that had to suck, they were going after your ass thinking you were the one with the bad check.
Archie are you gonna get into the present time of this guy also?
I got a july 98 issue of kit car which has different kits to put different engines in the fieros. And it has both your kit and Zumalts kit.
"V-8 Archie was one of the first companies to drop a Chevy into the Fiero" ..... "the company claims the stock fiero axles are up to the job ....."
Gary Zumalt is another pioneer of the Chevy/Fiero swap. He worked with Pontiac Motorsports to develop the first one in 1986. Zumalt says the engine should be centered in the chassis, and that requires making custom heavy-duty axles from 4340 chrome moly. (stock pullys can be used) The Zumalt kit (available from PISA) includes a billet aluminum front engine mount assembly, transaxle mounts, an adapter plate, a starter mount, a steel flywheel, racing axles, a mega torque starter, an al water pump, a colling sysem neck, a remote oil filter kit, al pulleys, a throw out bearing and a/c mounts for $2195. Zumalt makes a conversion for getrag five-speed that he says works just fine so long as super sticky tires are not used in conjunction with full throttle burnouts. PISA also recommends an al radiator for V8 swaps. The engine cradles on '88 fieros are different from earlier models and will need to be send to PISA for modification ($300). .... suggest bigger brakes and cooling
Gary zumalt also does northstar conversions with the standard auto or getrag five speed.
Theres a picture of how zumalts kit looks like installed on the cradle. What i have is the cradle is cut completly off on the passenger side. What i see, i wouldn't want to do the mod if the cradle has to be cut complety off. It doesn't seem that it can be strong at all. (later in the article it states its one of his originals and it lets you unbolt the siderail from the cradle to service the tranny and clutch)
Archie, what was he doing later. And how he got into sell his kits to PISA? (i know they sell other kits). Did he later go into business and start installing kits for people. Thats what it seems like in this article. And he works out of a PO box in kansas city, MO.
Design 1 also does make northstar conversions.
in the article it has a "FAMOUS LAST WORDS" summs up as do some research on all kits, and find people who have done the swaps and ask them if they had problems.
out of curiosity, i found the pisa website and heres a link to there "discontinued V8 swap" http://www.cybercars.com/mnfr/pisa2.html but they have the name of Corson Motorcar Co on the kit.
When I first started getting into Fieros I rember reading an article describing the "Axle breakage" when they were testing the car on a track some where. At that time I had never heard anything about Archie kit. The more I heard about Archies kit the more I liked it. When hearing about how he used the stock axles the first thing that poped into my head was that zumalt article. I thought, "If Archie has never broken an axle..EVER..then that zumult guy must be full of" Well, that was my train of thought.
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07:14 AM
Raydar Member
Posts: 40912 From: Carrollton GA. Out in the... country. Registered: Oct 1999
When I first got "back" into Fieros, in 1997, I was considering doing a V-8 kit. (Priorities, and my assessment of my own skills, have since changed.) Emailed Archie with several questions, which he answered. Zumalt didn't have e-mail, but I did find a phone number on Focoa's site. I called and left a message on the machine. No wonder he didn't call back. I consider myself fortunate that he didn't.
To quote Dorothy, "Things just keep getting curiouser and curiouser."
Rock on, Arch!
------------------ Raydar
From the Department of Redundancy Department.
[This message has been edited by Raydar (edited 03-08-2002).]
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07:40 AM
85GToronto Member
Posts: 927 From: Red Deer, Alberta, Canada Registered: Dec 2001
Originally posted by Archie: ... What ever happened to Gary Zumwalt? FWIH, A few years ago he got sued by several of his old customers...
Now you know why I state in my web page/about section/V8 Kits paragraph:
"Luckily, a trip to the 1997 Carlisle Kit Car Show made the decision very easy for me. To make a very long story short, I (literally) ran away from Gary's folding table. I did not like what I saw and liked even less what I heard. And I hadn't even seen his products yet!"
