So here we are. Hmm, what to do with it now. I would have LOVED to stretch it and install longitudinally my IROC-Z's twin-turbo 350 with a Porsche tranny, but that was a bit too much to handle for the time being, though entirely doable.
One thing was for certain, it was going to remain a manual, as it had come from the factory. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I had an automatic Fiero. Most likely it was going to stay a Getrag, as all other options require too much time and work for now.

3500 swap? It was at the top of the list for a while. 3400 swap with a turbo and 5-speed? It's a well documented combo in the FWD world, and makes good power for the ~minor boost levels stock 3400 pistons and compression allow. L67 swap? Not a chance. It's not my style. Heavy, crappy sounding, and full of Getrag-shredding torque, even with a turbo instead of the twin-screw. Thinking, thinking...
Before too long other projects were increasingly requiring the garage space, and the one-lane downhill driveway was too much to push the car into and out of to make room. One thing was for certain, despite my chronic health problems that leave me near-useless a lot of the time, I was going have to do something soon. Sell the car? After all this? I wanted to, but couldn't do it! These cars are evil, I swear.

Through sheer force of stubbornness, I still couldn't bring myself to install a stock 2.8/5-speed setup that had become available to me if I wanted it. It just didn't feel right, an '88 Fiero blank-slate with that horrible powerless abomination they call the stock all-iron V6 re-introduced. I like to think that the original 2.8 seizing up (long before I knew of the car) was a sign. Time marches on, this car deserves better now, come hell or high water (heaven forbid).

What came upon me was this possibility... A friend of mine, member Will on here, had snagged up a Turbo Grand Prix (aka TGP) 3.1 V6 and turbo setup from a local junkyard car awhile back, along with a FWD Getrag from another car. $300 for the entire engine and turbo setup and $150 for FWD Getrag, and it would be mine.
Hmm... Ultimately, it's not a powerful engine. Slightly stronger than a normal Gen II, but not at all more powerful before the boost. If I went this way, I knew that the TGP turbo setup would not work with the 5-speed, so I'd have to go custom, almost the same as turbo'ing any random non-turbo Fiero. That could be good for more power, but that Gen II top end is so darn restrictive, and I'd still have to do a custom swap. The benefits are low compression, strong pistons, slightly better internals, turbo oiling system already in place- a decent platform for moderate boost/power.
Thinking, thinking, thinking. Gotta do something... *closes eyes and winces real hard*, screw it. OKAY. TGP 3.1 5-speed with a custom turbo setup it is!
And that's how Project MIDTRBO was born.

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-21-2009).]

So...
I'd gone down to Will's place in VA to check out the setup, all looked well. We determined without a doubt that the TGP turbo Y-pipe interfered with the Getrag linkages (FWD or Fiero Getrag, doesn't matter). The TGP T25 turbo was locked up anyway, but who cares, it's tiny junk anyway. I left with all the transaction details worked out and one hell of a motorcycle ride over Thornton Gap in the Blueridge mountains of rural VA. Will was to deliver the goods to me at a later date.

Unfortunately I didn't get pics of the engine and tranny arriving at my house, but it was quite amusing. Will installed a hitch onto his '90 Pontiac 6000 AWD and pulled a medium-sized homemade trailer with the tranny bolted to the engine, strapped down in the middle. It was quite the redneck looking setup!

After unloading it all, more details and plans were thought out. I fabbed a cradle-dolly and we removed the cradle.
I ordered all new poly trans mounts and brackets and a poly front engine mount and adjustable dogbone from Rodney Dickman, and was hoping to use the TGP front engine mount bracket, as it's significantly stronger looking than a stock '88 front mount, which has a tendency to crack. Unfortunately this is what we found out, the FWD mount would not work, even with new holes drilled (note the rust-caused pitting of the 170k mile cradle underneath the powdercoat... I hope it'll be strong enough everywhere)...




So, I ordered a stock '88 front engine mount from the Fiero Factory, and all went well. The bracket looks like this, though that isn't mine and I used the RD poly mount pictured above. If it won't hold up, I'll reinforce it with my fancy new MIG welder and some sheet steel.




The clutch is from Clutchnet and supposedly will hold 450hp according to them. It isn't pictured, but the disk hub springs are encased in the hub unlike the cheap-crap Spec setup that regularly loses its springs in these cars. Will resurfaced an '88 flywheel for me.




After everything arrived and was installed here's what I ended up with...





The green injectors you see are 42 lb/hr, should take everything I can throw at them for now.
A LOT of work still ahead at that point...

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-21-2009).]

I'm going to jump over to the suspension for now as this was being worked at the same time as the next few drivetrain steps.

The suspension parts left untouched were the rear strut setups and the front shocks (actually those were missing altogether).
I hope to document in another thread the electrolysis process I used for rust removal, but you can see the results here.

Here are the money shots, the before and after. Obviously the left side was untouched and I de-rusted, POR-15'd, and re-assembled the right side with Koni adjustable's (the other side was then done as well)...






Upper spring perch untouched...




Upper spring perch de-rusted (almost completely at that point, anyway)...



More on this another day, in another thread.


The springs are stock for now because I want this car to handle properly, and very well. When I say that, I mean that if lowering springs (or lowered coilovers) are used without changing some other things, the geometry is negatively affected, I think the roll center. I forget the terms for sure, but you can ask Will if you want clarification on this...
Basically, in the rear suspension the angle at which the the control arms are placed changes when you lower the ride height via the strut assembly. In other words, the cradle mounting points drop while the spindle mounting points stay the same. This is very bad for neutral handling in the 88's. To remedy this, there are only two practical ways to go about it. By installing drop spindles which don't change geometry at all, or by raising the cradle mounting points. There are no available rear drop spindles for this car so that's out for me, which leaves raising the cradle mounting points.

I've heard that someone has done this without even lowering the car and had very very good results (an extremely neutral handling car) because it improves on the original geometry, but the problem is clearance (mainly with the axles). It's tight in there, and I'll need to measure everything once the car is fully put together. I think I'll be able to go up an inch with these mounts which will allow me to lower the rear an inch without affecting the control arm angle at all. I'm all for improving the stock geometry, but I really can't stand how high these things sit stock. I'll be okay with the factory angle and a lower ride height. However, if I can go up 1.5", I either have the option to lower it by 1.5" or leave it at 1" and have an improved angle. I'll hunt down an '88 rear cradle in nicer shape, weld up new mounts then get the whole thing powdercoated, swap cradles then sell this one. Simple.

There are other geometry changes as well, some of which I'm not sure as to the effect. One that makes me wonder is the trailing arm angle and if lowering will cause less pro-squat, resulting in reduced forward traction. I don't think it's as doable to modify that angle, but it may be. Once again, I'll figure out more later. So anyway, that's why I left the stock springs in. I don't ever want to negatively affect the factory handling, I only want to improve where possible and practical.

As for the front springs, he cut them a good bit before I got the car. Totally unacceptable. I acquired another set of stock '88 GT front springs, and they will be used for similar reasons as the rear (geometry changes). I need to research more, but I've read that the new owner of HT Motorsports (Held) is redesigning or has redesigned their '88 front drop spindles. If he works out the issues with the previous design, I'll go that route and lower 1 or 1.5" up there.
More later...

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-21-2009).]

It's going to start getting more interesting now, and so an apt time to explain the car's name (if you care to read).

MIDTRBO.
Notice my username of ALLTRBO, that comes from the license plate version (7-letter maximum states) of All Turbo. My 11.9 @ 118mph '96 Talon is named ALLTRBO because it's nothing WITHOUT the turbo (and a play on "All motor"). I use this username because I now have more than one turbo vehicle, and the goal is for all of them to be.
The twin-turbo Camaro, naturally, is TWNTRBO. Now somewhere in between 4 cylinders and 8 cylinders comes 6 cylinders, that's smack dab in the middle of the other two, and also the perfect cylinder count for a Fiero which mine happens to be, and you guessed it, it's a mid-engined car. There you have it, ALLTRBO, MIDTRBO, TWNTRBO, and my tiny-turbo'd motorcycle, SMLTRBO.

Now, the choice was yet to be made, which turbo to use for this car? Upon studying many compressor maps and much more research, I had come to decide on a Garrett T3/T4 based on price, reliability, and availability. I was going to use a T04E compressor housing with either a 60-trim wheel or a 60-1 wheel, and a .82 A/R turbine housing with a "stage III" wheel. I called a few different suppliers for quotes, the last of which was Tim's Turbos in VA and he told me that if I wanted it, he had a custom T3/S258 Borg Warner hybrid turbo that he built for someone who ended up not coming up with the cash, and he'd let it go cheap if I bought it before the end of the year because they were trying to clear out of inventory, and as you may know, the economy had tanked (this was Dec. 27th or thereabouts, 2008). He told me that the original price was $1400 that the guy couldn't pay, so make an offer. I told him I'd call him back. I looked up the specs and really liked what I saw, it was pretty much a great match for this setup whether on low-boost or high, and even with my planned future (REAL) engine build. Rest of the long story short, I took delivery of this $1400 turbo for $850 shipped.

It has a Garrett T3 .82 a/r turbine housing machined to fit the Borg Warner (Bullseye Power is the same thing) S258 turbine wheel and compressor side. Definitely bigger than this setup will need initially, but it isn't too massive.

Here's the compressor map...



If you understand what's going on here, notice the ability of this thing to remain quite efficient at very high pressure ratios. This is because the exducer to inducer ratio is pretty high (a lower 'trim', 44 in this case). One drawback of that is the higher likelyhood of compressor surge, but that's negated by the anti-surge compressor housing. What all this means is that for the size, the compressor can flow a whole lot of air if your setup can handle the higher boost it likes. This is why Bullseye Power/Borg Warner turbos do very well against the competition when in inducer-size (58mm in this case) limited classes of racing.

If you don't know WTH I'm talking about, I'll just say that it'll max out at almost 600whp with the right setup.

Here it is versus the stock TGP T25...

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-26-2009).]

I think that's all I'm going to post for now, I'm kinda burned out on posting at the moment. There's still quite a bit more to come, along with some changes, before I get to its current state. Stay tuned (and comment if you'd like)...

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-21-2009).]

Thanks Jacob, will do. I try to keep the wording to a minimum for all the impatient types, I really do, but I just can't do it!

Sure thing Dave, you will definitely be kept in the loop. As I said, more to come later.

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-21-2009).]

Okay, now that I'm going to have all this power and handling, how do I STOP!!! quickly. The car came with spacers to move the '88 brake calipers out for use with 12" Corvette rotors (less hardware) and with the centering rings originally from sluppy123 if I remember his s/n right, and also came with braided SS brake lines. The original calipers were removed and untouched when I got the car, but they were included.

I ordered 12" Powerslot rotors for the C4 Corvette from Autoanything for the lowest price I could find even before their 15% off discount that day (they have a new discount like, every day). They had them drop-shipped directly from Powerslot, and all was as expected.
I got pricier Powerslot rotors because they're made in the USA (support US!), and I've had more than my share of dealings with cheap crap Chinese rotors. Aside from that, the slotted rotors look cool and aren't prone to cracking under very hard use like some cross-drilled rotors.
Next up were 4 '88 caliper rebuild kits and Porterfield R4-S pads along with Motul Dot 5.1 brake fluid (high temp non-silicone, not to be confused with the silicone DOT 5 that shouldn't be used here). I did lots of research to come up with this combo, then I found out that someone here, I forget who, has this exact brake setup on their '88 and said it is amazing, perfectly balanced and the car will stop like it ran into a pool of peanut butter (my words, not his). I shall see if that's accurate with mine as well.

No pics of it at this point, but there will be soon. The pics exist, just waiting to get to the point that they were taken.

