Also, looking at your pics of the NC, see where they moved the cupholder to?
I guess I wasn't the only person whining about that..

*edited* to reflect PAGE OWNAGE!

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Currently in the middle of my 88 + 3800NA swap

[This message has been edited by aaronkoch (edited 06-23-2010).]

Oh sure, you just wanted to grab page 3!!

Good point about the cupholders. I was just pleased that it had some, and more storage than the Fiero. I'll see what I can do about them, but I would think very little with the centre console of the Fiero being so high and having the gas tank under it. Doesn't leave much room to lower any storage compartments that are sitting above it. Of course I drive an auto, so I can keep one hand on the cup! Ever see the "cupholder" (assuming that is what it is supposed to be) in a C5 Vette? I doubt it is more than 2" deep. Maybe you aren't supposed to be drinking while you drive a sports car. I'll see when I fit the centre console if there is room to cut the bottom of the cupholder out and re-mould one deeper.

Rick

[This message has been edited by couldahadaV8 (edited 06-23-2010).]

For my last fiero, I built a center console from scratch, and noticed that the stock fiero console has a lot of height built into it.. The plastic skeleton raises it about 1", and then the big molded plastic pieces sit way up from there. You might be pleasantly surprised how small the metal center of the fiero really is.. especially compared to all the "stuff" added in by plastic.

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Currently in the middle of my 88 + 3800NA swap

Leaving the defroster duct for now. It needs more fibreglassing work, but while I’m doing that and it is curing I can work on another area of the dash swap.

I’m working on fitting the Miata centre console into the Fiero. As you can see, it doesn’t sit down very low to start with.



Actually, it isn’t as bad as it first appears. If you imagine the gap between the centre console and the carpet filled in, then it isn’t really too bad, but it does need to come down a few inches at the back. It is actually resting on the plastic side of the console about 6” back from the where it joins the dash; you can see it in the picture. That area of the console is resting on the Fiero metal structure.



So what I did was to mark where it was contacting the centre console structure of the Fiero, and carefully trim that away. Then put it back in (it just snaps onto the dash part and doesn’t need screws for this trial fitting), mark the next point of interference and do some more cutting. I kept doing this until the bottom of the rear compartment was starting to contact the Fiero structure. The console can go lower than this, but it would mean cutting the bottom of the storage compartment off (and maybe the 2 cup holders bottoms as well), and rebuilding it to make it a shallower compartment. I don’t mind the centre console being high, as long as it looks reasonable. The Miata console is narrower than the Fiero centre area, so something has to be done to fill this space. I was thinking of moulding a fibreglass panel that would sit on the Fiero centre console structure, and wrap around the sides overlapping the upper edge of the carpet a bit. This would also be a good concept since something has to hold the carpet in place at the top, against the sides of the Fiero structure.

I cut a thin piece of wood (left over from the 2’x 4’ piece I bought to make the dash filler piece) to a size to fit on the console structure. A couple areas had to be cut out to clear the shifter, a small attachment bracket behind the shifter, as well as the area at the back where there are a lot of wires, cables, and pipes. I used aluminum foil tape to secure the carpet down along the top, and also to provide the release for the fibreglass. I carried the tape up over the top edge and down lower than the fibreglass will go on the carpet. Then I weighted the wooden piece down and was ready for fibreglassing.



It is difficult to see, but the lower edge of the tape sticks out from the console surface to form a catcher-lip for the resin.



There is a natural “lip” on the carpet where it was under the Fiero centre console and this is how far down the fibreglass centre adaptor piece is going to go. I carried the fibreglass slightly below this point and will trim it off after. I marked this line on the tape before applying the fibreglass and the mark (black marker) will transfer onto the fibreglass once the resin hits it so I will know exactly where to trim it off.

Oh, I first cut this piece of carpet off on both side to even it up a little. I suppose I was committed to making this dash swap work at this point, so trimming off the carpet didn’t bother me.



The huge mess of wires in this area is partially due to the transmission controller I’m using. I’ll have to shorten them up since I don’t think there is room to tuck all this away somewhere. I’m not using the Fiero ECM since I’ve got a carbureted engine, so I’ve taken out a lot of wires that normally go into the computer. A bunch of these still run forward to the dash area and I can likely cut them out since I don’t need them. Just thought I should add this in for those of you that don’t see a computer mounted anywhere. I will still have to mount the transmission control box somewhere. It does fit nicely into the rear storage compartment of the Miata console, but I’ll probably mount it roughly where the stock ECM goes to free up the storage compartment.

I don't think I could make the Miata cup holders any deeper than they are. The bottoms of them are pretty much hitting the wires and cables that run at the top of the console structure. By moving the wires, shifter cable, and throttle cable I could maybe gain 3/4" or so of depth, but I don't think it is worth the trouble (plus remoulding the bottoms of the stock cup holders) to gain that little depth.

Rick

So when you're finished are you going to show up at miata meets and claim it's a fiero rebody on your miata?

quote Originally posted by dratts: So when you're finished are you going to show up at miata meets and claim it's a fiero rebody on your miata?

Since this is the car, I can probably show up at Fiero, Miata, or Ferrari meets and confuse people (or more likely annoy them in the case of Ferrari).

Man, I had a hard time pulling the fibreglassed centre console piece off. I wondered if I had permanently attached it to the car! It was just that the aluminum tape takes the shape of every feature of the carpet, and where it was pressed in tightly it caused small pockets that the fibreglass filled in. It certainly fits well. By carefully going along the edge with a thin blade I worked it loose. Once one side was off the other side popped right off. I put it on the bench and added a few more layers of glass to it to strengthen the flange parts that will go over the carpet. I only did this on the outside, since the inside should fit right over the carpet. Oh, when I pulled the aluminum tape off the carpet, I left it on at the top where it overlaps the carpet, to help hold the carpet down. And I forgot to mention that I did put some contact cement on the upper edge of the carpet, before putting on the tape, to hold the carpet in position. OK, while I am remembering things, I also pulled out the 2 plastic protector things that are on the sides of the Fiero console near the front. That let the carpet sit in tighter to the console in that area. I may cut them down at the front and put part of them back in since the Miata dash/console is pretty wide at the front. I’ll see when the dash and centre console are back in for a test fitting.

I sort of did things in the wrong order. Since I trimmed the Miata centre console to fit the Fiero structure, now that I have the fibreglass adaptor piece made, the console doesn’t fit on it properly.



It isn’t a big problem, it just means that I have to cut the console down some more to fit this adaptor piece now. Oh, do you like my shifter?

I took the centre console apart so I could better see inside it while fitting it to the adaptor piece. All of the compartment pieces screw in from underneath; there are 2 cup-holders in the front (which are also small storage bins), and 1 larger bin in the rear.





In the second picture you can see the 3 points that are used to fasten the console down. Two are in the floor of the rear compartment and 1 is in the forward “compartment”, which is not actually a compartment, but is where the power window switch module goes. Obviously if I can use these points to mount it in the Fiero, that would be best.

A little more fitting and trimming and it is looking good. It is the proper angle to match the dash at the front and it’s sitting at a nice height.



I ended up cutting away a lot of the adaptor piece that I made. I wanted to leave enough to hold the 2 sides together. The front cut-out might be a bit larger than it has to be, but I was clearing the shifter, the metal tab that sticks up behind it (that I can likely cut off since I think it is for mounting the Fiero console), and the power window switch module that sits pretty low.



