Thanks!! I guess it's something going on with my Firefox browser that is only allowing audio to come through.
Yeah, there was no notable tuning done there, and no mufflers. I'm pretty excited about getting more of the tuning done this weekend. I'll be more excited when we can call that main harness "done" and install it in the cabin, and I can put the wire loom on it.
Top of my head, remaining items so I can get it to Carlisle and the 40th are:
1. A few more auxiliary sensors need to be wired in. 2. Idle tuning. 3. Radiator pinhole needs to be welded up 4. Coolant pump driver needs to be configured (La Fiera might be invited out to help with this, as he is familiar with that setup/controller) 5. Transmission harness wiring needs to be built 6. Intercooler hoses need to be run to/from the reservoir. 7. Alignment checked 7a. If necessary: adjustments to upper control arm bracket positioning 8. Finish welding up/boxing in upper control arm brackets 9. Powdercoating (some pieces are currently just painted with some VHT paint, since they might need to be modified again for alignment) 10. Refresh the steering column (new ignition module, key cylinder, signal stalk) 11. Slap in a basic interior, even if it looks janky for now. 12. Take back one of the wheels/tires to Discount Tire and ask them to check it for the slow leak, as well as rebalance it (one of the freaking weights is already dangling loose! so wash the barrel before I take it up there). 13. Put as many miles on it as possible without getting too far from my house or Mikes, to catch any bugs. I suspect I will become very familiar with the I-40 beltline around Raleigh...
[This message has been edited by Trinten (edited 03-14-2023).]
Saturday was productive, though cut short due to an on-call issue involving Mike's day job.
We finished wiring up all of the auxiliary sensors (back pressure, wide band, fuel pressure) We cleaned up a little of the wiring.
The current iteration of the engine harness was a modification of the original 2007 GXP 5.3 harness. When we were putting it together, the LS4 King Moroso pan was on there (so no low oil sensor provision anymore), no EGR, no DBW, so all those wires were removed. The rest of the original harness was used. Here's where we are scratching our heads. There is a lone brown wire.
I searched the internet for a 2007 5.3 wiring diagram, and found one that was hopefully correct. The two components with a plain brown wire were the EGR sensor and low oil sensor. Since we don't have those, we weren't sure where on the engine that wire is terminating. So for the moment we're leaving it alone and we'll see what doesn't work as we go through things.
Once that was done Mike finished wiring things up for key-on / ignition from the C500 and to the auxiliary fuse box we have stashed where the OEM trunk blower motor was. After that we started doing a little start-up tuning, letting it run for about 5 seconds each time. We have it starting up pretty easily now.
We need to verify our fuel pressure, right now we're guessing on that, and having told Fast what to map to the transducer. So at some point Mike will likely break out an old school fuel pressure gauge and put it in line someplace.
Next week we'll be putting the center/cabin section of the engine wiring harness in the car (and then I need to get some non-plastic split loom for it). Then getting into some more tuning and starting to clean up the rats nest of wires in the frunk.
Lazy guy update - I finally bothered to connect my phone to my computer to move the video off from this past Saturday. A short video after we did some tuning, this was just before we wrapped up for the day.
Hopefully in the next few weeks, LaFiera will be able to stop by and dial in the TecMotive controller for the water pump I'm using and possibly one of the radiator fans. I'm going to let him and Mike hash that out. I hope that the FAST can be set to kick on the second radiator fan when A/C turns on or when there's another coolant threshold that is breached.
Anyhow. After that's done, we'll be able to run the engine longer for tuning and videos!
That sounds epic, please take some good driving videos when you get it dialed in! Too many cool fieros with only a few 30 second vids filmed with a potato. Hope I can make the 40th and see it!
Today was a good day. LaFiera made the trip out to speed up getting the TecMotive controller wired, making sure it works, and giving me a crash course in how it works and the different modes.
We put distilled water in the system, filling it through the surge tank (didn't want to use coolant yet, and it was a good guess). LaFiera made sure the pump was working and would kick on the fan, and Mike fired up the car and started doing some tuning.
