for a automatic to manual trans swap all for $150. I figured it was certainly cheap and did not have any idea what I would do with it. It sat in the corner of my garage for over a year. It suddenly became obvious why I had bought it. This gave me the perfect platform to build the engine swap on. I could also convert my automatic GT into a 5 speed Getrag at the same time. I could do the complete conversion while leaving the GT alone until the swap was ready to go in the car. It was tough to let the new engine set as body filler dust kept building on top on it but I decided not to work on it till the bodywork was done.

Finally I was ready to start the engine work. There were lots of Pennock’s folk that assisted me in information on the engine swap but first and foremost was TerryK. He was so helpful getting me through the wiring and ECM stuff. Others that helped me were Eric at West Coast Fiero, Jelly2M8, Boilermaker, Phil, ToomanyFieros, Fiero38SC, Rockcrawl and I am sure I am missing some people. Many thanks to all. Let me say from the start about my engine swap. I plagued myself because I always think I have a better idea than GM. There was almost nothing on the outside of my engine that is still in its original place. I am in the Fiero chat room nearly every night and my friends constantly harassed me as to why it was not done yet. Good things take time. I was working in my garage usually from 4 o’clock to 9 or 10 o’clock every day from late fall till spring and I would use the Fiero chat room to unwind before bed. I often wondered what my neighbors thought with the garage lit up every night and the TV on. They must of thought I was banished to the garage.

Since I had the engine window I wanted to keep everything clean. I did not what anything interfering with the view through the window. When I announced that I was going to do a 3800SC swap, several people asked my why because the 3800 was too ugly to be in my car. I told them I would make it a pretty engine.

Since I did not want to spend a lot of money I decided to get an AC bracket and compressor from a Series 1 3800 engine from a U-Pull-It yard for $10. The Series 1 bracket bolts on but does need some grinding to clear the block.

I priced a 3800 SII alternator but decided to adapt my 88 Fiero alternator and bracket since it would create a cleaner install and would fit where the power steering pump would be and using this alternator would not cost me anything.

Then I started to do a lot of measuring of the 2.8 and the 3800 engines. To my amazement, I found out the 3800 was shorter and lower than the 2.8. I had taught metal shop for 8 years so I can fabricate just about anything I need. So I then built my front motor mount for the conversion. The transmission mounts and axles could be left as stock since I was using the 5 speed Getrag.

While doing the measuring I made an amazing discovery. The original dogbone mount for the 3800 could be mounted on the opposite head and was within fractions of an inch of the 2.8 dogbone mount. Hmmmm I think I have to use this. So I proceeded to adapt the dogbone and mount the unit on the cradle.

Next I started to tackle the wiring harness. Most 3800SC I see have a lot of ugly wire harness visible. Most just use the original harness on top of the engine and I have seen some swaps with both the 3800 harness and the 2.8 harness visible. I wanted my harness to be laid out like a Fiero harness and have as little as possible visible. I started by striping the harness from the sheath so I could arrange each wire in the path I chose. I also blended the Fiero harness into the 3800 harness at the same time. You can see the mess in the above and below photographs.

[This message has been edited by skitime (edited 02-07-2003).]

That ended up being over 100 wires cut spliced and soldered. I spent many evenings sitting like this splicing-soldering-testing each connection from both ends.

To take breaks from the wiring I worked on a few other things. I painted the valve covers and supercharger, installed the WCF headers and redesigned the pulley arrangement and created new fuel rails that went under the supercharger rather then over it.

One of the important things I was trying to accomplish was to make the engine appear to have been installed by the factory. . I wanted to engine to look similar to the stock Fiero engine. I really dislike the cheap looking plastic cover GM chooses to hide the mess they made under it.

I felt that the supercharger should be something to show off through the window in the trunk lid and should not be hidden under plastic. Have you ever seen superchargers hidden on high performance show cars? So I removed the supercharger and painted it to match the red of the car, which is close to the Fiero engine color. The valve covers on the Series II engines are made of fiberglass. I wanted to have the look of the brushed aluminum of the original Fiero valve covers. I laminated 1/16th inch aluminum strips to the covers and finished them in the same luster of a Fiero valve cover.

I also used the original 3800 manifold heat shields and modified them to use with the headers as seen above.

Here is a good picture of how I redesigned my pulleys. I ended up reducing it by two pulleys. Pulleys cost you horsepower.

The other system I needed to construct were the connections for the cooling. I wanted to create pipes the would drop exactly to the same locations as the stock hoses. I also needed a way to fill the system. I tried to find something the diameter of pipe I wanted that I could bend to the shape I wanted. I looked and looked and asked my buddies on the Fiero chat. Finally it came to me at the hardware store. PVC pipe. I would use my space heater to heat the pipes until soft then bend it to shape and cool it in the sink. Eventually I had two pieces the proper shape so I could take them to my exhaust guy and say make me copies of these pipes in steel. I brazed a filler fitting from a 4 cylinder to the top of the pipe to create the filler.

Well, it was getting time to install the 3800SC so for the second time in a little over a year I was dropping the 2.8 engine.


I use a skid cut to the size of the cradle. I mount a inexpensive set of refrigerator rollers to the skid. On smooth concrete you can easily slide the assembly in any direction with the engine on it. It sure works great. I only need one floor jack and two jack stands to remove an engine. I roll it out the side usually so I don’t have to have the car up very high.

Out with the old and in with the new.

I had made the 3800 engine setup totally plug and play. So all that needed to be done is remove the 2.8 install the 3800 and connect the exact same connectors that were used to connect the 2.8 to the car. This would allow me to reinstall the stock engine back in without modifying anything or transfer this 3800 to another 88 Fiero with ease. There were no modfications to the car itself to recieve the 3800.

Well I will try to get finished with this soon, maybe tomorrow. Sorry it is getting so long. I am surprised at how few comments there are compared to the number of times it is viewed. Strange??

You said that the engine was well worth the price the guy was asking or worth even more then the guy was asking, why? (not saying it wasn't, just wondering)

About your last comment... no we are all to busy drooling all over out keyboards and shorting them out
Matt

I prepared the 2.8 to be dropped one evening and dropped the engine in the morning. I did a did a test fit of the 3800SC the same day. Lowered it and adjusted a front motor mount spacer to raise the engine. Later that day I put the engine in for good. So the car was not without a engine for a whole day.

I asked a friend about it who is a GM parts guy. He said they charge $1200 for the supercharger alone. The engine assembly without the supercharger would be around $3000 through GM.

I can't believe the things that you have done to that car.