The next 2 cut-outs are for the bottom of the cup holders. These end up protruding just a little below the side profile of the centre console, so the cut-outs allow them to be used without cutting the bottoms out (almost). The last big cut-out at the rear is partly for the rear storage compartment clearance, and also to clear the wires and cables that tend to run “uphill” at the back to join the rear firewall, and are coming above the adaptor piece level. Notice I said “almost” no cutting of the cup holder bottoms. This is what I had to trim off in the forward one.



I just trimmed a little of the corner off, and the black you see is the Fiero centre console structure. So I really did get the console as low as it could go without getting into some serious cutting up of the compartment bottoms.

Working on attaching the console to the Fiero structure now, and making a piece to go on the rear firewall to house the computer and wires.

Rick

This is a damn nice swap, keep up the good work!

The only thing baffling me is why you're retaining so much of the old steel support structure. On every Japanese vehicle I've worked on (Mazdas and Toyotas mostly) this has been there mostly as structure for the front of the car and somewhere to hang things on... in a lot of cases it's left in while the rest of the dashboard comes apart. You could probably pare a huge amount of it out to reduce the sheer weight of the thing since the Fiero is strong on its own merits versus the Japanese donor. I know what you mean about the weight of a Miata/MX5 dashboard too... it's about the same as the weight of a GD 626/MX6 part. Madness really considering what it's made of!

The whole thing ust makes me want to go out and get a nice NA6C...

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Looking great! Thank you for posting so many detailed pictures. I want to buy another Fiero so I can do this swap. It looks so cool.
Jim

quote Originally posted by Carcenomy: This is a damn nice swap, keep up the good work!

Thank you very much.

quote Originally posted by Carcenomy: The only thing baffling me is why you're retaining so much of the old steel support structure.... You could probably pare a huge amount of it out to reduce the sheer weight of the thing since the Fiero is strong on its own merits versus the Japanese donor.

And the reason for this is.....I don't really know. I never really gave it a thought. I did say that I could cut out a lot of the metal dash structure since it isn't needed for strength in the Fiero, but then I only cut out the areas I had to so it would fit in the car. I suppose one reason is that you never know what is needed to mount some part on, or what you may be able to make use of as a mounting point later in the project, so better to keep it there. Maybe when I am ready to put the dash in for the final time I'll take another look at the metal structure and see what I can cut out. I do think weight reduction is important (I cut about 1 lb of brackets out of the engine compartment and was really pleased with myself for that!). Thank you for pointing that out, I'll keep it in mind.

Rick

A little more progress to show.

I put the dash back in temporarily to get the centre console in the right position. While I had the dash in, I put the filler piece in to see how it looks; remember that piece I made a while back? I did consider covering this with vinyl myself, but then decided to take it to an upholsterer to get it covered. I have done flat dashes and door panels before, and this one isn’t too tricky to cover, but I wanted different thicknesses of foam in different areas. By the time I bought the vinyl, the various thicknesses of foam, the adhesive, screwed it up a few times, I figured it was best to let a professional handle it. With the test fitting of the uncovered piece, I made notes about how it fit. I decided on 1/8” foam padding for the top and the front sides of the side pieces. There was a slightly larger gap at the outer sides of the side pieces, compared with the inner sides (ie, more gap between the filler piece and the outer panel of the Fiero than between the filler piece and the dash), so I wanted ¼” foam on the outer surfaces and no foam on the inner surfaces of the side pieces. So I made some notes and took it to an auto upholsterer to cover it. This is one of the good things about making the filler piece this way. You see how it fits without covering, and then decide how thick the foam should be, under the vinyl, to make it fit properly and fill the various gaps. It came out very nice. It is hard to get a good picture of it (when I get the car out in the daylight I'll take some better pictures of it) but here it is:





You can see in this picture how the filler panel forms the front side of the defroster opening in the dash.



The opening is actually very neat and doesn’t need much to finish it off. I will finish the defroster vent adaptor piece that I started, since the defroster plenum (not installed in the picture) is below the dash level and really needs something to guide the air. I also noticed that this area is pretty close to the windshield so I can’t put the piece in after the dash is installed as was the original plan. I’ll have to make it so it goes in place in the dash before the dash is in the car, and then the filler panel goes in last.

The fun continues.

Rick

I've been following along in the background since the beginning of this thread and I must say that I had my doubts about how good it would look after you posted those early pictures with the gaps and obvious challenges ahead. But I must admit you've done really well integrating it so far especially the tougher parts like the filler panels. I can't wait to see more progress. Way-ta-go CouldahadaMiata!

I'm working on the details of bolting the centre console and adapter piece down, but wanted to start on other areas of the dash swap at the same time.

The last part of the centre console is to make something to join the console to the rear firewall panel. If you have the computer mounted there, then there obviously has to be enough room to accommodate it. I’m not using the computer, but I do have a smaller unit for the transmission controller, so I still need something big enough for that (and a bunch of the wiring). Since there is enough added storage compartments with this dash swap, I don’t need any more right at the back. Even with the computer back there, the size of the box can be smaller than the stock Fiero one. Also, since the dash and centre console are nicely curved now, I don’t want a basically square box at the back; it should be nicely rounded.

Not really knowing how I was going to make this, I started by cutting the Fiero unit apart and stripping all the covering and padding off it. This is a really horrible job.



Then I sliced it down the middle. There is something fun about running parts like this through the band saw and chopping them up.



Here are the areas of concern. The Fiero rear compartment is about 10.5” wide without all the covering on it. The rear panel accommodates this size and shape. The Miata centre console is about 7” wide at the back. So in order to have the new box match the area on the firewall and the console, it has to taper from 10.5” wide at the back to 7” at the front. So I sliced up the unit on angles so it would more or less match both areas and came up with this:



This is going to take a lot of work to fibreglass together and get to look reasonable. It doesn’t really blend at all with the centre console, so that is going to take a lot more shaping. Then there is the size of it. It is still too large and boxy at the top. So after looking at this for a while and considering different possibilities, I think starting again and making something from foam/fibreglass will work out better. I don’t need storage back there, and I don’t need any kind of hinged door to get at the computer and wiring. It would be nice to have it removable without taking out the centre console; maybe using Velcro or something like that to hold it in place would be OK. With that in mind, I started over…

I made a form for the rear compartment out of foam, shaped to match the outline in the rear firewall panel, with rounded corners so it wouldn’t look too boxy.



Covered it in packing tape:



Put in on the bench with some aluminum foil under it so I could form a flange with the fibreglass, and layed on the mat and resin.



Popped it off the form and trimmed the flange to fit in the recess that is in the rear firewall panel. Looks pretty good. Plenty of room under it for the tranny computer and all of the wires. It could even be a little smaller, but there are a lot of wires in that area and it’s better to leave a little extra room. Also, I’ll want to put some sound insulation on the inside of this rear piece.



This is a small piece of fibreglass (cut from the opening in the lower part of the larger piece I just made) that will get glassed onto the rear piece as a start in blending it to fit with the centre console. The centre console is covered in packing tape in this area to protect it.



A little more layup of fibreglass to carry the console adaptor piece rearward to cover the remaining space.



Some filling and sanding to blend the pieces together and match the centre console and it should do the job quite nicely.



