Universal V8 set from Summit Racing. I made them to length myself. I actually still have all six of them, I was planning to use them for my 3800 swap, but they aren't working as well as I'd like. You interested? They are blue of course. Dirty, but very few miles on them, and they would come with the metal shields around the boots.
Thanks for the offer, but blue isn't really the color I was going to go for with this engine (maybe the car, I do like blue). If you just wanted to get rid of them I wouldn't say no, unless of course they are cursed and the real reason for the problems you had.....
Edit: yay, page two
[This message has been edited by Blacksheep (edited 03-08-2012).]
One thing I forgot to mention with the timing cover, there is a hole on one side that needs to be plugged if not it might leak a bit . On the 3400 block it just leads to an empty space in the block.
This is the hole (with a plug in it already),
The hole is smooth, I just put some threads in it and screwed a plug in. The plug can stick out the back a little ways, it will end up in this part of the block
You need to thread seal that plug in the timing cover.
Yep, didn't post that, but I did. Kind of hard to see cause the picture is a bit blurry, but in the picture from the back there is thread sealer on it.
So yesterday I took a bit of a field trip to Electrathon's house to remove the not so great, half finished spray paint job I was doing on the intake and valve covers and powder coat them instead. The difference of couse is night and day, the powder coating Electrathon did looks absolutely beautiful
I took a few pictures of the progress throughout the day and will post them here for people to see the process, I will probably say 'we' when referring to the work that was done, but really Electrathon did most of the work.
I had started to try and get the paint off of my old upper intake and valve covers by using a wire wheel (not a good idea, they end up scratching the parts... go figure.... :P). My upper intake is the red one, the yellow one I pulled off a car at the local junk yard in case mine was too scratched to look good powder coated.
Electrathon had a much better way of getting the old paint off the parts (as well as drawing out old oil and junk in the aluminum parts that would cause the powder coating to blister). First we put the parts in the oven on clean until the paint started to blister and peel. here is the valve covers and middle intake from the junkyard on the left, mine on the right in the oven baking
and the parts after baking
The junkyard intake is on the left, that's the old cheap yellow spray paint someone used on it. My upper intake is on the right, the material the intakes are made out of is fairly porous, if we had not have baked it first, I believe it would have done the same thing and ruined the powder coating when it was baked then.
After baking we let them cool for a bit so we could handle them and then took them to the sand blaster. Electrathon sand blasted the upper intake, I did the other pieces, it was the first time I had used a sand blaster, it was fun My upper intake being sand blasted, and after sand blasting,
After sand blasting it was time to start the powder coating. We put plugs in any threaded holes to keep the powder out of them, it can make the bolts no longer thread in and it is really hard to tap or clean the threads if they get powder coated. We also put plugs in the lower intake where the injectors go. If your powder coating a pulley, you will also want to tape off where the belt goes because the powder coated part ends up being fairly slick and will cause your belt to slip, Fiero's already have enough of a problem with that :P Middle intake with plugs in the holes being powder coated
The valve covers with powder on them If you tape off the ribs on top, it makes for a lot less sanding you have to do after they bake. Also you need to use a high temp tape as they will have to go in the oven.
Electrathon said all powders are slightly different as to how you are supposed to bake the parts after its applied, but the general rule of thumb he uses is bake them at 425 until they are shiny (think most of mine took about 5-10 min, but other materials can take longer), then at 400 for another 20min.
Some black pieces we powder coated
After baking, a belt sander was used on the ribs on top of the valve covers to make them all shiny and remove any powder coating that got on them. The finished valve covers
And lastly, the valve covers and intakes together
Also, I may have lied earlier about not using blue for the engine..... :P
I got a few more pieces put together on my engine today
I did run into one problem tho, I have to use a knock sensor with the way I had the ECM programmed, but if I put it back in the hole it came out of here It will end up hitting the part on the AC that I circled here
So is it possible to move the knock sensor to a different hole, or does it have to be in that one? There is one with a plug in it on each side that I believe have the same threads.
The knock sensor goes in that block coolant drain plug hole to your right on either side of the block. Ideally it would be better in a higher location closer to but not in the cylinder head near where spark knock is initiated.
[This message has been edited by Joseph Upson (edited 03-18-2012).]
my knock sensor is in the same place but on the opposite side of the block...but interestingly, that's where it came in that application as opposed to yours...
I'm thinking of moving the knock sensor to the other side of the block, there is a hole there with a plug in it right now (you can kind of see it in the picture of that side). I believe that hole is around the same area I've seen other people put them when they needed them on the 2.8 or I think some 3.4's, although it is a bit lower than it is now so I'm not positive it is a good idea. It would allow me to run the wires for it and the ones for the crank sensor together and probably run them up to go with the wires from the EGR as well so I can keep most of the additional wires together.
