Blooze Own: An F355 Six Speed N* Build Thread (Page 71/126)
Bloozberry JUN 06, 09:53 PM
With the engine mounted to the cradle, I figured it would be a good idea to test fit it into the engine bay to make sure things lined up as planned. Of course that meant spending some "quality time" sitting in the confines of the engine bay with high speed cutting tools slinging sharp metal filings all over the place. At least there's a little more room in there with the 3" stretch:



Before test fitting the engine and cradle, I wanted to clean up the engine bay by removing a bunch of parts: some I wouldn't need, and others would just be in the way. For starters, the Northstar engine impedes on some of the real estate that the Fiero torque strut mount occupies, so that meant removing it entirely. I started drilling out the spot welds that held it to the strut tower with a relatively large drill bit to get the diameter I needed:



But the spot welds are pretty irregularly shaped so the drill bit just couldn't complete the job. I also used a high speed carbide burr to enlarge the holes in whatever direction I needed to get the welds to let go:



I still had a bear of a time getting the mount out but it finally succumbed with just minor damage to other parts:



After fighting the strut mount for about an hour, I decided to do something easier like removing a bunch of small brackets and the insulation material from the firewall. There's still a bunch more to remove though:

[This message has been edited by Bloozberry (edited 06-07-2013).]

Bloozberry JUN 09, 10:27 PM
...and I thought the torque strut mount was tough. Holy cow... anyone that tells you removing the old hinge boxes is easy, is either being sarcastic or doesn't know what the hell they're talking about. I can't believe how long I struggled to get those damned things off. Whoever designed the program that spot welded them in clearly wasn't thinking down the road about us tinkerers, because the welds holding them to the bottom of the rear window sill aren't accessible with a drill, grinder, cut-off wheel, or any other tool known to man. I finally got them off but it's a good thing I don't have a swear-jar in the shop. It's also a good thing that I'm replacing the lower half of the rear window sill with some rectangular steel tubing like Yarmouth Fiero did in his build thread. Mine now looks more like a piece of Swiss cheese that someone took a chainsaw to!

Here's the rest of the hardware I removed from the firewall:



It seems nothing was going to come easy today because after that struggle, I attempted to remove the fuel filler tube. Anyone trying this in the future should be warned ahead of time to make sure both rubber lines are taken off of the bottom end otherwise the tube simply won't pass through the hole in the lower firewall. And taking off the rubber tubes... that should take, what? Two or three minutes? Multiply that by 20. Those rubber hoses are so well attached to the metal tubes that I'm convinced the glue that holds the heat shields on the Space Shuttle couldn't do a better job.

Anyways, after way more time than I want to admit, the engine bay was finally cleared of anything that might potentially get in the way of my first engine test fit. Obviously the sheet metal still needs to be plugged and sanded and painted, but that's for another day.



I got busy raising the rear end using the approach that's worked for me time and again: two floor jacks and a 6" X 6". I'm always careful to raise both sides evenly and have back up jack stands under the 6 X 6 just in case one of the jacks fails.



Lots of people roll the cradle under the car from behind, but I've found that rolling it in through a wheel well means you don't have to raise the car quite as high in the air. I measured the highest point on the engine at 31.5" while the cradle was resting on some wheel skates. That meant I only needed to raise the car high enough such that the lower frame rail was about 32" above the ground, in line with where the axle normally passes.
Yarmouth Fiero JUN 10, 05:19 AM
Great job stripping the firewall of excess metal parts. Yours looks alot better than mine at this point. I'm embarrassed as to how mine ended up and whenever I take pics now of the car, I try to avoid any clear shots of the firewall.

Thank god its going to get covered up with insulation and cladding.

If anyone ever wonders how these chassis stay together with a few random spot welds of the sheet metal, try taking one apart.
fieroguru JUN 10, 08:04 AM
Blooze, I think your meticulous nature, which is a great attribute about 99% of the time, was holding you back on this "demo" portion of the build. My opinion is it is OK to destroy the part you are removing with no intentions of putting it back on, to speed up the removal process. I have removed 3 sets of the decklid hinge boxes and probably 9-10 dogbone brackets and they come out much, much quicker if you cut them into smaller individual pieces during the removal process. This allows you to have better access to the spot welds and can bend/twist the small sections to fatigue the remaining portion of the spot weld.

For all the metal tabs on the firewall, use tin snips to cut the bracket in half right in the center, then grab it with some pliers and rotate/spin the bracket around the spot weld, the bracket will fold up on itself and will pull itself free of the spot weld and "usually" leaves the weld on the firewall. Then the remnants of the weld just need to be ground down.

The fuel filler tube can be removed/installed with the hoses still on the end, but you need to rotate the bends to a specific position so they will slide in and out. The downside is the hoses are either glued together or 30+ years of close contact/vibration have attached them so that when you separate the hoses (so they can be rotated) you will expose fibers on the hoses. With the filler tube out, it is much easier to just cut off the old hoses and replace with new once the filler tune is back in the car.