This fibreglassing stuff is kind of fun. You can be creative and make it whatever size and shape suits you. You can cut parts out or add more in later if you don't like how it is looking.

Rick

You may want to consider vents on the back piece. I'm not sure how hot it actually gets, but you know how our Fieros are.

This thread is beautiful

That's one of my all time favorite ferrari bodys. I always visualize it with a chopped top, but I know who has the better styling sense between me and the italians so I wouldn't touch it.

I'm going to ignore the venting of the back piece for now. I'll have the firewall well insulated on both sides, and the tranny controller says it is good to 140F ambient, but it does have a high temperature shut-off. The rear console piece is actually open to the area under the Miata centre console, and I'll leave a small space at the top of it when I attach it to the back wall. Whether that will allow much/any airflow though it I'm not sure. I can always cut some vents, or find a nice vent panel to work into it later if it needs it.

Rick

Back to the centre console mounting.

There certainly is a lot of stuff running on the centre console area; wires, pipes, cables. This adds to the difficulty in trying to find a fairly simple way of bolting the Miata console, and the fibreglass adaptor piece, down. The sheet metal seems pretty thin, so drilling some holes and tapping threads into them probably isn’t going to work. I did consider welding some attachment pieces onto the console structure but rejected that idea for a couple reasons. First, as I said before, I am trying to do this dash swap in such a way that someone without a welder could duplicate it. Also, there are a lot of wires to work around and welding would be tricky without spending time to protect things in the adjacent areas. Of course the gas tank being right under this area is also a concern. This is fairly thin material and I generally tend to burn through stuff like this. Having the molten metal dropping down onto the gas tank might not be a good idea! I did consider using epoxy to attach some mounting brackets and that might be a workable solution. But what I came up with is pretty neat and easy.

The Fiero centre console structure at the front has bent outer rails that are not completely closed. A metal strap can be hooked under the lips and that will prevent it from pulling up when the console bolt is threaded into the strap. The only problem is that the attachment point for the front of the console (under the power window module) is fairly low, so I had to space the strap down below the bottom of the lips. This was done by adding a short spacer piece, cut from some 1” square tubing. This is the strap with a drilled and tapped hole; it is just sitting on top of the Fiero console structure just behind the shifter area.



The next picture shows it in place. You can see the short section of 1” square stock, and I’m holding the strap up against it. I’ve had to snake it under the wires and cables. When the console is bolted to it, it will be pulled up so it can’t really go anywhere.



The strap was drilled and tapped for a ¼-20 thread.

At the rear of the console the Fiero side rails are closed, so a bracket can’t be hooked under it. So I took the air cut-off wheel to it and added a slot in each side. The metal strap slips in one slot and is pushed fully in. Then it slips into the slot on the other frame rail and is pushed half-way into that one. That leaves enough of the strap in each frame rail to keep it from pulling out. Since the stock attachment point for the rear of the Miata console is lower than the bottom of that compartment, it is too low to use with the strap-and-slot method. I drilled new holes in the bottom of the console compartment for the bolts. The plan will be to put some silicon or slow-curing epoxy on the straps and spacer blocks, then bolt it all together and let it cure. That will hold the straps in the proper location so the straps don’t move around when it is taken apart.







There is a lot of storage added with this dash swap. Along with the glove compartment in the dash there are 3 compartments in the centre console. The small compartment right behind the shifter area is for the power window switch module. Checking out the wiring diagrams from both the Miata and the Fiero, it looks like I can use this power window switch to control the Fiero windows; cool.





The only problem is that the wires and cables running along the centre console make it difficult to seat the Miata console down properly. I’m going to remove the clips holding the main bundle of wires in place, unwrap the bundle and remove the wires I don’t need, and then re-bundle them. I’ll probably make up a couple of smaller bundles rather than the one large one that seems to be getting in the way. I think it will be easier to move 2 smaller diameter bundles around to get them out of the way of the console sitting down, rather than the 1 large one. It does all fit the way it is now, but it’s tight and I always hate carrying extra wires that aren’t used; I’m not using the computer or any of that associated wiring so I can strip it out.

Speaking of wiring, I’m starting on the instrument cluster now……now this is fun!

Rick

I’ve started on the Miata instrument cluster for use in the Fiero. This is the cluster from the Miata:





I did notice that this cluster did not fit very well into the dash that I got it with. A little more studying and I figured out why. The dash I have is from a second generation Miata (NB). One of the changes they made to these cars was to go to an electronic speedometer; this is apparent from the digital odometer in the cluster. You can see that this one doesn’t have that, so this cluster is actually from an earlier car, the NA. You can also see that it has a cable drive speedo adaptor on the back which it shouldn’t for an NB car. I was going to exchange it for the proper one, but in the end didn’t bother since I was going to take it all apart and rebuild it with different instruments anyways. The reason it didn’t fit well into the instrument panel is that a small change was made to the mounting points at the bottom of the cluster. A little cutting and trimming of these and it fit fine. So you can really use either cluster as a starting point if you are going to be swapping out the instruments.

The first thing I did was to take the whole instrument cluster assembly apart. The front piece, with the clear plastic cover glued onto it, comes off and then all the instruments come out. What is left in the white housing are the warning light sockets that are moulded right into it; the 2 turn signals at the top, and all the rest at the bottom.



I also took apart a Fiero instrument cluster to see what it looked like inside.



My initial thought was to use the Miata instruments as-is in the cluster. After taking a look at the wiring diagrams I had to change my plans. It seems that the Miata, like most new cars, runs the instruments through a “computer”; they aren’t driven directly from the monitoring points. As far as I can figure (and the factory wiring diagrams are not very descriptive in this area) it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to run the Miata instruments off the Fiero connections. The fuel gauge might work with flipping the wires around and adding an appropriate resistor. I couldn’t even find out what sort of signal goes to the speedometer, but I don’t think it is the standard 4000 pulses per mile. So while it might be possible to get these to work, I didn’t want to put any more effort into it only to find out it might not work at all.

The second thought, and this is why I took the Fiero cluster apart, was to build the Fiero instruments into the Miata cluster. They would all work just fine, so it would be a nice, easy solution. Unfortunately the Fiero instruments are too big, mainly due to the odometer being a separate unit on top of the speedometer, and the tachometer having another gauge on the bottom of it. I looked into taking these instruments apart to try and arrange them all in the Miata housing, but it would be very difficult and might not end up looking good enough to justify the work. So the solution, which I kind of thought would end up happening, was to buy new instruments which I will build into the Miata cluster.



These are from Speedhut, which so far is a very nice company to deal with. When you order the instruments from them you essentially design them to what you want. You choose the bezel colour, dial colour, font style and colour, lighting colour, and any graphics on the dial face. The surprising thing is that they are no more expensive than off-the-shelf instruments (actually cheaper depending on what style of instruments you choose). I already had the air/fuel ratio gauge (the centre one in the bottom row), so I was trying to match the style of that one the best I could when I ordered the other ones from Speedhut. The dial faces look sort of white in the picture, but they are actually silver. Of course since you can put whatever graphic you like on them, and my car has a copy of a Ferrari Dino body on it, I got the famous prancing horse on the speedo and the tach, just to further confuse the unwashed masses who are unaware of what the car actually is!