I was about to start asking Gary questions about his kit, when a big-O guy came to serv him a law suit and yell at him. I just kept on walking cause it was gonna get ugly there what afternoon!
This brings back horrible memories of the 1996 Gateway Fiero show. Gary was friends with Jack Ditter('87 blue Northstar fastback) the club president. Him and Phil Huff were staying with Jack at his house for the show. One club member told his usual story of the race he had with a V-8 Fiero; in it he said one of the cars axles was sticking out too far on one side,and that the car blew it's tranny to pieces when they raced. He said "was that an Archie kit?" Gary said "Yup" in his backwoods redneck drawl.Before I visited Archies website and spent time here, I was sure he was right; Now it's so clear to me who was lying through their Goatee.
------------------ 85 GT Turbo intercooled
[This message has been edited by Mr.Frosty (edited 03-08-2002).]
Does anyone remember the time when Archie challenged Gary to see who could build a V8-Fiero in the shortest amount of time durring a car show? Wouldn't that have been a great sight to see! It was to bad that Gary wouldn't take the challenge.
Don't forget to include that in your story Archie
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12:28 PM
blakeinspace Member
Posts: 5923 From: Fort Worth, Texas Registered: Dec 2001
Originally posted by Archie: Ok, you'll find this funny in a way.... I had to travel over to K.C. and conference with the lawyers and take paperwork to convince them that they had the wrong guy.
Ohhh, Archie that sucks (insert lawyer joke thread here)! I hope you got to at least have some good BBQ or somesuch while you were in KC. I guess it could have been worse... at least the suit wasn't filed in Barrow, Alaska.
------------------ If life gives you lemons, squeeze the juice into a water pistol and squirt it into other peoples eyes.
Hello. Anybody out there? I returned to get the next episode. Am I alone here? Archie, I hope you're peckin' away at your keyboard. This is great stuff. If you write a book I will buy it. jp
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10:33 PM
Bob_in_NH Member
Posts: 132 From: Manchester,NH,USA Registered: Mar 2002
Originally posted by Archie: Tomorrow I'll show you some of the design elements that JD was going to correct on the original car and how those elements still exist today. We will also look at the compromises made by Corson and adopted by Zumwalt that still exist yet today. Archie
This pic. reflects what JD's adapter plate looked like on his 1st. V-8 kit.
While it looks like a nice part, looks and function are different things. I've been told that one of the major things JD wanted to correct before production was related to the area identified by the red arrow & line. The problem was that on an automatic car part of the transmission housing passes thru this area and the adapter had to be angled and a chunk of the engine block had to be cut out to allow clearance for the transmission housing.
This is another kit of the Z type that shows the adapter plate bolted to the engine. The place right below the arrow is cut on the engine block to clear the transmission.
Here is a view from the other side of that same assembly. The red line indicates the amount of material that has to be removed from the engine block to clear the automatic transmission housing. The sad thing about cutting this particular chunk out of the engine block is that this area is where the original Chevy starter used to mount. So, in effect, once and engine has been modified to work with this design, it is a dedicated engine and can never be removed from the Fiero to be used in a regular front engine/ rear wheel drive configuration again because the normal Chevy starter mounting area is now gone.
Here is a pic of a Stick shift kit we worked on a year ago, and it has the same angle cut on the adapter plate but doesn't have the chunk removed from the engine block. The interference of transmission to the engine on automatic cars is the reason my automatic kits has totally different adapter plate designed for it. But in the Corson re-engineer of JD's design, he wanted to use the same adapter plate and thus that angle that is not needed for a stick shift car remains a part of the design, even on stick shift applications, to this day. You'll also notice that this angle missing from that area of the adapter plate eliminates one of the adapter to engine mounting bolts, you can see the empty threaded hole in the engine block just below the angled area of the adapter plate.
That also means that the area all the way around the bottom of the engine between the indicated holes (more than 180 degrees) is unsupported.