So now I have 12" brakes, and 15" wheels that they won't fit under. I have to upgrade. Darn.
Lots of research led me to wheels I really like, and while a tad bit on the heavy side, they look beautiful and can be had for a good price used in good shape if you look around hard enough.
Note: I give partial credit to justa6 here for having these rims on his beautiful GT first, and while I didn't completely get the idea from him, seeing them on his car sold me on them.
Meet the Volkswagen Monte Carlo or Santa Monica (depending on who you ask) wheels that were available on 02-04 Golfs, Jettas, and Beetles. My memory may be slightly off on the years, but close.

Here are the first three I bought from a guy in Hawaii for cheap, and shipping wasn't bad believe it or not. He removed the tire before shipping...



I then found a single wheel from someone else later, for a good price also.
They're 5x100 and 17x7 with a 38mm offset. Not a great offset for the front of an '88, but they'll do. I like the idea of the good '88 scrub-radius stock but I don't think this hurts steering effort all that much. I have an idea to make them look less like they're sticking out up there (though they aren't bad looking anyway).

More research led me to try Yokahama S-drive's for the tires. 235/45 for the rear and 205/50 for the front. I can hardly wait to try shoving them out of their traction zone.

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-22-2009).]

A note, throughout this whole thing I've been ordering new and used parts left and right. Some of them I've shown and/or explained, some of them I've yet to.
I still have to find a few more used parts for this project, would anyone mind looking in my WTB thread to see if you might have any?

https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum4/HTML/043893.html

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-22-2009).]

Big project directional shift ahead...

...At least WRT the way it's going to be completed. There comes some time in every man's life when he just has to give in, and all that jazz.

I've always been the DIY/built-not-bought type, mostly because half of the fun is completing a project myself but partially because I can't trust anyone to do anything right (at least it's very rare), but this time was different. My chronic health problems have been slowly getting worse and worse (severe sleeping troubles and severe IBS-C are the two main problems, among lesser problems, neither the doctors nor I have figured out what's going on for sure, and yes I've tried almost everything). I hate to keep bringing that up, and I'm not looking for sympathy, it's just that these problems infiltrate every second of my life. I have to follow a strict schedule or I spiral out of control, and even when I do follow a strict schedule I still am about 1/2 the person I should be.

Often I'm in so much pain or so out of whack mentally from a violent night's "sleep" and/or from being 'backed-up' that I can't go to work or do anything around the house, and have to now make up my time at work because I'm constantly at a no-leave balance, or just have to work longer hours because I'm very slow on certain days and can't rightfully count them as a full 8-hours, and every day I spend at least 1/2 hour in the bathroom at work on top the ~2.5 hours I have to spend in the bathroom at home every single morning and the ~1 hour every evening (If I don't, I can't go at all even though I take two laxatives every day, and then I'll spiral out of control). On top of that I have various doctors appointments to go to often on Saturdays, Mass on Sundays, and drive to work about 6 days/wk to get just 40 hours in.

One of my problems makes the other worse, and the other makes the one worse. I like typing more than talking as I can gather my sometimes very muddled thoughts more collectively and coherently in written words because I can go back over them several times before I hit 'submit'. Work is priority 1 (After Mass but that's only 1 hr/wk) because, while my wife works and makes reasonable money also, we still couldn't afford to pay the bills if we didn't both work.
Again, I'm not looking for sympathy and I hope that wasn't TMI, I'm just trying to express how much this affects me, and how it ties in to this project that I so very much want, and need, to drive (not just the beater truck or motorcycle)

So, this summer came the turning point. Will had been helping me on some of this throughout the months it took me to get to that point in the story and he was leaving soon for the desert for a year with his new Naval Reserve unit (God speed!), and I was about to switch companies.
I work for NASA as a contractor Electronics Technician, and how it works there is that we pretty much move from company to company as the projects change and new contract are awarded, or as the contracts and end are re-awarded to someone else. Most of the actual design and labor is completed in this way, civil servants are increasingly more managerial or administrative only.
At this time the last project I was working on had been finished, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and I was offered a job with a new company to work on two new satellite projects simultaneously (GPM and MMS) which I accepted. This was great, and not so great. It provided a very healthy pay raise and job security for a few more years, but at the same time meant that I had to work even harder to get the job done, I had to move to the work lifestyle posted above. This meant that there was no way I was going to be able to complete this thing in any reasonable amount of time, and I also had (and still have) other cars to get fixed and driving, or gotten rid of.

Coincidentally, there was a certain german car guru who also likes Fieros that opened up a portion of his repair shop recent to this to build some bad-arse Fieros. This particular guru also happened to be in New Jersey, which is on the same side of the country as I am, and isn't that far away. On top of that, this crazy fella with a crazy birdy-flipping wife ( ) that I had met a couple times before, just happens to be an OCD perfectionist like I am.
So as some of you already know, after several PM's back and forth it was decided that the bmwguru himself, Dave (along with his team of Fiero nuts), was going to be completing my project for me (almost completely completing, I'll get to that later) at the Haus of Guru. You may or may not have any idea how humbling that was for me, but it is what it is, and Dave will do (and is doing) a great job.

I'm still not to the point where we are now, but getting close. More later...

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-22-2009).]

Wow, that's a lot to read. If you don't care to, just read the first bit and the last paragraph and that'll tell you what the shift is. The rest is why, heh.

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-22-2009).]

So the date was set for Joey (Dave's wife) to come pick up MIDTRBO with her blingin' new Ford semi-truck (at least it's about as big as one), about a month or so from then IIRC. I had to get crackin' on it just to get it onto a trailer.

First off was finding the correct hardware for the rear suspension in my pile 'o parts, the previous owner slapped a bunch of random bolts in it to keep it from falling off when I picked it up (another detail he failed to mention beforehand) so I had to order some of the correct hardware and find the rest used. I finally had everything sorted out, then I had to complete the other side strut ass'y with the rust removal, POR-15, and Koni, I hadn't actually done that until this point. Once that was back together I bolted all the suspension back onto the car, and next up was the new wheels and tires.

Since I was going to have him finish the 12" brake upgrade and the 15" wheels had bald tires anyway (those 5-star 15's you can see on the front in the rear-up shot earlier were the only others I had, I sold the gold lace wheels with the last Fiero I think I'll ever sell, haha), I needed to install the new tires on the VW wheels. I had previously spent a lot of time polishing up the VW wheels because they didn't look perfect when I got them, and while still not perfect, they are now very acceptable looking.

I took my trusty old beater '90 Chevy 1500 (I REALLY hate driving that thing unless I'm using it for its intended purpose) to the NASA tech center with my wheels and tires loaded up in the back, then proceeded to mount and balance all the tires. One of the rears took way more weight to balance than I like but rather than dismounting and using the fancy features of the top-o-the line computer balancer with road force measurements (it is NASA afterall, hehe) to determine which part of the assembly was the problem (wheel runout? Tire out of round? etc. etc.), or even just doing the old-fashioned rotate-the-tire-180*-on-the-wheel trick, I just left it balanced with lots of weights because I had no time left that day. Those rears were a PAIN to install, the sidewalls are low, they're wider than the wheels, and those have sidewalls as stiff as I've seen. They wouldn't even rotate on the wheel without having one bead entirely removed.
I'm hoping it'll be fine when it comes time to drive it back home from New Jersey so I can deal with it then. It should be okay, but I don't ultimately want okay, I want perfect. Tires aren't something to toy with in my opinion.

I also had to order a full set of Fiero lugnuts since I had none because the 15" wheels use the other style lug (I forget the name), and because I want to use Fiero (any older GM, really) black lugnut caps on these. I don't need those yet, however, but will order them when the car gets home so I don't lose them in the meantime. I also will order two more VW centercaps since two were missing, and will put Fiero decals over those.

Here was the result (better pics soon)...



P.P. I don't have that motorcycle anymore, but a fire-breathing 200hp 450lb monster that'll pull the front wheel from a roll in third at 130mph! 9.9 @ 150 in the 1/4, a 2008 ZX-10R. Then I have the little 750 turbo project that'll make the same power when I'm done with that (after the Fiero at least).

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-22-2009).]

Time was getting shorter, the date fast approaching. I had to clean the hell out of the garage and label and pack all of the parts I had that needed to go with it, stuff them in the Fiero, then come up with a series of base tune chips for Dave to try (in order) when the time comes to start it up. I ended up with a few different combos, one of which should work should the others fail, providing the wiring and mechanical's are proper.

Around this time TLG auto (member Oslo) came out with a product that I thought I'd try, a set of low-rise wingstands. They require finishing touches and minor mods to look GREAT rather than just good IMO, but I ordered them up real quick and installed them so I could snag pics before the car left.

Here are the pics of those installed. Note the Fiero lacking a passenger seat and packed with Fiero junk, hehe.

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 01-09-2010).]

The day was finally here. Joey and her sidekick Shawn (one of Dave's Fiero loving employees, also working on it) were fortunately late, because I wasn't ready until they arrived, haha.

I'll try to keep the long story short. This whole time I was filled with a rush-rush anxiety that I shouldn't have been, it was a bad day for that.
My driveway is a mild S-curve uphill, Joey couldn't get the trailer backed up it with the massive Ford, we tried to 'hoist' it into position and failed, so ultimately I had to go get my trusty ol' beater Chevy and back the trailer up the grassy area with it. Chevy 1, Ford 0, haha. If you'll remember the car had no brakes (not even the parking brake) so down-and-up-and-down onto the trailer was hard, then while being strapped down MIDTRBO almost ran over and killed Joey , fortunately Shawn was there to save the day preventing certain death while I was la-la-ing around taking these pictures at that very moment.
MIDTRBO got strapped down, I pulled it down the street, we traded trucks, and they were off into the sunset (not really, it was early summer afternoon and they were headed north, but it sounded good, didn't it?)

How many Fiero nuts does it take to load one onto a trailer without killing anybody? Exactly 3. Barely.

(Shawn strapping it down, my Chevy in front, the Ford on the side. )








Joey and Shawn on the left, my wife Christine on the right. TWNTRBO in the background parked on the street...



My favorite side shot (the car in reality anyway), I love the wing location in this pic. Unfortunately the brakes are still missing, I'll have to have Dave get us a pic of them sitting behind the wheels now that they're fully installed.



The rest of the story continues for me only in pictures for awhile. I feel like you guys now. Well, maybe not.

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-22-2009).]

I'm going to have to stop here for tonight and I'm not sure when I can post again, but I still have to get you all up to snuff with what Dave has done so far (quite a bit, he's a lot faster than I am!). In the meantime you can see some of it in his Haus of Guru thread if you haven't already.
Comments still welcome.

To offset all the RED RED RED (gosh, I can't stand red, but no offense if you like it.), I leave you with a simple photoshop. Goodnight Fiero friends...

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-22-2009).]

quote Originally posted by Mr_jacob7: Yes. It looks real tough, and I like blues.

You beat me to the last posting...
Cool, glad you like it and I agree.

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-26-2009).]

quote Originally posted by PhantomMs1: bmwguru and ALLTRBO, Keep us updated, I for one like the lengthy posts. As mentioned before alot of times details are left out, I might not understand everything (I.E. compressor mapping) but I do like how you sum everything up at the end for us who don't understand. to go along with your lengthy posts, don't forget pictures. WE LOVE PICTURES keep up the great work!

Sure thing. Everyone here loves pics of this stuff, very true. Unfortunately I didn't get as many pics as I would have liked to when I still had it, but there will be many more to come, I promise.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words... In that case I really should have taken more, that would have saved me a lot of typing!

[This message has been edited by ALLTRBO (edited 11-26-2009).]

One last teaser pic for tonight...