Oh, the other neat thing about these instruments is that they are electronically programmable to work in pretty much any car. You calibrate the speedo when you are driving to work with any tranny speed sensor output. You program the tach for any number of sparks per engine rotation. And the fuel gauge is calibrated with the tank empty and then full, so it works with any fuel level sensor. That is the story anyways; I’ll see how well it all works.

Of course I won’t be able to fit all of these in the Miata instrument cluster, so some of them will go in a panel on the centre console part of the dash; a fairly common Miata mod. My idea is to get the tach, speedo, and at least 2 of the other instruments into the cluster while still using the existing warning lights. There are a lot of warning lights that I don’t need like ABS, check engine, etc, but the ones I would like to keep are: turn signals, high-beam, brake, and battery. OK, I probably don’t really need the battery one, but since it is beside the brake one, if I keep one I can likely keep the other. There is a seat belt warning light too but since I always wear it I don’t need a reminder to tell me that.

Time to start really butchering up the existing instrument cluster.

Rick

While driving out to a job earlier today I was looking at the cluster in my work car (which isn't accurate), thought of my speedo in the Fiero (which isn't accurate) and of you with your Miata instruments (which wouldn't work). Makes you wonder... if SpeedHut can have the gauges program up easily to the application, why don't they build a small conversion box that can be programmed both sides to drive an existing instrument from an existing input? If only some such solution existed... dash swaps and gauge inaccuracy would be a thing of the past!

The swap's coming along famously regardless, it looks really well done. Although I really must ask - how does it sit with the doors shut? Is there going to need to be fillers on the doors as well as the fillers between the frame and the dash? If so, could be a good chance to smooth out the seam between the black dash top and the tan doors

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I think when I was searching around for info on the Miata speedometer, and what V8 swap guys do, I found a company making an adjustable interface to calibrate the speedo. Can't remember if it was Miata specific or not. That may be the problem if newer stuff is not designed to any particular standard.

The plan is eventually to put on the Miata door panels, which are black on top to match the dash colour scheme. In the meantime, the tan Fiero panels look pretty good. The stock Miata does sort of match the door panel to the dash, but I don't think it will look bad if there is a gap in there. I don't really remember how it looks from the inside with the Fiero panels and the door closed, but I think it looked good. You would think I would know that, since I have closed the doors and sat in it to see how things look. I'll see if I can take some pictures of it to show those areas.

Rick

Nice

Keep up the good work brother, it looks smashing.

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Here are some shots I took from inside the car with the door closed. I tried to sort of simulate what the passenger would see:







The good thing about the way I did the filler panel, that comes down the side of the dash, is that it can replaced with a different design of panel when everything is completed, without removing or altering the dash. I might want to re-do the end pieces of it to bring them rearward more, even overlapping the door a bit. You could contour them however you like to blend things in more. I think it looks like cars used to look before they started blending dashes and door panels together. Since you see the filler piece in the side filling the space, and everything is “finished” (no ragged edges or gaps) I think it looks good. Also, as you can see in the last picture, there is a natural step in the Fiero side piece (the bottom of the A-pillar extension) and the filler piece comes right down to this step; makes it look like it was designed to fit together, which of course it was.

Rick

The smaller instruments in the Miata cluster are much smaller than the standard 2 1/16” diameter aftermarket ones. The speedo and tach fit in the existing holes, and in fact the holes are a little too big since the whole instrument bezel fits in. I would not be able to fit in 3 of the smaller instruments into the 3 smaller holes of the cluster. There is not enough room to open these up without running into the openings for the larger instruments. I figured that I could maybe enlarge the holes of the 2 instruments in the lower corners of the cluster and fit in the ones I bought by squeezing them very close to the speedo/tach.

The first thing I did was to break off the plastic cover since the instruments I’m using have their own glass. This is another one of those steps where you pretty much commit yourself to go ahead with the mods and hope they work.



I opened up one of the smaller holes to fit the new instrument in there.



By pushing it to the outer corner, I could get it to fit, but it was not very good. It was too close to either the edge of the cluster (which would then be covered up by the instrument “hood” that goes on the dash after) or be too close to the larger instrument and the 2 bezels interfere. So, onto plan B (or maybe it was C or D at this point).

The plan then was to cut a new instrument panel out of plastic, mount the instruments in the new panel while hopefully keeping the warning lights visible, and then glue this panel over the existing one and cut away all of the existing one that is getting in the way. Piece of cake.

I had a piece of 1/8” Lexan that I cut to shape; you could also use a piece of fibreglass, or maybe even thin wood. Use carbon fiber if you like that look. An adjustable hole cutter works very well for cutting the instrument openings.



Note: if you use one of these it must be in a drill press, not a hand-held drill. You can use a fixed size hole cutter in a hand drill and then open the hole up a bit more with a sanding drum. So this is what it looks like with the 4 instruments in it.



By laying it over the main cluster part, you can see what has to be cut away to make room for the new instruments. I arranged it so the warning lights that I wanted would still be visible. Yea I know, there isn't much left of it now.



Then I drilled holes for the warning lights to show through. A brad point bit or forstner bit both work very well for drilling into plastic; sometimes regular bits tend to suddenly grab and crack the plastic. After this was done I went over the whole thing with an orbital sander to give it a nice matt finish to help the paint stick better.



The 3 holes between the larger instruments are for the high-beam light (top) and then the battery and brake warning lights below. There is a whole row below these that can be drilled out to be visible, but those are ones I don’t want/need. The 2 slots near the top are for the turn signals lights. These don’t quite show through entirely. Things are very tight in this area. If I didn’t push the instruments up this high then they would interfere with the smaller instrument bezels. So I compromised and have enough of the turn signal lights showing through so the green light is visible, but not the whole arrow shape.

A bit of black textured paint and it is looking good.



Areas of the white housing have to be cut away to make room for the instruments. As I said, things get very tight inside, but it all does fit.



Put it all back together (not leaving anything out?) and route the wires out through the various holes in the back. Some of the holes were for instrument lighting bulbs which aren’t needed now.



I mounted it in the car for a test fit, and then sat and admired it for a few minutes. I think this looks very good! What do you think?



One small slip-up. Remember me saying about not leaving anything out when putting the cluster back together? Well, I forgot to put the piece of plastic back in that has the warning light symbols on it. That is why you can see the 3 warning light openings a little too much. With the plastic in place they are dark and not nearly so visible (until they light up). Not too big a deal since I have to take the cluster apart again to adjust the instrument position a little.

OK, second small slip-up. When I started checking the wiring connections to adapt this cluster into the Fiero I discovered that the Fiero doesn’t have a “battery” light. A little more research shows that the ‘84’s, since they have a voltage gauge in the tach, don’t have a battery light (after ’84 they have an oil pressure gauge in the tach, so they have a battery light). Oh well, so I have a warning light that will never come on. Since I’m putting a voltmeter in the centre console panel the light really isn’t important. I could always hook it up for some other function if I need one.

Now to mount the other 3 instruments into the centre console. This is really starting to look good!

Rick

The stock Miata, depending on the choice of radio, has a storage compartment in the dash part of the centre console. There are basically 3 openings all the same size; one for the radio, one for the heater controls, and one spare. The spare one has a storage compartment that snaps into place. An accessory is available that mounts 2 or 3 gauges in place of the storage compartment. I almost bought one that holds 3 gauges, but it is $60 US. By the time I pay shipping and taxes it will be close to $100 Can; too much for a piece of plastic that is more “holes” than plastic by the time you have 3 instrument cut-outs in it. I figured that if I can do a dash swap I can certainly make a gauge holder for less that that. It turned out that it didn’t cost anything to make one, other than my time.