The cradle and transmission are caked in a few inches of dirt/oil/grime I was going to use the pressure washer on them, but it is no fun to do so when it is snowing outside like it was last weekend so now I'm just waiting a bit for some better weather.
Went back this weekend to see if I could figure out how to get the AC to miss that sensor and do a couple other things.
I had forgot to put thread sealer on the water pump bolts when I put it on before so I decided since I had to remove them again anyways I would just replace the torx head bolts with normal ones. They were still in pretty good shape, but I figured if I didn't I would end up needing to remove the water pump for some reason and strip one of them out and probably end up throwing a wrench at something :P New water pump bolts (I did leave a couple torx head ones in the timing cover):
After that I decided to work on the AC a bit, I wanted to figure out a way to mount it without having to move the knock sensor. I went out to the parts car to grab the AC hose from it to see if one from a 4cyl might work better....it didn't....but check out this high tech door hinge that came on the parts car when I got it
I had a few other types of AC hoses laying around, none of them really worked, the one that came on it was the closest. Eventually I was messing around with an AC compressor from one of the 4cyl Fieros and noticed the bracket on the rear was different and it had a little piece sticking off the bottom much like what the bracket on the 6cyl one has on the top. So I put the bracket from the 4cyl AC compressor on it and turned it 180 degrees. Since both the top and bottom ears on the front of the AC compressor are threaded that wasn't a problem and turning it gave me the clearance I needed. Ignore that bolt I stuck in there its just temporary since I forgot to pick up one in town today, someone who owned the car before me had replaced the bolt that used to go there with some long thin bolt with a nut on the end instead of using one the correct size and screwing it into the threaded hole on the AC compressor.....
Only problem is now the other end of the hose is pointed in the wrong direction I can turn it back and point it the way it needs to go (although it wont stay that way until I have something to bolt it to). Hopefully that wont cause any problems. Also, I think I should have enough clearance with how the hose is now, but I can't really be sure until its back on the cradle and in the car.
I also wanted to see what I could do about plugging the holes where the cold start injector used to go. I read in another thread where someone just put a short bolt with the old washer in the fuel rail and a freeze plug with a little bit of silicone where the injector was in the lower intake so I decided I would try that. The bolt is M12 x 1.25, the shortest one I could find was 25mm but that was way to long so I just cut about half of it off with a hack saw and then rounded the end a bit with a dremel so I would be able to start the threads. I also cleaned it up a bit to make sure there wasn't any left over metal pieces that would end up in the fuel rail. For the cold start injector hole I also used a 7/8 freeze plug and put a little bit of silicone around the edge then tapped it in, it fits in there nice and snug
And this is how I left it for the weekend:
Doesn't look a whole lot different from a couple of weeks ago, but I hopefully got the AC and cold start injector delete figured out now. Also, it now has two belts on it :P
The bolt that goes in here has a stud that sticks out the top. It is used to keep the seal from breaking on the timing cover when you pull the water pump off. The trouble is you have an unsuported ear on the waterpump like it is, this is likely to crack in the future if it hasn't already. It goes under the pump, a nut goes on the pump.
The bolt that goes in here has a stud that sticks out the top. It is used to keep the seal from breaking on the timing cover when you pull the water pump off. The trouble is you have an unsuported ear on the waterpump like it is, this is likely to crack in the future if it hasn't already. It goes under the pump, a nut goes on the pump.
Thanks
I thought that little gap was a bit weird, I had used it in the past to get the water pump off, thought that might be what it was for but what you said makes more since. I never had the bolt your describing there, its always been a torx head bolt since I've owned the car (doesn't mean its correct). The ear is kind of supported on the sides that may be why it hadn't broken before, but I would rather put it back together the right way. I should have a bolt like that in one of the boxes of random bolts I have, or I can go see if the one in the junk yard has the right bolt. I'll switch it out next weekend.
Were you able to get the 88 front engine mount to work? I think I can see it in the picture....
Yes, I was able to get the front engine mount to work (kind of). It was quite a pain and if I had to do it over again I would have done a bit more research to see if an engine mount from an earlier v6 Fiero would have worked on the 88 cradle, its a lot less work to use one of those. The main problem is on the 3400 I have had it's mount at the front of the engine bolted directly to the bottom of the oil pan, it would have worked great if where the mount bolts to in the Fiero was in the center of the engine, but it is off to the rear of the car slightly. You also could have probably used the same bracket on the engine and moved where it mounted on the cradle, but I don't know how to weld and that's also quite a bit more work than using the earlier brackets. So basically, since the 3400 has the mount bracket bolted to the oil pan there are some large ribs (or whatever they are called) for support that get in the way of the 88 bracket. Also on one side there is a place where I believe the AC bolted into the oil pan which is also in the way.