Great job as always, but I had to give you a little grief for being too tidy with your demo process!
Your removed pile should be messier and show more destruction...

[This message has been edited by fieroguru (edited 06-10-2013).]

Bloozberry JUN 10, 12:30 PM

quote
Originally posted by fieroguru:
Blooze, I think your meticulous nature... was holding you back on this "demo" portion of the build...



LOL. Hit the nail on the head with that one Paul.


quote
Originally posted by fieroguru:
For all the metal tabs on the firewall, use tin snips to cut the bracket in half right in the center, then grab it with some pliers and rotate/spin the bracket around the spot weld, the bracket will fold up on itself and will pull itself free of the spot weld and "usually" leaves the weld on the firewall. Then the remnants of the weld just need to be ground down.



Dohhhh! Now where were you when I could have actually used this advice? Now rather than simply grinding off excess metal, I've got to fill the holes with the welder and then grind them! You see... that's why you're actually driving your car and I'm still putzing around.


quote
Originally posted by fieroguru:
...the hoses are either glued together or 30+ years of close contact/vibration have attached them so that when you separate the hoses (so they can be rotated) you will expose fibers on the hoses.



You have no idea how long I tugged, twisted, and yanked on that big fuel hose before realizing it was fused to the smaller one. They were like conjoined twins sharing some vital organ. I tried to save both but killed them in the process. Notice there are no neat tidy pictures of the fuel hoses.

cptsnoopy JUN 10, 01:16 PM
Bringing back "fond" memories Dave!😮😬😮
It was while I was was grinding down the welds of the torque mount that I caught my garage on fire 😜
Good luck with the test fit! 👍😃👍

Charlie
Bloozberry JUN 10, 10:44 PM
Charlie! Don't say things like that! Geesh... are you trying to jinx me?

Well today I lined up the cradle with the wheel well opening...



... and rolled it under it's new home (for now):



Things were looking pretty good as I lowered the car back down...



But then I hit a snag. The extensions that the PO welded to the chassis cradle mounts (extending them 3" rearward) are tubular rather than just "ears" like the OEM mounts:



The "floor" of the tubular extensions force me to have the cradle sitting about 2" further aft while lowering the car in order to allow the cradle to be shoved forward into the ends of the tubular extensions. The trouble is that initially having the cradle 2" further back causes the rear valve cover to interfere with the trunk wall before I can lower the car enough to shove the cradle forward into the extensions (see arrow):



In this picture, to line up the front of the cradle so it can be shoved into the extensions, the car would have to come down another 5-6 inches, however I only have about one inch left before the trunk wall contacts the valve cover at the rear. I think I'll try cutting part of the the floor out of the extensions to make them more like the OEM ears. That should allow me to shove the cradle forward and have the cradle rise up through the bottom of the tubes rather than having to be inserted from the ends. Hopefully that'll give me the additional clearance in the back.

I'm starting to look at that passenger strut tower though... it's the next thing that is going to cause troubles...
carbon JUN 11, 01:10 PM
Just finished reading through this thing... dayum.

I hope I win the lottery some day so I can do things like this too...
Bloozberry JUN 12, 10:26 PM
Thanks Carbon... although you don't need to win the lottery if you spread the payments over many, many years like this project!

After looking at my setup for an hour or so and seeing several other clearance problems in the engine bay, I decided to figure out why my bay seems to need more mods than others who've done Northstar swaps before me. Then it dawned on me that I've shoved my engine over to the passenger side more than most to get the clearance between the F40 transmission and the lower frame rail. (I believe most Northstar swappers have used Getrags which are probably less long than the F40.) By doing so, my already-larger-than-stock aft valve cover interferes more with the passenger side strut tower. Then to worsen the interference with the tower, I've lowered the entire chassis onto the cradle by 1" more than stock meaning that the top of the engine must squeeze into an even tighter space between the towers since they angle inwards.

Luckily that's all fine because I don't need the strut towers with my new suspension design. I can keep the F40 where it's at and not have to notch the lower frame rail, and gain the necessary clearance on the passenger side by removing or cutting back the towers. Nevertheless, I became curious why I hadn't noticed the interference on my drawings but quickly realized I only drew the driver's side of the chassis in most of my drawings, assuming the clearance issues would be similar on the passenger side. Dohh!

The only other clearance issue I can foresee is between the aft valve cover and the forward wall of the trunk in one small area. I don't think other Northstar swappers have had interference with the trunk wall, though I'm not sure how many have the wider CHRFA valve covers. Regardless, it should be an easy fix with a clearance bubble in the sheet metal.

I've redrawn the top view of the engine bay (this time including the passenger side) and shown in green where the two interference areas are.
zkhennings JUN 13, 11:10 AM
Blooze are you using SolidWorks? How do you measure out all of the complex shapes and curves accurately? I would love to have my car in CAD to play with geometries and fitments but I cannot for the life of me figure out how you are getting such precise measurements. Your build is also very awesome!