This is the storage compartment:





Notice how the side is moulded to clip in behind the console. This part goes in from the front until the thin horizontal piece touches the front of the housing opening, at which point the clip snaps open behind the housing to hold it in place. It is removed by prying it out from the front.

What I did was to cut some various thicknesses of wood and plastic to copy the function of this clip. The front piece of wood was then painted with the textured black paint. The various pieces were stacked together and holes were cut in them for the instruments. The retaining ring that threads onto the back of the instruments to keep them in place also keeps this whole assembly together. Now it can be snapped into one of the dash openings.



If you want to take the easy way out you can just buy the piece already made, or maybe find one in a wreckers from a modified Miata.

While I had the storage compartment handy, it looked like a good piece for mounting the heater controls. Using the Miata heater controls, as much as I like the look of them, is not really practical. The cables are too short and they run in the opposite direction to the Fiero (“hot” pushing rather than pulling the cable). I cut the storage compartment off right behind the snap piece on the side, and trimmed the mounting tabs off the sides of the Fiero heater control panel.



Then it was simply a matter of bonding the heater control panel onto the front piece of the ex-storage compartment. I used a product that is supposed to glue almost any type of plastic called Plastex. It worked great for bonding to the Miata part, but not so great bonding to the Fiero part. A little more reinforcing with glass cloth and epoxy did the trick.





At first I wasn’t sure I liked the look of the heater controls being set back inside the compartment. I didn’t want to cut any more off the storage compartment since there are small locating tabs on the top and bottom that also help hold it in place. I also left the moulded-in protrusion that runs along the inside bottom. Once I had it installed to see how it looked, I liked it inset. It gives it a nice look while not making the heater controls so obvious; not quite hidden, but not right there in your face. And being black it blends in nicely. Along with the new instruments it is really coming together now. What do you think? Now this what a Fiero dash is supposed to look like!





I put the heater control panel in the middle slot since I was concerned with the cable run out the back of the unit. The Miata heater cables run almost directly back out of the control unit. The cable from the Fiero unit runs almost sideways from the control. The reason is that the Fiero unit, in the Fiero dash, is inset much farther forward in the dash, so the cable run is over to the side where the heater box is. The Miata centre console area, where the heater control mounts, is farther rearward. I thought the heater cable would run right across the glove compartment if the unit was mounted too far down. It turns out that it can go in the lowest of the 3 mounting slots and the cable just clears the back of the glove compartment opening, so you really can put it in any one of the openings. I'll probably leave it where it is and put the radio in the lower opening. I think the gauges in the upper slot is the best for visibility, but then again some cars have them mounted very low in the console. With this dash you can swap the 3 units (gauge panel, radio, heater controls) around to suit your own preference.

Have to start getting everything wired up.

Rick

There are several things I didn’t think about when I started this swap. The main areas of concern were the fit of the dash in the car and how to mount it in so it looked good. I didn’t consider too carefully the differences between the Miata and the Fiero accessories that are part of the dash.

The first thing came about when I was installing the new radio in the centre console. Nice to have a radio, but much nicer to have some speakers to go with it! Where are the speakers? Sitting in the basement still attached to the Fiero dash. The Miata doesn’t have dash mounted speakers, it has door speakers. Also, the older cars have speakers in the seat headrests, much like the Fiero. My Fiero has speakers in the seat headrests, but I figured these are more to balance the sound, not to be the primary source of it. It seemed that the easiest solution to the lost speakers was to put them in the doors.

There are several postings on how to add door speakers to your Fiero doors/panels, so I’m not going to go into detail here on how it’s done. What I chose to do was to add them in the easiest way I could, which meant not modifying the power window motor location. This puts them under the door handle area, as opposed to right at the front of the doors. I bought 5 1/4” speakers which fit very nicely after cutting the appropriate size hole.



There is a small concern here. I do have the Miata door panels that go with the dash I bought. The plan is to eventually adapt these panels onto the Fiero doors. The size is pretty close so I think it will work. The concern is that the Miata door panels have built-in speaker grills right at the front of the doors. For this to work with the Fiero door structure the power window motors have to be relocated. Since I didn’t want to take the time to do this now, I’ll have to do it later when the Miata door panels go on. I saved the round pieces of sheet metal that I cut out of the Fiero doors to put in the speakers in case I want to weld them back in later and “move” the openings to the front of the doors. One of those things that I’ll worry about later.

The second thing you will notice with this swap is that you have lost the dash-mounted switches that were on the Fiero dash; headlights, panel light dimmer, trunk popper, and rear window defrost (depending on the options on your car). You have also lost the centre console mounted power window switches, but this turn out to be a good thing.

The Miata has the headlight switch on the steering column stalk like most new cars. So we have lost the dash mounted headlight switch and don’t have a dash mounted one on the Miata. Not a big deal with a little creative wiring and use of available Miata switches. The lower left portion of the Miata dash has 2 switches mounted together; one is for fog lights and one is for cruise control. Since I don’t have either on my Fiero, I don’t need them for those functions. So you have a choice here; modify the existing Fiero headlight switch, and the hole in the Miata dash, to fit the switch in there (don’t know if this would actually work or not), or use the Miata switches. I chose to use the Miata switches since they look good and naturally fit right in where they are supposed to go.

If this picture scares you, then maybe a dash swap like this isn’t for you!



It isn’t really too bad if you take the time to study the Fiero wiring diagrams and learn what the various wires do. As you figure it out, label the wires with masking tape or you will forget a week later what goes where.

The 2 Miata switches are push-on, push-off switches. They also have backlighting that can be tied into the dash lights, and they also have small lights to indicate when the switch is on. Since I wasn’t sure of the amp rating of the switches, it seemed best to use relays for the headlights and parking lights. I wired them up so the fog light switch now controls the headlights and the cruise control switch controls the parking lights. The wiring is not really difficult and it works very nicely. Oh, I don’t have headlight doors on my car (Ferrari Dino body, remember?) so I didn’t hook up the white wire that goes to the door actuators. This shows the switches with the relays behind:



The 2 wires on the right are the grounds and the 2 on the left are for the light in the switch itself (will tie into the Fiero instrument lighting). The basics are this: take the hot lead going to the Fiero headlight switch (mine was red) and use it to power the Miata switch and the relay to give power to the Fiero yellow wire (Fiero headlight power). Likewise, use the Fiero orange and brown wires with the other Miata switch/relay to power the parking lights. I’ll put together a schematic of this later, and it will be clear if it isn’t now.

Another easy wiring job is for the power windows, and here is where you get an added bonus. The power window switches for the 2 cars are pretty much in the same place. The Fiero wiring has 4 wires going to each window switch and the Miata switch (both power window switches are in one unit) has 6 terminals. A bit of time with the wiring diagrams shows that each Fiero switch has “power” and “ground”, so that when the 2 power leads are connected together and the 2 grounds are connected together, we get 6 wires from the Fiero going to 6 terminals on the Miata switch; perfect. Actually, a bit more thought afterwards and I realized that you can cut off one of the pink (hot) and black (ground) leads from one switch and just tape them off since they branch out from one common lead before running to the switches. What is the added bonus? The Miata switch unit has a built-in relay for each switch. No more slow windows due to high current eroding the switch contacts. You can get the relay kit for the Fiero power window switches for around $30 each, so you just got a $60 bonus! Want another bonus? How about the express-down that the driver’s window now has. That is built into the Miata switch assembly and works with the Fiero window now. Cool, eh?

The wiring is pretty easy, the only snag was that I didn’t have the connector the goes onto the window switch (it is not part of the dash wiring harness). If you have this connector you are all set. If not, just do what I did and break off some of the housing at the bottom to expose the contacts better and solder the wires onto the contacts. Do one at a time and blow on it right away to cool it off. Then get a 6 pin connector set and solder that onto the switch wires, with the other end soldered onto the Fiero wires.

Bottom of Miata power window switch:



Housing broken off and wires soldered on:



I’ll put some hot-melt glue on the soldered wires to protect them from shorts.

The wiring is like this, from left to right on the Miata switch: dark blue wire (LH window up), brown wire (LH window down), pink wire (hot lead), black wire (ground lead), blue/white wire (RH window up), tan wire (RH window down). These were the colour of the wires on my ’84 Fiero, yours may be different; check your wiring diagram. Again, I’ll show a schematic of this later.

I somehow did manage to get it wired completely wrong at first, reversing everything from one end to the other. Don’t really know how that happened, but if you plug in the new switch assembly and your passenger window immediately goes down and your driver’s window works with the passenger switch, then unplug it and reverse all the connections from one end of the switch to the other. Fortunately it didn’t seem to do any harm to any of the components on the Miata switch board.

I don’t have power mirrors on my car, but do have a set from a C5 Vette that I will be putting on at some point. You can use the Miata power mirror switch, on the lower part of the dash at the right of the steering column, to control your mirrors.

Is this wiring part scaring anyone off that may have been considering this swap? I don’t mind spending time studying the various Fiero and Miata wiring diagrams, but I know there are those that avoid it. I can put together some schematics of what I am doing that will make it fairly easy to follow.

Now we come to the panel light dimmer control. This is a subject in itself……

Rick

quote Originally posted by couldahadaV8: I mounted it in the car for a test fit, and then sat and admired it for a few minutes. I think this looks very good! What do you think? Rick

Looks fantastic!
You built your gage panel essentially the same way I built mine, (Speed Hut gages, lexan panel, etc.)
I really like how easy the lexan is to work with. I used 1/4" but could have used 1/8", but it was still very easy.
Very nice work.

------------------

Right beside the switches that I’ve used for the lights, there is the Miata panel dimmer switch; not really a switch, more of a rotating control similar to the Fiero one. Unfortunately, that’s where the similarity ends, as the 2 units function completely different.

The Fiero unit works by reducing the voltage to the “hot” lead of the panel lights; the other lead of all the panel lights are grounded. How exactly this is done I don’t pretend to understand. There are actually 2 units that make up the dimmer, the first one being what I’m calling the dimmer switch mounted on the same panel as the headlight switch. The other part of the system is what looks like some sort of power transistor mounted on a large heat-sink on the right side of the steering column mount. Between these 2 components the voltage is reduced going to the various instrument lights while the other lead of all the bulbs goes to ground.

The Miata uses a self-contained dimmer unit, which I suppose is the equivalent of both of the Fiero components in one casing. The significant thing about this unit is that it is a completely different system than the traditional dimming circuits. With the Miata one, the bulbs are not grounded at all. Studying the various wiring diagrams, it seems that this dimmer works by chopping/pulsing the voltage in the lead of the bulbs running to ground. So the common lead of all the bulbs is the “hot” lead, not the ground lead as in the Fiero. Any existing bulbs that you want to dim with this control cannot be hooked up directly to ground; both bulb leads have to run through this dimmer. Also, the Fiero dimmer switch has the courtesy light function built into it (courtesy lights come on when the switch clicks onto the full bright position). I’m not sure that the Miata switch has this function, but I don’t think so.

So what is the bottom line here? I’m not going to try and make the Fiero dimmer circuit work with the Miata dimmer switch. I don’t understand the systems well enough and really don’t want to put the time into playing around with it any more. One option would be to mount the Fiero dimmer switch in the Miata dash, right where the existing Miata one mounts. The Fiero switch is slightly wider than the Miata one and it means cutting the opening in the dash a little larger and then mounting it in. You obviously have to be very careful cutting the opening larger as you don’t want to mess up the dash. There is another option if you don’t like this approach.

What you can do is to mount the Miata switch back into the dash (where it came from), and mount the Fiero switch somewhat hidden but accessible; the Miata one will be a dummy and the Fiero one will be wired up (as stock). I don’t think it’s the greatest solution, but it will look OK and will function correctly. A good place to mount it is in the panel that goes under the steering column, either on the left or the right of the column. Mounted there it barely shows, but is still accessible to use it. While you are playing around with this piece, take out the metal liner that comes in it. It is just screwed in, but it is pretty heavy and I don’t see a need for it. Every bit of weight reduction is a good thing! A little bit has to be trimmed off the rear of the plastic piece so it fits around the Fiero steering column. This shows the piece with the metal part still screwed in place:



I had almost decided to mount the Fiero dimmer hidden in the lower dash panel, and then decided to actually mount it in the Miata dash where the Miata dimmer switch mounts. As I said, the opening has to be widened for the Fiero dimmer switch. You can carefully trim off the plastic until the switch fits in from the back. It is a very tight fight and stays in place nicely:



Obviously the only problem is that it looks like crap. A little cosmetic work is in order to tidy it up. I made a cover piece for the switch from a small piece of fibreglass. I laid up 2 layers of matt between 2 pieces of tin foil lightly pressed in place while it cured, then cut it to shape.



I bonded-on 2 small pieces of wood left over from the dash filler panel (nothing gets wasted with this swap!). Fibreglass pieces would have worked as well.



You can see from this next picture how it works. The switch fits the opening in the dash very tight on the sides, but there is space top and bottom. These spaces allow the wooden pieces to slide in and locate the fibreglass face plate.



The switch goes in from the back of the dash and then the fibreglass piece goes in from the front. It is a very tight fit and I don’t think it is going to move at all, but I put some hot-melt glue on the back to secure it; I glued the wood/fibreglass piece to the dash and the switch to the wood. The original plan was to make some small steps in the piece that would let it snap in place when it was inserted into the dash, and another small step on the inside that would lock the switch in place. It all fits tight enough that I don’t need that, and the glue is extra insurance. Of course taking it out will be a bit of a pain now, but hopefully I won’t have to.

A bit of paint and it looks pretty good (other than the picture being out of focus):



The other switches that I’ve lost from the Fiero dash are the trunk popper switch (Miata uses a cable in back of the centre console compartment), and the rear window defroster switch. You can put these switches just about anywhere that is convenient. Since the stock Miata trunk popper switch is in the centre console compartment, that’s where I’m going to put mine. If you have the key for your compartment cover then you can lock it to prevent trunk access. Just extend the wires and run them back there and mount it. I debated about where to put the rear window defroster switch and eventually decided to put it in the centre console as well. I don’t really like the look of the Fiero rocker switch so I’ll hide it away in the console for now.

Rick

Gives me a few ideas for my rally car...

When I showed the various fibreglass parts I made (centre console adaptor piece, rear bulkhead wiring cover, and the small dimmer switch faceplate) a few people PM’d me asking for more details on how these were made. I have since made one more fibreglass part and have taken more pictures of the whole process. If you are familiar with this then just skip ahead quickly. If not, I hope this shows you the whole process and maybe encourages you to give it a shot.

One more fibreglass piece is needed in this swap (at least I think this is the last one!). This is a filler piece that will go just under the instrument cluster and down around the steering column. The Miata has a large, square steering column plastic housing that fits into the dash opening; the Fiero has a smaller, round column cover that leaves a large opening between it and the dash.

I use the pink insulating foam sheet to build up an appropriate thickness of block. To speed things up I used a hot-melt glue gun to attach 2 pieces together (or as many pieces as you need depending on how thick your foam sheet is). Cut it so it is a nice fit from side to side, and larger than needed on the top and bottom:



With the foam block in place in the dash, draw on the sides of it the contour of the dash. There are different ways to cut this block to match the contour of the dash. I’m going to use a hotwire to cut the block, but you can use a long knife or saw blade if you like. What I did was to make some wood templates and glued them to the blocks.



A hotwire is a thin stainless steel wire, stretched across a bow, and energized with electricity until it gets hot enough to melt its way though the foam. This is from my old R/C plane days. Like I said, you can carve it away with a blade, or make a hotwire (search around on the net for more info on hotwires, but it really won’t be worth making one if you are only going to use it this one time). With the foam cut, this is what it looks like:



It does not have to be dead-on accurate at this stage, close is good enough. With it back in place and the instrument housing snapped in, it is already looking pretty good:



Now we are going to cover it with fibreglass mat and resin (on the front surface, so ideally the foam should be about 1/8” or so in from the dash contour to allow for the thickness of the fibreglass). While this foam is cheap and easy to work with, it will be dissolved by the solvent in the fibreglass resin, so it has to be protected. I use clear packing tape and just stick on a few layers. It will protect the foam from being eaten and since the resin does not adhere to it, the fibreglass will pop off fairly easily when it is cured. Use a piece of plastic sheeting or tin foil to protect your workbench and use 2 or 3 layers of mat with resin.



When it is cured pop it off the foam and trim the sides to fit the dash.



Now it has to be held in place. I didn’t want any fasteners showing so I bent some angle brackets open a little and used the dash sides of the opening to screw them into (2 at each end). These will be covered by the instrument cluster hood when it is snapped back in place. Trim the brackets as required and try the hood in place to make sure everything will fit OK.



You can see the one on the right wasn’t very straight but that doesn’t really matter, it will still do the job. Now use hot-melt glue or whatever will set up quickly to attach the fibreglass piece to the brackets when they are screwed in place. They don’t have to be really solidly bonded at this point, just enough to so will stay in place.



When you snap the hood back in place you will see that there is a space between the fibreglass and the hood itself that needs to be filled; I used a piece of wood for this (MASH trivia question – do you know what kind of wood this is?). Here is where your own freedom and creativity comes into play. I used a piece of wood that sits just inside the opening of the hood. You can sit it farther in if you like, or have it match the contour of the opening in the hood and have it come rearward to fill the opening more; you will see what I mean in the next steps.



And with the hood snapped back in place, it is starting to look like something.



Now it is trimmed out to fit around the steering column. The easiest way to do this is to take the part out you just made and raise the steering column back up and bolt it in place. Make a paper pattern of the steering column and use that to trim the fibreglass piece. Fibreglass sands very nicely, especially with a spindle/drum sander for something like this. I think this is easier to do than to try and make the piece with the steering column in place. With this done, it starts to get a little tricky. Keep the steering column up, bolt the new piece in place, and put on the cover part of the dash that goes under the steering column. You will see that there is a gap on each side that has to be filled. I started by using some of the fibreglass piece that was just cut out from the steering column opening, trimming it to a rough size and hot-gluing it in place.



You can see that I just glued them to the back side of the main piece.



It doesn’t have to be perfect, just something close to get it started. Now do some more fibreglassing on the back of the part. Bond the metal brackets in place and also bond the small filler pieces that were just glued on.



Looks a mess from the back side, but that doesn’t matter. Since the small pieces were bonded on the back side, they were set in a little too far so I built them up with some thin pieces of wood glued on the front side. I put a little filler to blend the pieces together. Use small pieces of wood or fibreglass to build it up until it looks right. You will notice that the lower part now wraps around the steering column, so you can’t raise or lower the column with this piece in place. Remove/install the piece by tilting it so the lower parts are forward of the large diameter of the steering column and it will come out. The steering column goes to a smaller diameter just forward of where this new filler piece contacts it.



To blend it into the dash shape a little better, cover the ends of the dash with some packing tape to protect it and smooth on some filler.



From here it is just a matter of sanding, filling, sanding, filling…..until it blends in nicely with the dash. You don’t have to get an exact match since you will see that the plastic dash pieces don’t match exactly anyways.



When you get it all smoothed and shaped, paint it. I tried matching the tan dash colour and couldn’t get it close enough. I blended colours a few times and then gave up and painted it with the black textured paint. That was the original idea anyways since it looks good with the black parts of the dash.



If you want to put warning lights or anything like that, this is a nice little panel for mounting them.

So there you have the whole step by step on how to make a fibreglass piece. Once you play around with it a bit you will see that it is pretty easy and you can make a lot of custom parts.

Hope you enjoyed it and got something from it.

Rick

There is one issue that I noticed as soon as I started playing around with the centre console; the shifter interferes with it at the front. Of course this was one of those many things that I ignored knowing I would come up with a way to fix it later (that method has worked well so far with this project). Well, the time to deal with it is now.

I don’t know if this would apply to manual tranny cars or not (mine is obviously an auto). With the shifter in (or trying to go into) “park”, it hits the front edge of the shifter surround opening in the console. I do have the Miata shifter and console piece that goes with it (it fits in the same console opening that the shifter boots goes in with the manual ones), but it didn’t look like trying to adapt the Miata pieces would be feasible, or helpful. My first thought was to just bend the shifter rod back at an angle to give more room at the front. This is not quite as easy and it sounds with an auto, since the shaft is hollow and there is a rod running inside it to release the shifter interlock. The inner rod is plastic and flexible enough to take a bend, but the problem is trying to bend the outer tube without kinking it. The shifter assembly doesn’t come apart without grinding off the head of the pivot pins and then welding it back together. Likewise, the shifter shaft is welded to the pivot mechanism so it can’t easily be removed. I did consider grinding off the pivot pin heads, taking it all apart, cutting off the shifter shaft/tube, bending a new one, and welding it all back together. Oh, the other issue is that the shaft is at a right angle to the pivot piece it is welded to, since there is a lock release lever that fits up inside the lower portion of it, and that has to remain pretty much at right angle to the shaft to work properly. So I couldn’t just weld on a new shaft with an angle to the rear, it would have to start out vertical (like the stock one) and then bend back.

Like most things, once enough thought went into it, a solution came about that was much easier than what I described above. Why not just move the whole shifter assembly rearward? Well, the reason is that as soon as you move it rearwards it hits the floor of the Fiero centre console metal; there is sort of a ramp up just behind the shifter. So it has to be raised as it goes back. That got me thinking (happens now and then) that raising it helps to clear the interference with the console surround; the more the shifter is raised with respect to the console, the less travel there is in going from “park” to “first”. The shifter still travels through the same angle, but the distance goes down the closer you get to the pivot point. So, within reason, moving the shifter assembly rearwards and upwards will position it to clear the console interference. The shifter cable running to the back has enough flexibility in the engine compartment to allow it to move back. There is also a cable running forward (the shift interlock) and that seemed to have enough length/slack to allow it to move back. OK, enough theory, I know you are waiting for the pictures. There may be other ways to solve this problem, but this is what I did.

