How's production coming?

-- I can't wait to wake that 2.8 up

EDIT: Page 23!

[This message has been edited by squisher86SE (edited 09-26-2006).]

Just waiting on my parts... I'm going crazy with anticipation! I hope things are wrapped up soon.

I hate waiting, lol!

Steve

Chill out funky before you blow a head gaskett, we're working on them. Really, wont be too long now, just completed and set today. Just have to pressure test and then paint them and start on next set. We also got our back-ordered shipping boxes for the headers.

Sorry to be a bother mate - It's just that my car is down until I get the exhaust installed, so no car for me right now.

I'm not trying to rush you guys or anything, sorry if that's the way I'm coming across - Just very excited. Thanks guys!

Steve

Got some pics of the new vacuum distributor that Francis and Troy made - looks nice







And the fuel door - shiny!



Contact Troy or Francis if you guys have any questions about these, I just work here

-Steve

[This message has been edited by The Funkmaster (edited 10-02-2006).]

I know, I know, patience is a virtue...but....

I wanna play with my new toys!

How's it coming guys? I plan on test-fitting these, then sending them off to get coated. (no more heat shields for me! -- or at least fewer of them)

I'll get pictures when I put it all together, that's for sure. I should have taken pictures while I was taking it apart, but I was too busy cussing at the busted-off manifold bolt. Only one thank goodness, but still a pain. So now I have 11 metric stock sized studs (Thanks Rodney for carrying these!), and 1 5/16 stainless bolt.

Most people wouldn't want to go at the disassembly the way I did anyway. Once I snapped that bolt, I just decided it would be easier to pull the heads (I had all the intake stuff off already anyway because I'm getting one of those too). Man, the front manifold has never been easier to get to than with the head on the ground

Squisher, check your PMs

Awesome, thanks. Not much longer now *muwahahaha*

For those that may not have seen the thread, in general chat forum take look at the posting ' trueleo headers installed. And yes we made a few changes.

Sweet, thanks, the results he's talking about are exactly what I'm looking for, now I'm looking forward to these even more!

Keeping the thread up top

quote Originally posted by The Funkmaster: Got some pics of the new vacuum distributor that Francis and Troy made - looks nice -Steve

You now have my attention here, any more info on this would be nice.

[This message has been edited by OH10fiero (edited 10-12-2006).]

When I complete the headers I'm working on now, I'm going to make another vacuum distributor or whatever I shoud call it fopr my 87GT. I'll see just how much time they take to make. We are all use to buying small items like these made in large quanites (in china), and thus expect to get one for like $5. They would not be worth my effort for probably less $20, so I doubt that I will be making them to sell. I may, and this is just a thought, include one when someone buys our intake/header combo. Anyone else interested in the buggers?

BTW: I took some pictures of our first notchie intake and it looks (in red) quite nice. Should them up on our site soon along with a picture of our Y pipe for 2.5" exhaust.

Here's a couple archived threads of my install and dyno runs.

https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Archives/Archive-000001/HTML/20060811-2-062550.html

https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Archives/Archive-000001/HTML/20050818-2-059634.html

Keep in mind that my intake was a very early production piece. They look nicer now.

pardon my ignorance, but what's a vacuum distributer?

Never heard of a vacuum distributor huh, me either. It's just a little thing to get rid of some vacuum Ts I had. If you look at the picture back a few replies, it's the little block attached to TB with the vacuum lines on it. I think it looks nicer than Ts.

Francis, Pm Sent>>>>>>>>>>

I just found out that our site's (trueleo.com) e-mail has not been working working correctly and haven't been getting all our messages. If you need to contact us, send your e-mails to me at rspiderii@aol.com. 3800 check your PMs.

Here are a couple of pics frank sent me their latest design.
aka "The Notchie intake" I do believe.

[This message has been edited by srat110 (edited 10-14-2006).]

have you guys considered hanging up the MIG gun and maybe doing a few quantaties with a TIG welder, your product is a great idea, its just that pulsing a MIG gun like you guys are doing produces a very cold and piled-on weld. Sure it works, but it could look a whole lot better.