Since I don't plan on ever using those bolt holes I cut them and cut the ribs down a bit to allow the mount to fit, I don't have any pictures of that right now it was kind of ugly but where it is people can't really see it anyways. I tried to round all the edges where I cut because I've heard sharp corners are places where cracks like to start, not sure if it actually applies to this but figured it couldn't hurt.
Another problem with the 88 mount is only 3 of the 4 holes where it bolts to the block line up. On the Firewall side the bolt that goes in from the front does not have a hole that matches up with it in the block, there is a hole but it is a bit higher than the one in the bracket. I decided that since the earlier style mounts only bolted to the trunk side and the 88 mount I have is bolted to the same area as well as a bolt on the other side I wasn't going to worry about that one missed bolt too much. I do seem to remember reading the 88 mounts were not quite as strong as the earlier years in a post somewhere but I don't know if there is any truth to that or not.
I will take some pictures of what I did this coming weekend and add them here.
Here are the two different AC brackets I was talking about earlier. V6 on the bottom, 4cyl in the middle, helper at the top :P
V6 Bracket on the left, 4cyl bracket on the right:
And this is where my mount was bolted on under the engine but not in the center. My guess would be they did this because of the L shaped bracket on the earlier models, moved it closer to beneath where the mount was bolted so it wouldn't bend maybe? I don't know for sure, all I know is it would have been a lot easier if they would have just put it in the center :P
Here is what I did for the front mount bracket, not the prettiest work in the world, but hopefully it will work and not break.
Bracket on engine:
This is the hole that didn't line up, on the firewall side:
Modified (hacked) oil pan:
As you can see most of what I had to do was on the firewall side of the engine, the other side was pretty much untouched which is why the L shaped brackets are so much easier for people to use, don't have to worry about the side I hacked up to get my bracket to fit.
I also had to shave a bit of the edge off the back of the 88 mount to get it to clear, the edge on the corners was fine, I left it. Hopefully this didn't make it too weak:
While I had the bracket off I also pulled the pan again since I now have the dipstick mounted, I used the one that came from the Fiero and its tube. Does this look about correct with where the oil fill lines are, or would that be a little high?
EDIT: In that second picture that was a dog hair by where the tube comes in and it was removed before the pan went back on.
[This message has been edited by Blacksheep (edited 04-11-2012).]
The pre 88 front engine mount bracket goes in place with a lot less trouble requiring a more localized notch in the pan. I believe you'll have to do some work on the 88 cradle mount pad also.
So I haven't really been keeping this post up to date. I had been kind of slacking but then I realized it was almost time for the NW Fiero Fest so I figured I should hurry up or Ill be there without a car again... :P
I spent most of this last week getting all the wiring worked out for the 1227730 and the DIS. Everything was pretty simple to do following the instructions from Darth Fiero. I didn't take any pictures tho, phone was being used for Pandora and it went pretty fast. This weekend my brother and I spent some time working on it and managed to get the engine back on the cradle and it back in the car, everything went pretty smooth here as well except I had put the front mount on the engine on backwards so it didn't really fit, but we took it off and turned it around and it fit great. Again no pictures, but I did take a short video of the first attempt at starting it,
Someone may have forgot to put the cap back on above where the thermostat goes...... Also it was idling too fast so I turned it off. We put the coolant cap back on and started it again after this and let it run about twice as long, it stayed around 2500rpm, so after turning it off we checked the lines and we had forgot to put the line going to the brake booster on. After we put that vacuum hose back on however the car didn't want to start anymore. We tried removing the line again, still didn't start. Put the line back on, checked to see if we were getting spark, we were. My brother had made a thing to watch the injector pulses on his laptop so we plugged that back in and it was reading the same as it was before we first tried starting it. I could hear the fuel pump coming on for about 2sec when you first turned the key on. Oil pressure would be right at 60 as I was trying to start it. Plugged in the jumper and turned on the key to see if there was any error codes that came up, fan came on and the light just flashed 12 over and over. Loosened the bolt where the cold start injector went a little bit and tried to start it, fuel came out but it didn't spray out. I'm going to go get a fuel pressure gauge and some fittings next week and see if I can test the pressure there.
Any other ideas on why it wont start anymore?
EDIT: Created a new thread "3.4 engine swap/rebuild started twice and not again..." to get some help from people who may not read all the random build threads. Added this link here for anyone who stumbles across this thread for whatever reason later.
[This message has been edited by Blacksheep (edited 08-01-2012).]
My question is how is the new wire harness compatible with the top end from the fiero?
What new harness? You re-pin the ECM end of the Fiero harness. For the DIS, you remove the mini harness that runs the coil-pack from the 3400 you buy used that usually comes with the harness on it already. I believe you only have to add several wires to the old Fiero harness and that's well documented on the '7730 swap page.