This is the stock auto shifter removed from the car. Actually, this shows 2 shifters, one from my ’84 and one I pulled from the ’85 I stripped. They are almost identical, with the only real difference being that one of them has a nylon runner that the shifter rubs on as it moves (can’t remember now which is which, but I think the ’85 has the nylon – that’s the one I’m using here anyways). First thing you can do it cut off the bracket that sticks up just behind the shifter mechanism. That is for the Fiero mounting and you don’t need it (weight savings, remember?).



There is a little bit of adjustability in the position of the shifter as it mounts in the car, but mine was all the way back to start with, so that was no help. You can also see how the Fiero structure ramps up just behind the shifter, preventing it from sliding back without being raised.



So here is what I did. I made up 2 aluminum blocks, about 3/8” thick with holes drilled in each to match the mounting studs in the car, with another set of threaded holes about ¾” back from those. Here they are bolted into the car (use the nuts that originally hold the shifter in):



The extra set of nuts shown are spacers. The shifter now bolts in using the new mounting holes in the aluminum plates. Of course it has to be raised up enough to clear the original attachment nuts, so that is what the other spacer/nuts are for. I may machine some spacers to replace the nuts, but the nuts seem to work fine. So the shifter ends up moving rearward about ¾” and also upwards about the same amount. I don’t have a picture of it bolted it, but I’ll get one. A little piece of the shifter mounting plate had to be cut off to clear one of the rear nuts.



Now that it is in place there is another small problem (of course I didn’t think this through when I started it). Raising the shifter up of course raises the shifter cable and mounting plate up, and now it interferes with the Miata console. So the plan is to keep the shifter raised up but lower the shifter cable back down to its stock height. First thing is to cut this bracket off:



Then reverse it and weld it back on:



If you don’t want to weld, it looks like there is just enough room with the overlap to drill 2 small holes and bolt it back together. If you compare that picture to the earlier one you will see where some metal was trimmed to clear the rear, right-hand attachment nut. The angle of the cable has changed with respect to the shifter mechanism, now that it is lowered, but not enough to affect its movement.

So everything worked out well and now I can mount the center console back in. Wrong. Every time I solved one problem with this another one came up. In moving the shifter back and up, the bracket that holds the shifter cable is now right where the lower part of the power window switch compartment is trying to go. I can’t just cut off this area of the console since that is where the front mounting bolt is. Closer inspection showed that there is just enough room to cut off the part of the console that is interfering with the shifter but still leave the part that takes the bolt and holds it in place. It is close, but it all works. A lot of finicky stuff, but it is all working out.

Rick

UPdates?

quote Originally posted by Logan: UPdates?

Yes, I've slowed down a bit on the postings (but not the dash swap itself). I'll post soon.

Rick

quote Originally posted by couldahadaV8: There is one issue that I noticed as soon as I started playing around with the centre console; the shifter interferes with it at the front. Of course this was one of those many things that I ignored knowing I would come up with a way to fix it later (that method has worked well so far with this project). Well, the time to deal with it is now. Rick

I do that a lot, let my subcontious work on a problem while I do something else, my way of multitasking.

I like the way this is turning out, nice build.

Joe

The dash swap is coming along very well. Here are some of the things I have been working on over the last couple weeks. I’m skipping around on the various tasks, so if I’ve left out details of something you are interested in, let me know.

I finished making the fibreglass defroster vent. It is hard to see the details in the picture, but it is basically a long, semi-rectangular duct with a rib in the middle to help hold the shape while it was being made. I painted it black with the textured paint.





This is it glued onto the dash. The bottom of it sits on the Fiero defroster duct and it directs the air up through the small opening at the top of the dash. The only part of it that shows is the lip at the rear side that sits on the dash.



And with the dash filler piece in place:



Jumping over to the centre console now. The mounting point for the front of it is under the opening for the power window switches. I showed previously how I made up some metal pieces to hold it in place. I’ve since cut one side out of the square pieces of tubing to let the wiring run through. You can see the details in this picture.



First, you can see the metal plate on the bottom with a threaded hole to take the console mounting bolt. The square tubing pieces on each side keep it from pulling up as the bolt is tightened, by reacting against the metal structure of the Fiero. There is a piece of foam stuffed under it to keep it pushed up in position while it is being assembled. The wire bundle on the right will be pushed into the square piece to keep it out of the way. The modified shifter is bolted in at this point.

With the console bolted in, this is what it looks like before the power window switch is put in.



You can see the small cut-out that was required to clear the rear part of the shifter. Tight, but it all fits.

I mentioned previously that there was no mounting point for 2 of the switches that used to be on the Fiero dash, the trunk popper and the rear window defroster. The easiest thing for me was to put them in the centre console. That way they don’t show (since I don’t think the switches really look very good), and they are fairly easy to access. I cut part of the mounting bracket from the Fiero dash and hot-melt glued it into openings I cut in the rear compartment of the dash, and screwed the switches in. I’ll close up the large opening between the switches, where the Miata mounted release levers for the gas flap (and trunk?). I still have some protective tape on the console, if you wonder why it looks like it is delaminating.





The installation of the dash itself is pretty much done. I’m still finishing up the opening under the radio that originally held the passenger side airbag switch. I’m making a small compartment that will go in there to hold an iPod or cell phone.



One more shot to show what it will look like at night. Pretty nice, eh?



The centre console details are being finished now and once that is installed that should pretty much complete the swap.

Rick

Very, VERY nice!!

Looks right at home in there!

I just stumbled across this thread! FANTASTIC!!!!!! Keep those pics coming!

Question - what spray paint & type of foam are you using?

quote Originally posted by Sofa King: I just stumbled across this thread! FANTASTIC!!!!!! Keep those pics coming! Question - what spray paint & type of foam are you using?

The foam (for molding the fibreglass pieces -- I assume that is what you are asking about) is just the stuff for insulating walls that you get at Home Depot. The stuff I bought is pink, but it used to come in blue. It comes in various thicknesses in sheets that are generally 2' x 8'. I cover the foam with packing tape to keep the fibreglass resin from dissolving it. You can buy urethane foam that isn't attacked by fibreglass resin, but it is expensive and hard to find. Another option is to use epoxy, that doesn't eat foam, but again it is expensive.

I don't know what the brand of paint is, but I can check when I get home. Again, it is just the stuff that Home Depot sells and it is called "textured". You can also get hammered finish and several others to match whatever you think would look good. The black textured stuff matches the black vinyl dash nicely.

Rick

Rick, you're doing a fantastic job on this installation. Thanks for spending the time to do thorough write-ups on how you're making this thing fit, including how you're making all the little fiberglass pieces as well. Putting a thread together like this takes at least two things: the ability to make a purse out of a sow's ear, and second, the fore-thought and effort to take great pictures and describe what you've done. You're great at both! You may not get a lot of written feedback, but I for one am following this thread silently in background storing all these little fabrication tips in the back of my mind. Kudos to you!