I didn't get the one where Mike tested to see if the car would move under it's own power (making sure it would shift into gear and listen for any odd noises from the transmission/torque converter). He didn't tell us what he was going to do, just said "Everybody get back." in a pretty firm voice, which made me think there was a problem at first. He just wanted to make sure no one wound up with crushed toes.
The downside is, once the distilled water heated up, we discovered a pinhole in the surge tank that was too small to turn up from a gravity check. It sucks that we already had that part powder coated, so that'll need to be done again. You can see in the video where I took the cap off to see if I needed to add more water as the air burped out, and where LaFiera is tweaking the TecMotive controller.
I still need to buy a vacuum block, the vacuum tubes are currently taped off, but it's not likely air tight.
We are really amped up about the progress!
Again, a huge thanks to LaFiera for making the trip and helping out. It was great hanging out with you for a while!
The three hour trip was justified by the awesome sound of the engine! Also, we haven't hang out in years and It was nice to hang out with you and Mike. I'm just glad I could have a little bit of an input in this project. Mike is a very talented, ingenuous and hands on individual. I was very, very impressed with his work. I can't wait to get a ride in it!
Hey guys, small update from last Saturday - since we're running the car more, we put on a temporary air filter solution. Mike mounted the mufflers so we could see how it would sound.
After one of the test runs, one of his neighbors that likes to stop by warns me "don't touch anything back there, it's gonna be hot!!" So I hover my hand near the exhaust, and yeah, it's a little toasty. Then I gingerly put my hand down on the turbo blanket. It was warm, but not uncomfortably. I could just leave my hand there. Mike and his neighbor were both pretty impressed. I was pleased that the combo of the Jethot and the blanket seem so effective. I'll know more after it's had some more run time than then ten minutes or so it was running/revving while Mike played with the tune.
So here is one of those videos so you can compare the sound with the mufflers to how it sounds without them. It's still rowdy, but when the throttle is pushed, it doesn't "scream/braaap", it just gets louder. Mike was worried the mufflers were going to make it too quiet, he was surprised it was still as loud as it is. I kinda hoped it would be a little quieter. We'll see how it when driving.
Beyond that, Mike finished cleaning up a lot of the wiring in the frunk, and he mounted up the FAST stuff again. This weekend will be installing the engine control harness in the cabin and working on secondary wiring tasks, hooking up the vacuum distributor, and temporarily plumbing in a manual fuel gauge so we can calibrate what the FAST is seeing (and then probably change tuning stuff).
We are running out of weekends. I'm always a little pessimistic with schedules and time. Some things Mike will need to do during the week (like the Alignment stuff). Some he can do during the week if his schedule allows it (like finishing up welding things after the alignment checks out). Then getting the last of the things powder coated. We need to finish running/connecting the tubes for the intercooler.
Then there's dyno tuning (with and without mufflers. Yay V-band clamps) and putting as much miles on it as possible to make sure it's going to be up for the road trips this year.
The last few weekends have been focused on cleaning up things that we are done with, loom and tidying up wiring in the engine bay, getting the intermediate harness loomed and going through the car (instead of just laying on top of it), and looming up the XFI and XIM.
Yesterday and today Mike spent some time getting the transmission harness built. One thing we realized is the metal information plate that is press-fitted to the transmission was gone. I don't remember it ever being there. So I don't know the final gear ratio of my 4T80. Worst case is we'll put in a gear ratio and see if the TCU throws a fit when we start to move it under it's own power. I'm going to email Triple Edge Performance, hopefully his documentation has the information on there. I looked through the emails we had and I didn't see it mentioned.
With the harness made, we hooked it up (laying it over the car until we know it's all working as intended), and hooked the TCU up to the laptop. It connects via a direct USB connection, and it has a canbus feed with the XFI. We confirmed that the XFI was passing information along (such as TPS and coolant temp), and that the transmission temp sensor was working.