Another problem that JD had intended to fix was the adapter plate thickness. The thickness originally was 5/8" and the problem was that the torque converter was so thick that. When the converter was bolted to the flex plate, the backside of the converter was right up against the flex plate attaching bolt heads. If you just engineered things so that the converter just touched the flex plate attaching bolt heads then the torque converter fit back into the bellhousing to deeply by about 3/8". I had to repair one of these once that came from Corson (but all of them were the same deal) and Corson's customer had assembled it according to his instructions and just bolted the tranny down and the pressure of the converter against the inside of the bellhousing caused it to crack the trans case. (I still have that transmission at the shop & I'll insert a pic of the cracks here tomorrow. Anyway, on JD's original assembly he had to shave the heads of the flexplate bolts so that he could get the converter so it wasn't too deep into the bellhousing. This is another feature that was never corrected and continues in use today. No matter what is done, the converter, cannot be moved any closer to the crankshaft. Unless the adapter plate is made thicker, the converter will be too deep into the transmission. This picture is of a Zumwalt kit sold in 1995 and assembled by the customer. At least on this one the customer didn't ruin the transmission by not shaving the bolt heads.
You can look at all of the current kits of JD's design and see that the adapter plate thickness is still to thin and you can see that it hasn't yet been corrected.
If only Zumwalt had waited until JD was done with the revisions to the design before he took off with it, You can't help think that a lot of Z's customers' would have been a lot better off & the History of this design would have been a lot better.
Yesterday I over estimated how much material we would be able to cover tonight, so we will discuss the compromises made by Corson and adopted by Zumwalt that still exist yet today, tomorrow.
That don't sound right
Archie
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02:50 AM
Brandon86SE Member
Posts: 586 From: Calgary, AB, Canada Registered: Aug 2001
Originally posted by Archie: I had to repair one of these once that came from Corson (but all of them were the same deal) and Corson's customer had assembled it according to his instructions and just bolted the tranny down and the pressure of the converter against the inside of the bellhousing caused it to crack the trans case. (I still have that transmission at the shop & I'll insert a pic of the cracks here tomorrow.
The red arrows indicate the cracks that run almost all the way around the case & the blue arrow shows where the Torque Converter rubbed against the back of the case when he had tried to crank the engine over.
Funny story follows: He had brought the car to me partially assembled with the engine/trans assy. already sitting on the cradle. Neither one of us knew about this internal problem at the time. When he dropped it off he mentioned that he had tried to crank it over and he had to hook 3 batteries up to it to get it to turn over slowly. hehe...... I know there was something wrong at that point but I thought that he had cranked down the bearing caps too tight or had not lubed the engine up when he had built the engine. Imagine how surprised I was when I saw the actual cause.
Archie
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11:13 AM
jelly2m8 Member
Posts: 6232 From: Nova Scotia, Canada Registered: Jul 2001
Keep it coming Archie, this is an awesome story of design and compromises.
I've been thinking about using your kit with a 4.3l v-6... does that leave enough room to bypass the whole waterpump issue? I figure a 4.3l TBI in my 87 notchback, maybe with a 4-71 or 6-71 blower, would package better and be more than enough power.
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02:10 AM
Banzai Member
Posts: 533 From: Flushing, MI, USA Registered: Aug 2001
I've been thinking about using your kit with a 4.3l v-6... does that leave enough room to bypass the whole waterpump issue? I figure a 4.3l TBI in my 87 notchback, maybe with a 4-71 or 6-71 blower, would package better and be more than enough power.
With the 4.3 you'd probobly have room for a centrifigal blower.
Banzai !!!!!!!!
