Wow page 3! I don't think I've ever had a thread this long before. I guess I better start page 3 with some big news.
After hours and hours if endless searching for wheels. Different aftermarket brands and looking on Craigslist and ebay for used or factory take offs from vehicles with the same 5x4.75 or 5x120 bolt pattern trying to figure out sizes and offsets and such I stumbled across a really good deal on a set of used HRE 547's. Now I am anxiously awaiting their arrival to make sure they fit and I measure properly.
As you can see I am in desperate need of tires. Currently I'm not comfortable taking the car out of town especially because I have no spare for it. The tires were worn funny from driving it without being aligned (they were shot anyway) and now that it's aligned again it's nice shredding rubber from these old tires.
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 06-18-2015).]
Here is a pic I borrowed from Nosrac's 3800 build thread showing how low the headers dump compared to the cradle. I have done a few rough measurements and it looks like the muffler will be a pretty close fit width wise between the cradle mounting points.
but I think having the muffler laying flat above the pipes coming from the headers would give me the best fit and save as much trunk as I can. If anyone has any suggestions or other ideas for me I would be interested in hearing them.
Well . . . yesterday was the big day. My HRE's were delivered. I was very scared when the UPS guy took them out if the truck and told me that they'd been rolling around the back all day and were poorly packed. He guessed they were wheels and made a note on the delivery that they may be damaged because the boxes looked so messed up.
I unboxed them and thankfully everything looks ok. They need some love and to be polished up a bit though.
I'm trying to decide if the 20x10's stick out too far or if I can get away with it if I run a slightly stretched tire. What do you think?
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 06-24-2015).]
Big big day today! My tires arrived, so I took the wheels over to get them mounted up. It turned out badass! The rear fitment is perfect, the fronts could use a small spacer still, but not bad.
The front tires are a little more stretched than I'd prefer but it's either that or run really wide 255's up front and have really difficult steering. The front wheels do contact the lower control arms at full lock but it doesn't look like I sacrifice much turning radius and should be better once I put the spacers on the front. I've gotta pull all 4 back off to put the centers back in.
They look great! What offset are they and are they both 10 inch wide? I have been watching some TSW wheels that are 5x112 but I am not sure I want to spend more on all the conversion. The other problem is they are 35 offset and that make them stick out to far unless I get the wide body from Archie.
They look great! What offset are they and are they both 10 inch wide? I have been watching some TSW wheels that are 5x112 but I am not sure I want to spend more on all the conversion. The other problem is they are 35 offset and that make them stick out to far unless I get the wide body from Archie.
Thanks. I actually don't know the offset. They are 19x9's up front and 20x10's in the rear. I know the backspacing and I figured out offset from that but I'm not sure if I did it right. The front backspacing was 7 1/4" and the rear was 7". The fronts still need about a 1/2" spacer to be flush with the front fenders though.
You might be able to get away with a 35mm offset depending on width. I know there is a car on here running 19x9.5 with a 30 offset and it looks awesome, but he's got stretched tires too. I think he's running like a 245 on the 9.5 rim.
Wheel fitment is a lot trickier then I thought it would be. I was very nervous and recalculating and researching constantly until yesterday when I mounted them on the car.
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 07-02-2015).]
Center is at 5 inches so your offset must be 50mm, if I know as much as I think I do after reading threads as well. How far is the tire from the spring? I want the TSW Snetteltons because I can have a 2.75" lip with a 9.5" wheel and a 1" lip in front with a 8" wheel. I think I will like staggered look. I just wish I could try them out, maybe I need to photo shop the but that is nothing like in person.
And I don't want to insult you or anything just a heads up, I thought I knew exactly what I needed for spacer and where the wheels would sit and such and I ended up standing there scratching my head a couple times like wtf that's not what I figured. How'd that happen. I'm just very glad to have it behind me.
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 07-03-2015).]
Just Googled those wheels, very nice. They look very similar to the TSW's that alex4mula is running on his red 88 except his have a center cap instead of exposed lugs. I've always liked the stance and wheels on his ride.