If you have any questions regarding welding in general, P.M. me

Eventually we hope to go that route. We haven't had any weld failures so it really hasn't been a problem. Yes, they would likey be nicer looking welds, but when you sell in limited quanites (keep in mind we're not making items for SBCs, but rather a long-discontinued engine) it takes a while to recoup the cost of any machines you buy especially at our pricing. I would love to have a mandrel bender for our headers, reality says it could take a long, long time to recoup that cost. Fiero owners for most part don't much money to spend. If they did a lot of them would have new Corvets and such instead. Our goal has been to provide very functional high proformance products that breath life into the 90deg V6 at a low price. Could they be a little nicer looking, perhaps. I personally don't mind the race car prototype look of our intakes etc.

They look absolutely great! Have you mentioned anywhere if you will be trying to get a CARB certification for use in the People's Republic of California?

That's a big NO. We're not GM, just guys with a side biz. It's shame they are so crazy in Ca because our intakes don't hurt emisions, in some respect they help. Whereas the engine wont start to go rich near 4.5K

quote Originally posted by Notorio: They look absolutely great! Have you mentioned anywhere if you will be trying to get a CARB certification for use in the People's Republic of California?

quote Originally posted by srat110: Here are a couple of pics frank sent me their latest design. aka "The Notchie intake" I do believe.

Hmm...notchback fitment...red....hehe, I wonder where that one's going....
That looks like it's all business. Hopefully it's all waiting for me when I get home tomorrow night, and I can start posting stuff up.

Ah!
I like the little mod for the notchie decklid. That ought to work nicely.

I did notice that with the manifold vibrating against the bottom of the decklid, it turns the decklid into a 4 foot wide SMC sounding board. (Kind of like a big, flat speaker.)
At WOT at 6K, the thing just wails! I'll bet you can hear it for blocks.

Word has it that I'm going to be sitting by my front door for the next little while, waiting to attack the postman when he arrives... Bloody excited!



Steve

Yeah funky, you can watch for the postman. We are all caught up with our orders, the last few orders for headers and intakes went out early in the week. Gives me a chance to make an intake for my 87 as I have the headers made already. We will also start to make headers and partial intakes (we get some request for dif TB necks ) to have some on hand as have in the past. I hope to also get to that airbox mod(for air filter) I've been wanting to do and maybe tackle increasing oil pan capacity for the 87. Nice to now have an extra Fiero to experment with. I hope we get some more feedback from those of you installing our new headers.

I got mine yesterday Will be posting up pics next week while I'm fittin them up

Just curious as to what shipping service you gentlemen used, and if there was any tracking numbers involved? I'd like to track the packages trip across the country if I could lol! Thanks guys!!!

Steve

Hey FrancisT, have you guys ever concidared doing a upper and lower intake that would allow people to use the aluminum 3.1 heads? These things flow twice as well as a ported stock head, just need some way to get them to work with a distributor. The lower intake that must be used with the heads will not clear a distributor so replacement solution is needed, the only downfall to this set up is also a new set of headers would be in order as well as they have a different bolt pattern compared to the 2.8 heads. I thought about doing something like this since I have no tuneing skills with DIS, distributors are a lot easier to dial in timing, but never got around to it due to a equally poor aluminum welding ability, or lack of ability. But by looking at your site you seem to have the resorces, the skill, and the desire to possibly do something like this

quote Originally posted by OH10fiero: Hey FrancisT, have you guys ever concidared doing a upper and lower intake that would allow people to use the aluminum 3.1 heads? These things flow twice as well as a ported stock head, just need some way to get them to work with a distributor. The lower intake that must be used with the heads will not clear a distributor so replacement solution is needed, the only downfall to this set up is also a new set of headers would be in order as well as they have a different bolt pattern compared to the 2.8 heads. I thought about doing something like this since I have no tuneing skills with DIS, distributors are a lot easier to dial in timing, but never got around to it due to a equally poor aluminum welding ability, or lack of ability. But by looking at your site you seem to have the resorces, the skill, and the desire to possibly do something like this

I second this. Perhaps a lower that could be used with your existing upper.
I might suggest something that would bolt up to the 3500 heads (or at least the generation III 3400 heads), since they are the latest and greatest evolution of our basic V6 block. (I've heard the 3.9 blocks use a different bore spacing, but I could be wrong.)

I'll add that I'm not that well versed on the Gen II or Gen III V6, so I may be incorrect on any or all of what I posted. But hopefully, you get the idea.
I'm sure that someone will step up and correct me.

Great idea ... a 3.4 lower that would go with your current upper. Perfect. Please consider it

Great dream, bad idea. Sorry guys, but we could never sell enough to cover the tooling/production cost for the flanges alone! Just not enough of a market out there for them. It took us like a year to recover our investment on our currant intakes and they're are a lot more people using the stock heads on their Fiero's. Wish we could since I love designing things.

is this better than slapping togeather a dual throttle body setup? sorry if this has been asked before but i cant read through 23 pages to find out.

The only reason I think that most people still use the stock heads is they are unable to use the aluminum ones from a 3.1 without completely redesigning a lower intake. But I do think that a lot of people here would go with the 3.1 heads if they could. The only reason I am trying to see if I can use the 3.1 heads I have is I got them brand new, never used, and assembled for $50.00, long story but I got them from a local GM dealer.
Believe me I do understand why you would not want to produce something like this, I looked into doing a kit for a Firebird dash for the Fiero and wanted to keep the price in the $500.00-$700.00 range, and when I did the research and initial cost of this I came nowhere near my price goal, unless I sold around 1000 orders from the start than I would be insured I can sell the kit for the price I want. But I do not need to tell you that what people say they want and are willing to buy, and orders that are paid for are two very different matters all together.
But still, I think that you should keep this in concideration for a possible future project, who knows, you may just find there is enough of a market to justify doing a intake so that we can use the 3.1 heads.

To even consider doing it; I would have design it, get cost est for X number of custom flanges needed and then 'GET FIRM' deposites from enough people to cover that investment. Knowing that wont happen... Now if someone wants to front the startup cost.... ha like that would happen.
Remember were just two guys and not GM and do this on the side mostly because we like to build things. Some folks still think we charge too much! Most have no idea what it cost to offer anything like this. Oh, and with respect to our headers/Y pipes, I would not be surprised to see us raise the price sometime in the future as they take a lot more T&M to make than we figured they would. We will however try to hold the price since our goal was to deliver a good design at low price.

best thing to do would be use a alloy head 3.1L lower intake and heads, then have a custom flange made for the lower intake, and see if you could simply ship it to frank and use his intake onto the alloy head 3.1L lower intake flange, maybe it would work and still clear the distributor? thats the challenge.

i think with the alloy heads our 3.4L motors could see upto 250-260HP naturally aspirated at the crank


matthew

[This message has been edited by m0sh_man (edited 10-27-2006).]

quote Originally posted by m0sh_man: best thing to do would be use a alloy head 3.1L lower intake and heads, then have a custom flange made for the lower intake, and see if you could simply ship it to frank and use his intake onto the alloy head 3.1L lower intake flange, maybe it would work and still clear the distributor? thats the challenge. i think with the alloy heads our 3.4L motors could see upto 250-260HP naturally aspirated at the crank matthew

This would not work as the problem is with the lower intake, that is what needs to be redesigned. From there, if you have seen a mock set up, you will know that the upper intake will now no longer work so now you will need a new upper intake as well. Also as I said, an entirely new set of headers will now be in order since the 3.1 heads are "D" ports, not round like the stock 2.8 heads.
As I said, FrancisT has a better chance of doing this as a production than anyone else here on the forum that I have seen, I would just like him to keep this a "possiblity" for a future project and not dissmiss it completly for now. If he does not do it, I still plan on doing a one off for my car, so I am not worried about it, but I do know others would be interested in it as well seeing as useable 3.1 heads can now be found in the junk yards for cheap.

Ohio check you PMs............................