We also tested out some of the faults, and we saw the TCU send signals to put the transmission into "limp home" mode. We won't know for sure if we have everything wired up correctly until we start rolling it around on it's own power, the nice part is the software for the TCU gives you a very informative dash, that includes what gear you're currently in, what gear the TCU is going to ask for next, immediate fault codes, stored fault codes, etc. And you can select which fault codes you want it to monitor/ignore.
After that was done, Mike started working on the vacuum manifold plumbing, he came up with a solution he liked better than his initial setup, so we had to pop the intake off to get to the bits going to the bottom of it. That's almost done, I had to order a tube sleeve & nut, as well as an NPT to AN adapter.
Mike is going to chase the powdercoating guy this week, if we don't have everything back by the weekend, we've got plenty of other things to do. Finish the vacuum tubing, hook up the AC line and do a vacuum test, door hinges, steering column components, taking two of the wheels to Discount Tire and asking them to find out where/why they are slowly leaking and fix it. And that's just the stuff I rattled off to him off the top of my head that we can do before the car is rolling on it's own.
Still waiting on powder coating, so we put some things back in the car for now so we could move forward.
Mike finished a few odds and ends today, including getting the vacuum manifold/distributor all hooked up, and the brake booster to vacuum as well. Once that was done, we reconnected our beta-transmission harness, started the car up, and carefully drove it down a dead-end road to see if it would shift. This also highlighted the amount of engine tuning left to do, it was running pretty lean anytime we were giving it gas. We also were taking things very easy here, there's still some parts of the suspension mounting points that are just tack-welded, and we wanted to make sure the brakes were going to work properly.
The good news is, the transmission did not default to "limp home" mode. The bad news is, it didn't shift out of first. Sensor, setting, or wire(s). First thing Mike will do is confirm the VSS output sensor is working (and check the wiring for it by happenstance). If both of those check out, then it's something we missed in the TCU settings.
We also decided we either need to find a way to plumb in the TecoMotive coolant sensor in closer to the engine or find out if the ohms range their sensor uses is the same as the GM sensor and we can do a split from the feed going to the FAST into the TecoMotive water pump controller.
The TecoMotive also has a lot of advanced settings options, but it works sort of like a combination lock. You start at 0, then do a 3 digit code, and the last thing you leave it on is the overall program you want those mods to apply to. It's not so much complex as it is tedious, and looks like it takes some practice on timing/speed so it doesn't think you're choosing an option that you didn't intend.
We thought it was in a 'pulsed' mode where it would be doing a slow trickle feed even at cold temps, but that didn't seem to be the case, the temp at the engine got to 200, the hoses at the radiator were dead cold and the primary radiator fan hadn't kicked on yet. So for today we switched it to one of it's "test modes", where it runs the pump and fan at full tilt. That fixed our cooling issues. After idling for about fifteen minutes the temp crept up to about 175 and stayed there.
The second radiator fan is being controlled by the FAST, and set to come on when the coolant hits 160 or when the A/C is running, and that was working perfectly.
Lastly, power steering in the Fiero is awesome. Sitting still on 255 Michelins and I could turn the steering wheel with two fingers behind one of the spokes.
Discount Tire had a sale going on for one of the tires I wanted to put on my Z06 wheels. So I now have the Nitto NT555 G2s. 275/40-17 in the front, 295/40-18 in the back. I thought about getting 305/35-18 in the back, but apparently the tire-to-road patch will be bigger with what I got.
We also discovered that two of the coupe Vette wheels had a very slow leak, that was gradually accelerating (it took a year to get low the first time, then a few months, then a few weeks...). So we brought those in to DTC at the same time. They claimed they couldn't find the leak. Okay, so for now the Z06s will go on and stay on there. I'll figure out what I want to do with the coupe wheels later.
We drove it a little more today, doing some tuning and trying to get the transmission to behave. Discovered the new VSS was bad. Put in another one, verified we were getting signal. Now validating wiring. We discovered that the instructions that came with the box are for the TCU-EZ, which is a different diagram than the TCU 2.0. I've emailed the company and Summit Racing to get the right information.