I spent majority of a day searching the Dorman wheel stud chart and driving to the different autoparts stores searching through their bins of wheel studs to try to find which ones I need in order to be able to run my small spacers up front. What a hassle. The stud I removed from the front hub was only used on a few Fords for like 4 years on the 90's. But I don't think those were the right spec stud because I'm running Corvair hubs up front and nothing GM is close to these Ford studs I took out. I've done some more research and am going to stop by the parts store tomorrow with a new part number to try. Fingers crossed. I don't know why he didn't use the stock Corvair size lug studs that go with the hubs he used. Instead he picked a weird Ford Tempo stud that they only used for a few years and there are no longer ones that are close enough to work.
I'm dieing to drive it some more but it's been raining a lot lately and the windshield leaks because it needs to be reset still. That's next on my list.
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 07-31-2015).]
I guess I forgot to update my thread. I was able to figure out what wheel studs to use and got my 3/8" spacers installed. As I mentioned the previous owner had installed Ford Tempo studs into my Corvair hubs that had a weird knurl diameter. Well I had to special order some studs that I thought might work from NAPA, they ended up being slightly too big in diameter but they were not returnable and there really weren't any other options that would work. So my brother was visiting for the weekend and we said let's go for broke and bore out the hubs to fit the studs. I ended up using studs from an AWD Pontiac Vibe which is still pretty oddball, but they are much longer and ended up working great.
I was a little nervous at first because I didn't see Corvair hubs listed for sale anywhere on the Internet so I really didn't want to screw them up. The end result turned out perfectly. There still is a very small amount of steering interference, but it is very livable.
Next, I took the car over and had the windshield pulled out and reset because more than half of it was loose from not being installed properly, the previous owner installed a new window but apparently used the wrong adhesive or prepped it wrong or something because it didn't hold at all. So that's one more thing I can cross off my to-do list.
Well lately I have been trying to fix the A/C on the 3800. I've got 3 cars, the 2 Fieros, and an older Cadillac Eldorado that I drive in the winter and none of them have working A/C. With these Temps in the 90's lately I've had enough and really want working A/C in something. The 3800 is the best candidate in theory due to it having an 04 grand prix compressor that's designed for 134a, compared to my other 2 R12 systems.
The previous owner of the 3800 had the A/C lines made and looks to have attempted to charge the system judging by the connector I found in the pile of parts. First I went and bought the $40 can of A/C pro with the hopes that would solve my problem. It worked for a trip across town and back, and felt awesome to have a fiero with A/C so it's pretty much become a battle of me against the A/C system at this point.
The previous owner had done 1/2 the retrofit and switched over the low pressure fitting, so after reading everything I could find, I needed to remove the high side Schrader and swap out that fitting. When I went to remove the Schrader, it stripped out of the aluminum tube, no fun. That tube sucks to remove.
I got the line pulled out because my friend said he could tig weld a new fitting on for me. Required gutting the whole front compartment to get the line out, and still was a little challenging. I reinstalled the line and tried pulling a vacuum on the system to see if it would hold. Of course no go. So I put a can of 134a in it with dye so I could find my leak. One big leak was at the high pressure fitting I installed because it's kind of a crappy design. I exchanged the fitting for another one and it seems to fit better, I also found that my A/C line are leaking where the Fiero lines were mated to the 3800 lines, so I'll need to pull those out and have them redone. That was the only place I saw any dye showing, so I'm really hoping that's my only leak in the system.
I sandblasted my headers and crossover pipe to get them ready to take over to my powdercoat guy to have them ceramic coated. I used a really cheap harbor freight sand blasting gun and it worked pretty well. I am not sure when they will be ready, the guy at the shop said headers are tricky to do when there is a high humidity level. But I am really not in a big hurry because I have been enjoying driving the car.
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 01-29-2016).]
I got my headers back from ceramic coating. It took them a while because they had a lot of industrial blasting jobs that they were making a lot more money off of that took priority, which I totally get. I haven't unwrapped them yet because I have been daily driving the car as of recently, been busy with a lot of other projects.
I have been working on another new somewhat car related project recently. What does one do with the extra wheels when they get a really good deal on 6 HRE wheels? Well they bring them into the house, polish the hell out of it and make it into a table obviously
Lighting it up with some LED's
I still need to paint the center support and do a final polishing and a few other small things left to finish up on the table before it's complete.
I've got some pretty cool upgrades waiting for the 3800. I wish I could get it in the garage this winter to start working on it. I bought a really nice set of PRJ fuel rails so I can get a little cleaner looking fuel system, and eliminate having the fuel rail cross over the supercharger. I also bought this Gen V intake turndown that I may or may not end up using in the future.
I also bought a set of valve covers that have been hydro dipped with carbon fiber. I am usually not a huge fan of fake carbon fiber, but I think these look pretty cool, especially between the anodized black fuel rail, and freshly coated flat black headers. It is hard to capture a good picture, but they look really nice in person.
Since the Fiero has to sit outside for the winter, I decided to start another winter project. I wanted to see if I could build my own intercooler for my 3800 since the options available are fairly expensive. I did lots of searching on RockAuto looking at the shape of different heat exchangers. The core is 2 inches thick with 3/4 inch inlet and outlet. I ordered up a Gen V supercharger gasket to use as a template.
Then I cut a bottom and top plate from 1/8" aluminum. It's definitely not easy because I have a limited amount of tools. Been giving my Dremel tool a workout.
I ordered some phenolic material from the internet to use for the material in between the plates to keep the heat transfer to a minimum.
I think I have all the materials that I will need to complete the intercooler, as long as I don't mess up, and I think my overall cost will be about 35 percent of what the ZZP intercooler costs. The finished product will be 2.25 inches thick, just like the ZZP full stack.
Another bonus to the carbon fiber dipped valve covers that I picked up, is that they are both fronts, so it should make it easier to solve my lack of PCV system since the intercooler blocks the ports.
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 02-26-2016).]
More progress on my intercooler build. 3 layers of phenolic cut, 1 layer left to go. Then I just need to fit the core inside it. Currently, it is 1.75 inches thick including the top and bottom plate. Once I have all 4 layers cut, I will block sand the entire thing and make sure everything is nice and square.
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 03-04-2016).]
I still have not finished up my intercooler project, I have gotten side tracked on a few other needed repairs before additional horsepower is added. But I have cut out all 4 layers of phenolic material to fit the core inside, I still need to cutout an area for the lines to run through and for the boost bypass but it is definitely taking shape.
I made a big addition to my garage that should be very helpful in future repairs and modifications, as well as storage.
Well I decided it was finally time to address my slipping accessory belt issue. The belt would slip severely when driving in a decent rain, to the point that volt meter would plummet and the voltage light would come on. The belt routing and tensioner setup that the previous owner used is different from any of the setup I have seen when researching on here.
This is how my original belt routing was setup.
As you can see, this is different from what anyone else is running. My tensioner is was over to the left in the picture and circled in red, with an additional idler pulley up top. Also, the tensioner pulley is a smooth pulley running on the ribbed side of the belt. Also the way that the coolant lines and rear fill point left something to be desired and was a little bit of an eye sore.
I searched on eBay and picked up a stock 3800 alternator tensioner mount and proceeded to modify it and reclock the tensioner to fit the Fiero's needs. Since the locations that the stock coolant elbows go, had already been plugged on my motor, I decided to smooth out the bracket and the castings in the aluminum as much as I could to make it look a little nicer since I wouldn't be using those passages. After reclocking the tensioner and a quick coat of paint, this is what I ended up with.
I ended up rerouting some of the wiring harness, and removing a mess of brass fittings and coolant hoses that were plumbed to the heater core feed. My plan is to modify a 2.8 thermostat housing to use for my rear coolant fill as well as my heater core feed. Currently I have my heater core line plugged with a large bolt until I can find someone to modify my extra 2.8 housing.
This was just part of the mess of coolant lines that I removed as well as the old idler/tensioner setup.
The new tensioner setup seems to put a lot more tension on the belt and looks like it is going to work much better, I have not had it out in a heavy rain yet to see if it slips at all, but I have a feeling I will be good to go. The engine bay also looks so much cleaner with this new setup, and rerouted coolant and wiring harness.
I have not decided yet if I want to fab something up to relocate my dog bone mount to the other side of the engine bay and utilize the alternator part of that tensioner bracket. In some ways I think it would help clean things up a little bit more, but I don't know if it is worth the hassle since what I have now doesn't look too bad.
I am also considering unwrapping some of my wiring harness so that I can relocate my MAP sensor as well. I see no need in having it right in my face every time I open the hood, it's kind of an eyesore with the giant bracket that it is mounted on and vacuum going to it. Does anyone have pictures of where they have relocated the MAP sensor to?
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 06-10-2016).]
Recently I decided to trim up the remains of the bottom of the trunk a little bit so I could mock up the Ferrari 355 muffler and see how it would fit. It was definitely a lot of messing arround to even get the thing to fit in there. I would like to retain some type of trunk space up top, so my only option was to tilt it and try to almost lay it flat. It would only fit one way laying flat due to where the exhaust exits on the muffler are. It looks like it has some potential to work, but it is hard to say without the headers installed to see exactly where they will dump. But considering I would have to run cats, and the muffler sits pretty low, it could definitely be interesting.
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 06-29-2016).]
Well I decided to dive in and tear the stock exhaust manifolds off and start installing my headers. They actually weren't too terrible to remove, I was surprised, the bolts came loose with very little effort. One of the worst parts was dealing with those darn heat shields that are sharp as razors.
Overall the header install went fairly smooth, only a couple minor hiccups, the main one being getting that stupid little EGR tube to fit into the flange. After installing the headers I am realizing that I do not think there will be any way to use that Ferrari muffler without standing it vertical which would take up the entire trunk area, so I think I will have to ditch that idea. Thankfully, I do not have much money invested in it.
Now I need to figure out how I will setup my exhaust. Currently I am waiting on some bends and clamps to arrive and I will see what I can come up with as far as routing.
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 06-29-2016).]
I guess I have been negligent and have not updated my thread a quite a while. I decided to ditch the Ferrari muffler idea, it was just way too big to be able to have any kind of usable trunk space left, and it is very very heavy so it would have been difficult to figure out a good way to mount it. Since I use my Fieros as daily drivers it's nice to have some kind of trunk. Since I am running the Pacesetter headers that have the modular Y pipe setup, I decided to take advantage of that as much as I could. I found a Magnaflow True-X muffler that is a dual-in dual-out and has an X pipe built into it. Exhaust mock-up outside of the car:
Since I don't know how to weld (yet) and don't own a welder, everything needed to be clamp together.
The exhaust looks a little crooked in the pictures, but that is due to the fact that the motor is not mounted straight on the cradle ( bought it this was, working on fixing that)
Exhaust fully installed, was still working on finishing up installing the tips at this point. There is no flex pipe installed but it is hung with 2 rubber hangers that are mounted to the impact beam for the rear bumper.
I am really happy with the way that it turned out. It sounds different than any of the other 3800 swaps that I have heard and I really like the fact that it there is nothing hanging down low below the rear bumper. I will however need to figure out what I will have to do to make it pass emissions since I did not mount cats anywhere in the system.
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 10-25-2016).]
So after I got the exhaust done, I decided I was tired of having the car look like crap being 3 different colors and terrible panel alignment. I got the crazy idea to vinyl wrap it since I had wrapped my other Fiero. I thought to myself, I have a lift now and can take my time this one should be easier. I setup a work table behind my lift to make it easier to roll out and measure the vinyl, last time I was doing it all on the floor of my breezeway which was no where near near a large enough area to work doing this kind of job. The color that I am using is called Fiery Orange and is made by 3M from there 1080 product line. I decided to do a higher quality job this time, I had to take my outer door skin off anyway to readjust the door, install new dew wipes and clean up the window tracks, so I decided to paint the mirrors and do things right while I had it apart.
Looks good Its kind of amazing hat the wrap tucks down into the Pontiac letters so well.
Is that muffler ok used that way? I would have thought it was dual in on one side and dual out the other. Maybe the air just passes across the x at a steeper angle when used this way?
[This message has been edited by 2.5 (edited 10-25-2016).]
Looks good Its kind of amazing hat the wrap tucks down into the Pontiac letters so well.
Is that muffler ok used that way? I would have thought it was dual in on one side and dual out the other. Maybe the air just passes across the x at a steeper angle when used this way?