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04:27 PM
FieroGTS Member
Posts: 200 From: Tampa, FL, USA Registered: Feb 2002
i know at least one person here has the zumalt kit or a version of it. a fiero everyone has admired. though he brought it assembled, i wonder if he knows what if any work was done to make it work well. not a "the other side of the story" thing, i guess just some extra perspective. if it could be done without starting a new flame war (lately that seems way too easy to do).
if that seems like it would "destablize" the thread or he just dosen't want to be in the middle of it, that's compleatly understandable. just seems like some personal consumer input would make the story more compleat.
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09:55 AM
Raydar Member
Posts: 40912 From: Carrollton GA. Out in the... country. Registered: Oct 1999
Originally posted by Philphine: i know at least one person here has the zumalt kit or a version of it. a fiero everyone has admired. though he brought it assembled, i wonder if he knows what if any work was done to make it work well.
By the time this thead completes it's course you'll see that the reason the Kid is not having the problems with the stick shift car he has is directly related to the type of clutch he was lucky enough to get with his car when he got it.
I took the weekend off but will continue this thread tonight. My posts have already talked about the automatic version of JD's kit tonight we'll start to make the transition over to how those design features effect the stick shift version.
Hang in there, it will show how at the kid's clutch cures one of the problems that Randy Corson never addressed.
Archie
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01:44 PM
California Kid Member
Posts: 9541 From: Metro Detroit Area, Michigan Registered: Jul 2001
And silently in the background I be grinnin' cause I did reseach the Archie kit for many problems before I purchased a kit from him that does work well.
Thanks for your studies Archie.
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03:25 PM
Mar 12th, 2002
blakeinspace Member
Posts: 5923 From: Fort Worth, Texas Registered: Dec 2001
Well we've established that when Randy Corson had obtained a version of JD's original design he turned it over to a machine shop to make it into a stick shift kit. Since Corson wanted to use the same adapter plate that had been used on automatic kits. This left the machine with an envelope that had already been established and inside that envelope they had to find a way to install a stick shift F/W and a clutch & Throw-out bearing. The clutch had to be a low profile and the F/W had to be thick enough to allow threaded holes deep enough to give some grip length to the bolts that would holt the clutch to the F/W. The best was to design something like this is to design the adapter plate AND the flywheel together, but Corson's contractor did not have that luxury. The Adapter plate was a fixed design and they had to work with what was left.
On the original automatic kit, JD had made the flexplate ring gear the same diameter as the original Fiero flexplate. With the adapter plate being a "fixed" design the stick shift F/W would also have to be the same diameter. And with the clutch assy. being the same height as an original Fiero clutch to avoid contact with the inside of the Fiero transmission bellhousing the only variable was the flywheel thickness and design & this is where one of the main problems come in.
Think about this, the clutch can only go into the bellhousing just so far. The clutch is a given height or thickness. The thickness of the area where the F/W bolts to the crankshaft has to be at least a minimum thickness. That leaves only the face of the friction surface on the F/W as the only surface that can be a variable dimension and even that is governed by the clutch height.
If the combined thickness of the clutch and the F/W exceeds the available depth of the bellhousing then the only adjustment that can be made in the design is either a thicker adapter plate or moving the friction surface of the F/W closer to the engine by making the Flywheel thinner.
Thus the Corson F/W was designed with a very shallow step from the friction surface of the F/W down to the hub where the bolts pass thru to bolt it to the crankshaft.
This is a picture of a typical Corson/Zumwalt F/W hub. Notice the shallow step from surface A to surface B.
Here is the kind of step a "normal" F/W would have.
As you know there are a set of springs in the center hub of most street type clutches. If a person was to use a normal Flywheel bolt to attach a F/W with a step as shallow as the one you see here then the center hub springs would hit the bolts immediately.
So to gain clearance in this area the Corson contractor elected to use Flat Head Allen Cap Screws to attach the F/W to the crankshaft.
Today, while Zumwalt and Corson are no longer around you can still see this feature in the current crop of V-8 kits based on the old Z & C kits.