If I don't hear from either of them with the right instructions by Tuesday, I'll burn up my lunch hour trying to call TCI and hopefully get through to someone.
No forward progress yet, just ruling things out. After a surprising number of chases, we finally got the correct manual and wiring diagram from TCI. Their tech support so far leaves much to be desired. From searching for solutions to our newest mystery, I found many people had this same inconsistent level of competence from them.
The TCI TCU we have is not seeing any VSS input. We validated signal at the wires with a voltmeter. The TCU has a section where you can set which item (RPM, VSS, Turbine sensor, etc) is reading from which input. We cycled though the different options in the monitor, such as setting the turbine speed sensor to be the VSS, to try to get something. Nada.
There is a former TCI TCU engineer out there that has helped people on other forums with odd issues with this controller, so we're trying to get a hold of him. The most recent guy that Mike talked with at TCI tried to insist two things that didn't make sense to Mike: 1. The Turbine speed input would "throw things off" even if it was mapped to the right place, and to disable it since it's not needed for the TCU to do it's job. Then why have it? 2. That even though the sensor tests good (we see activity when the wheels turn), to replace it "only with a GM OEM sensor." Okay fine, so I ordered one of those. 2a. When Mike tried to press the guy to find out what the next diagnostic step would be if this didn't solve it, the guy simply kept saying "This'll fix it." So we'll see.
If we can't get this thing to play nice soon, I have two other aftermarket transmission controllers bookmarked that also specifically call out controlling the 4T80E.
We've got 6 weeks left to get quite a bit done, and at least going to lose one day Memorial day weekend for Chug's milestone birthday party.
Holy hell progress with the transmission controller!
So when trying to figure out why the TCU wasn't seeing anything from the VSS, I found a thread on another forum where someone had a problem with the first generation TCI TCU. He was helped out by one of TCI's engineers.
Searching more for this guy, I found other posts on other car boards where he was helping out people with the TCU. The problem is, everywhere I could find him, he hadn't been on since late last year!
To spare the details, I did some digging, found a few ways to get in touch with him, and used all of them. With success! We'll come back to my reaching out to Kevin.
Mike had the idea to try to figure out if the issue was with the TCU. His truck has a 4L70 transmission. The controller has a base file for a 4L60. Mike said the 60 and 70 are close enough in operation that it should at least register a solid VSS. So he jacked up the back of his truck, made a harness with long wire leads, and we wired it up. We first tried it with the 4L80 file we'd been working with. No joy. So we fired up a 4L60 baseline file... and we see VSS!
So Mike thinks about it and says "let's see if the 4L60 sees your VSS." Wiring change... and it does! FINALLY. Of course, it's reading everything wrong because of reluctor tooth count, but the software is flexible/configurable enough that he can change those parameters. A bunch of changes later, including which solenoids to engage for the different gears, ratios, pulses... a bunch of stuff, Mike takes it for a test drive. He said it shifted from 1 to 2 nicely, but then went to 4 and then locked the Torque Converter!
So Mike said he'd have to go through things to figure out why we're missing 3rd.
On my way home, Kevin (the aforementioned guy who used to work at TCI) calls and texts me! We exchange a few texts, then a phone call. I explain everything that I could remember. He was super patient and said "I think I know what's going on. It's been a minute since I worked on that, so I need to do a little digging to refresh my memory. There's likely two wires he'll still need to re-pin, but you might have all the settings right." so I got his email and started a chain with him and Mike, so Mike can send him our 4L80 config file and the 4L60 file we were running today. With any luck, we'll hear back from Kevin a few days after that with the solution to our missing 3rd gear, and hopefully an optimized file!!
We also discovered my Corvette steering rack has developed a nasty leak. I asked Mike if it the seal was serviceable, he said it wasn't. So I need to order that. And one of my Z06 wheels is leaking air!! I don't know what the hell is going on at that Discount Tire location, but they seriously need to prep wheels better so this doesn't freaking happen.
Mike is taking his Grand National to a big GN event in Bowling Green Kentucky this upcoming week. So we lose next weekend to work on things. Memorial day weekend we will lose Saturday for our mutual friends birthday, but we'll have Sunday and Monday to hopefully work on things.