Yeah I was actually really surprised how easily the vinyl layed down in the lettering. I thought it was going to be really difficult, but it pretty much went in there almost by itself, just ran my finger over each letter.
I was a little worried about if I could run the muffler that way or not myself. The X design of the muffler looked pretty symmetrical to me in the picture so I didn't see how it would be a problem. On Magnaflow's website they say that it is bi-directional, so I took that to mean that it could be setup however you want. I haven't had any issues with it being setup this way, this was this exhaust I had on it this summer when I took it to Fred's and to Fierorama, I just never updated my thread on here yet, so I have put some miles on it with this setup.
Prepping the decklid for vinyl, skimming over the holes that were filled from the spoiler.
It's crazy how different this color can look depending on the lighting. Cutting the opening in my passenger side 1/4 that had never been mounted on the car. This is where learning to color inside the lines really paid off haha.
Filled some small imperfections on it and primed it with some filler primer to make sure it was nice and smooth.
More work being done on the passenger side. The passenger side mirror was flattened out on the outer edge when I bought the car, luckily I had an extra mirror in my parts stash but it was not power, so I swapped all of the internals over. Installed a new dew wipe, and cleaned and lubed all of the window and door lock mechanism.
The maroon paint that was on the car must have been done at Maaco. It had a terrible finish and deep scuffs and scratches in it. It peeled off in large chunks leaving a nice smooth surface ready for wrap.
The nose had more of the same terrible maroon paint and as you can see the fitment was terrible and had some deep gouges in the center of the top.
I was a little worried about if I could run the muffler that way or not myself. The X design of the muffler looked pretty symmetrical to me in the picture so I didn't see how it would be a problem. On Magnaflow's website they say that it is bi-directional, so I took that to mean that it could be setup however you want. I haven't had any issues with it being setup this way, this was this exhaust I had on it this summer when I took it to Fred's and to Fierorama, I just never updated my thread on here yet, so I have put some miles on it with this setup.
Awesome, are all Magnafow True X that way or just a particular part number. May need one someday.
Awesome, are all Magnafow True X that way or just a particular part number. May need one someday.
From what I could see on their website, it looked like all of their dual in / dual out setup's were the True X style, but their website seemed pretty good about showing what the internals of the mufflers look like.
So next year I'll probably see this car in all its full glory?
I'm hoping, I haven't made a lot of progress on the wrap since Fierorama, spent a lot of time working on my hood trying to fill the chips in the edges and getting it ready to wrap. Now the temps are getting too low to be working with the vinyl, hopefully I can get an early start on it in the spring and finish up the car. I am hoping it may have a little bit more power next season as well . . .
[This message has been edited by zmcdonal (edited 10-25-2016).]
My first attempt at wrapping the top portion of the nose was unsuccessful. This Fiery Orange does not like to stretch much at all, the vinyl itself stretches just fine, however the color will distort and look weird. In order to get the cool color it is done similar to how paint is done, the vinyl actually has a silver metallic base color with an orange printed over the top, so as soon as it starts to stretch, the orange top starts to fade away leaving a weird tie-dye gold look.
Here you can see really well in the sunlight where the vinyl had been stretched too far.
Trying a different method with a small piece to see if it can be done with less stretch, or hide the stretch in a much less obvious area. Generally bumpers are done on the vehicle because they usually require some stretching because of all of the contour and then you don't have to fight the bumper sliding around since it is secure to the car, but in this case, since the color deforms so easily I left the bumper off of the car, thinking that if I started pulling on the material, the bumper would start to move before I would overstretch the material.
That method worked perfectly. It's amazing how starting with a different surface or doing a corner a slightly different way can have such different results.
I was a little worried about if I could run the muffler that way or not myself. The X design of the muffler looked pretty symmetrical to me in the picture so I didn't see how it would be a problem. On Magnaflow's website they say that it is bi-directional, so I took that to mean that it could be setup however you want. I haven't had any issues with it being setup this way...
I'm no engineer, but IMO there is no way the exhaust is going to flow efficiently through the muffler (especially at high revs) the way you've designed the system.
Its kind of amazing hat the wrap tucks down into the Pontiac letters so well.