Ok, so what's wrong with using allen head cap screws to hold the F/W on? This will take some explaining and those unfamiliar with machining and automotive methods still won't understand but I'll try. Those that understand True Positioning Tolerancing and machine practices don't need me to explain this to them.
Every Flywheel you will ever see on any application (except this one) will use normal Hex Head bolts to hold the flywheel onto the crank shaft. Using hex head bolts puts all of the load on the underside of the bolt heads and puts no side load on the bolts themselves. The bolts hold the F/W onto the crankshaft and their main purpose is not to locate the F/W radially. Using the flat head allen cap screws whit their cone shaped heads into chamfered holes drilled in the F/W is kind of like putting a wheel onto your car. The 1st. bolt that is tightened down locates the F/W radially and the rest of the bolts don't necessarily make full contact around the chamfer when they are tightened. This has 2 flaws in it's use #1 is that the 1st. bolt is the only bolt that has a chance to hold all the way around it's load bearing surface. #2 The other bolts only make contact into the chamfer on one side and when that point starts to make contact and the screw is further tightened it tends to bend or lean towards the side that is not making contact. For these tapered holes in the F/W to be perfectly aligned with the corresponding threaded holes in the crankshaft, the holes in the crank and flywheel would need to be drilled & tapped all at the same time.
As these cap screws begin to bend over when they are tightened you will find that they bend and later removal is virtually impossible and you'll break a lot of allen wrenches getting them out.
To remove these bent bolts, it's not uncommon to have to weld a large nut to then and try to boost them out with an impact wrench. If you also look real close at this next picture you can see the black wear marks left in the chamfered holes by the uneven contact of the flat head allen cap screws.
As you can imagine, you can solve the shallow hub depth by using a racing style clutch that has no center hub springs but there is no cure for the improper use & substitution of flywheel bolts.
Nite
Archie
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02:06 AM
mrfixit58 Member
Posts: 3330 From: Seffner, Fl, USA Registered: Jul 99
FWIW, I am enjoying this story tremendously. What a great example of designing oneself into a corner, because of poor configuration decisions made early on. Before long, it's tough for anybody to bail out. Been there.
Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to the next chapter...
I'd like to hear the last chapter(s) too, but give the man a break! He does have a business to run.LOL We all know Archie does his homework, so he is probably gathering facts and organizing the next installment.
We will wait.
------------------ Have a good one!
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08:11 AM
Denny Member
Posts: 1410 From: Leola, PA USA Registered: Apr 2001
To your knowledge, has any of the Z/C kit flywheels failed? Have you ever heard of the tapered allen-head screws failing?
Roy
Roy,
I don't want to speak for Archie, but I can tell you that as far as I understand the flaws in the kit, it's not the flywheel itself that fails, it's those chamfered allen bolts that break from the stress of not being aligned properly in the holes. One good drag race and all the V8's torque stresses them to their breaking points. I know he has had numerous people come to him with broken Zum(w)alt kits for him to repair. That's why it's necessary to weld a nut onto those bolts, you have to get the flywheel off to unfück the whole mess.
I took a picture of a grenaded Zum(w)alt flywheel when I was at Archie's shop 2 years ago. I put it on my webserver for Archie to download but I don't know if he ever did. Those pics were wiped in a server crash I had last year, so I hope so. That would be a great picture to add to this discussion to help clarify the flaw.
Archie, I never get tired of hearing this story, it's great to see it re-told in this level of detail. Thanks for taking the time to write it all down and share it with all of us.
Hey Dave...Did you ever stop to think that just maybe, it was whoever installed the kit didn't torque the bolts right?? Same thing can happen with any kit done by someone not paying attention to detail when putting it together. Personally, while I understand the point Archie is trying to make, I have not experienced any problems with either the flywheel or fasteners (30,000 miles and counting).
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07:35 PM
Archie Member
Posts: 9436 From: Las Vegas, NV Registered: Dec 1999
Now you know why I state in my web page/about section/V8 Kits paragraph:
