now before anyone starts a "why not a SBC" rant, I have my reasons. I need room in the engine bay for the turbo, once I get to that stage this engine is smaller, fits better, is lighter, and can still be built to 600+HP. don't believe me, ask the sy/ty guys, or vortecfiero. I'm shooting for 475HP at the crank, but not right away. this is stage one, which is basically, "get the car running again". I also have lots of suspension work to finish, so this is going to be a multi-subject long term build thread. For more details on my swap, and more current progress, visit the website in my signature.
I'll get more pics tomorrow, I have to run to the hardware store to get the bolts to mount it on the engine stand, then I can start the teardown and inspection.
Good for you. That is a good engine. I had one in the S-10 that I autoX'd and road raced. I beat the heck out of it and it took all I could give it. I could chirp the tires in the first 4 gears. That was with a 3.08 auburn posi rear. Might have been a locker for as tight as that rear was. I also had a Pete Jackson gear drive on it. Noisy of course. I hate timing chains.
So the next morning I began teardown inspection and cleaning, after a brief run to ACE Hardware for the right bolts to mount the block to the stand. I then proceeded to tag and remove what was left of the stock engine harness.
I also removed the accessory brackets, water pump and power steering pump. Here's what I was left with:
At this point I removed the exhaust manifolds and did some heavy duty wire brushing to remove the rust, scale, grease and chipped stock paint. Once that was done, I decided to pop off the valve covers and see what things looked like inside the engine. The engine has over 120K on it, and will be rebuilt in the near future, but for now I just want to get the core in and get the car running, that way I know all the wiring is working and I can get a true feel for the car before adding the heads, cam and all the other goodies I want to stick into it. After all the suspension work, there will be no more rust to contend with so dropping the cradle in the future will be a piece of cake. Here's a shot of the rockers, plenty clean in there, more so than the pic shows.
I decided to remove the intake to clean it better. So my engine is now looking pretty, and once I get the block and heads cleaned up and painted (Ford dark blue) it'll look even better.
And later today, I got a little creative with the valve covers and decided to accent the logo a bit:
I think it looks nice. More updates to follow. Should have the rest of the front suspension parts ordered and on the way from the Fiero Store next week, so I can get that stuff out to powdercoat and get the front end done.
Ok, time to get serious. One of the problems I had with the car was a badly rotted battery tray. Most old Fieros are going to have this problem. I had a bungee holding the battery down on the tray, which worked fine for a while. In hindsight though, it was pretty stupid since the battery sat about 2" away from the spinning water pump pulley and belt.
So one hard corner later, guess what? The strap gave out, the battery slid into the pulley and sprayed energized hydrochloric acid all over my car's engine compartment. nice! So needless to say, I later cleaned it out, sprayed a little paint over the bare metal to attempt to stop the rusting, and tacked in a spare battery tray out of an old Chevy truck my brother had lying around. That worked great and I was able to bolt the battery in place. But I still had a rusty mess in the engine bay.
Fast forward to today. I jumped in the engine bay and started pulling down the nasty old insulation to get at the metal.
With the old firewall insulation out of the way, I could start cleaning the engine bay out for the 4.3L to go in. What good is a swap if the engine bay looks like trash? I ground down the spot welds and removed all the old rusty remnants of the factory battery box.
More to follow. I will be welding in some sheet steel and coating it with POR15. This is as far as I got tonight.
IP: Logged
08:10 PM
Wafflez Member
Posts: 46 From: Victoria, B.C. Canada Registered: Nov 2007
lol looky what we started ! nice to see another 4.3 feel free to ask for help or ideas
------------------
87 Fiero GT 5sp with Vortec L35 4300 Turbocharged V6 Bully Stage 2 clutch Syclone intake manifold and engine management with Moates adapter and chip burner Air/water intercooler and Devil's Own progressive water/alky injection 50lb injectors, 3 bar map sensor, Walboro fuel pump and Jabasco Intercooler pump LM1 wideband on custom manifolds and 3" stainless exhaust system T31/T04B S4 turbo with a Super T61 in the box S10 caliper conversion. Murphy's Constant Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics Things get worse under pressure. Arthur C. Clarke "Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
LOL vortec, this is deja vu for you, eh? IIRC you started with a TBI engine in an '84 mine's just taking longer because of everything else I'm doing. Too many projects at one time!
thanks to a forum member, I got the firewall pass-through salvaged:
consisted of a fairly simple procedure: boil the connector in a pan of water to soften the glue, then remove outer shell of connector. to get glue off wires once the shell is off, freeze it and smack a few times with a hammer to shatter the glue and free the wiring from the blob.
other progress on the wiring is as follows -
Here is what's left of the engine harness part of the C500. I will be running the new sensor wires and such through the old fiero passthrough and cutting the wiring to fit and look stock. The splices will be soldered and hot-glued under heat shrink tubing.
the pigtail came today for the ECM. I can finally start splicing harnesses together and making this mess come together into hopefully a working fiero harness.
got some paint on the engine. the engine is darker blue than the pic makes it look like.
and the engine bay is clean and ready to get a new powerplant stuffed in
some interesting notes as I was fooling around today: the fuel line from the TBI is bent just perfect to allow me to reuse the bracket and mount the filter right up top where it is easy access:
and I'm not sure if this will be used or not, but the pulley hub from the 4 cylinder fits the 4.3L crank perfectly. it fits the seal on the timing cover as well, I just don't have it installed yet as I am waiting to get a new cover and seal.
no one but me has posted to this thread for a month and a half....does anyone give a crap? if there's no interest in this build I'm just going to focus on the website.
IP: Logged
02:16 AM
fieroguru Member
Posts: 12639 From: Champaign, IL Registered: Aug 2003
I have been watching it closely (and we have shared several PM's) so please continue to post.
The 4.3 swap is not as common as the other options and many people write it off as an option due to the cost of the adapter plate, so there will be fewer posters than some of the other swaps. For me, the value of posting a well documented swap is to share ideas and provide the people who want to do the swap with as much information as possible.
Please keep up the good work!
[This message has been edited by fieroguru (edited 02-29-2008).]
By all means, please keep posting! I'd like to try this swap some day. It's interesting to see how different folks approach different issues. I never fail to learn *something* new by reading what the "pioneers" have posted.
FWIW... I'm thinking that if I can find the accessories, WP and pulleys from an old V8 Monza, that I'll have one of the hardest parts knocked. That's probably the most compact V8 installation that GM ever did.
Be careful using the 2.5 hub on the 4.3. It might really need a damper. The 4.3s vibrate like hell without the balance shaft.
------------------ Raydar 88 4.9 Formula IMSA Fasback..........................88 3.4 coupe -soon to be something other than red Read Nealz Nuze!Praise the Lowered!
i probably wont use it, I just put it on there to see if it fit, which it did. The engine i have is a balance shaft engine. I'll probably go with the cavalier serpentine balancer/pulley like fieroguro(?) did on his swap.
and I'll keep the post going, I was getting a little bummed at the lack of input thanks for the replies.
not much new at the moment though, I placed the order for the new 10.9 bolts, and thats about it for the car this weekend as I just bought a laptop and some other computer parts to start upgrading the dinosaur desktop. Once i get the harness bracket that fieroguru made (thanks a million!) I should have the harness knocked out and then things will pick up again.
[This message has been edited by cowan1984 (edited 02-29-2008).]
IP: Logged
10:47 AM
fieroguru Member
Posts: 12639 From: Champaign, IL Registered: Aug 2003
I thought about doing this...then I realized how easily I could put my S10 back together.... I would like to do an engine swap but, not sure which engine yet or when. It is interesting to read about this swap.
It looks like three of us are at about the same stage on 4.3 swaps at this time. I've already found some good hints from you fellows to use on mine. I didn't want to hi-jack your threads, so decided to wait until I was further along to post while watching yours.
By all means keep posting!
Egor
------------------ ____________________________________________ "Of all the things I have lost during my lifetime, I miss my mind the most."
just posting to keep this out of the archives. i hope.
work on the car has been very slow, i have the front suspension pretty much done, just need upper balljoints and shocks. money is tight right now as i am working on starting a business, maybe.
with all luck I can get some photos uploaded this weekend. I have to pull the front x-member back out as I've decided not to take a chance on the brake lines being bad. easier to get them out now than with all that stuff in place.
Any suggestions on what 17" wheels look good on a notchie, and dont cost a ton? I'm thinking of going with 17 on the front and 18 on the rear....maybe. I'd have to see it first.
I'm still working on the car, I just don't have enough time to update this thread and the website anymore. I got disgusted and was about to scrap the whole thing, but I thought better of it and just took a break from it. After winter when I have more time it'll get done.
this engine is smaller, fits better, is lighter, and can still be built to 600+HP. don't believe me, ask the sy/ty guys, or vortecfiero. I'm shooting for 475HP at the crank, but not right away. this is stage one, which is basically, "get the car running again". I also have lots of suspension work to finish, so this is going to be a multi-subject long term build thread. For more details on my swap, and more current progress, visit the website in my signature.