I will admit my stress level is creeping up a bit with the approaching deadline for Carlisle.
[This message has been edited by Trinten (edited 05-14-2023).]
The weather was not cooperating for most of yesterday morning, but Mike had a 10x10 tent that we put up over the car and we'd move it as needed. There are likely some more tweaks we could/should do with the transmission tune, but 3rd gear is now working.
The problem seemed to be the gear ratio settings (not final drive, but for each gear) were off. That lead to a "GIGO" situation with the computer trying to figure out what gear to put the car into, based on RPM and VSS. We did validate that the wiring was already setup as Kevin (the former TCI engineer) suggested, and tune wise he pointed out the gear ratios were wrong and provided us the proper numbers.
Mike wanted to take it on a longer drive to get it up to higher speeds and test 4th and the lockout, but we still don't have the shocks on there yet, so the transverse springs and speed makes the car a little floaty/bouncy. He expects it should be fine, since it was jumping right from 2nd to 4th a few weeks ago.
So we're now working on doing the final installation of the ECU/TCU wiring harnesses, getting the bulkhead/firewall pass-through made. Mike really hates the dipstick I have, it's out of a LS powered Escalade, it was the longest dipstick I could find at the time. It's partially in the way of where the stock harness comes through the bulkhead, and space there is also limited because of the coil packs.
I did find a replacement C5 vette steering rack. The guy selling it said it wasn't leaking. Fingers crossed. So that'll be going in next weekend, then we're going to do the "alignment in the bag" to get things close, so Mike can then get the shock mounts welded in, finish welding up the A-arm mounts, and install the shocks.
Cold start up tune is (to me) really good. Mike thinks it could be better. He also swears we have a cylinder that isn't always firing. He thought this before and we changed out all the spark plugs -- they were all badly fuel-fouled from the car running rich while we chased down gremlins and did tuning. When it's sitting there idling you don't notice anything, he says he feels it when driving it. He thinks one of my coil packs is bad, so I'm going to find a reputable coil pack tester setup, versus trying to jerry-rig a different coil pack setup in there to test, then still have to guess-and-swap-and-testdrive each of the coils on that pack till the issue is gone.
Frustratingly, one of my Z06 wheels had a slow leak. So I made an appointment with Discount Tire last Saturday for them to find it. I rolled the wheel in, and thankfully the same guy who checked me in when I got the Z06 tires mounted (and they unsuccessfully tried to find the leak on the two base Corvette wheels and then brushed me off to go to a wheel shop) was there. I told him "Look, this is the second set of wheels you guys have done for me where I have this problem. And they are for the same car. I don't care how long it takes, please find and fix the leak on this thing. I'll give the tech 20 bucks. I have two big road trips coming up and I need reliable tires."
I then went to lunch, came back after I got their "it's done" text. The tech rolls the wheel out to me and says "yeah, it was a bead leak. I cleaned and polished it up real good and used a little more bead sealer, it should be good now." I thanked him and gave him the 20 bucks. So far it's holding air!
99% of the powdercoating is done. The last thing left is the removable cross member sections in the back. Right now they are just VHT sprayed and will likely stay that way. But the headlight bucket assemblies are powder coated and they look good!
CowsPatoot and Firefly were in town so they were hanging out for a bit. He wasn't there for the test drives, but he did take some video of Mike doing some tuning and then driving the car back to it's temporary parking spot. I asked him to upload that for me when he gets back to Michigan.
There are some things on the punch list I don't expect we'll get done in time for Carlisle, but none of them are necessary to make that drive. So pulling forward my last list and using strikeouts...
1. A few more auxiliary sensors need to be wired in. 2. Idle tuning. 3. Radiator pinhole needs to be welded up 4. Coolant pump driver needs to be configured 5. Transmission harness wiring needs to be built 6. Intercooler hoses need to be run to/from the reservoir. 7. Alignment checked 7a. If necessary: adjustments to upper control arm bracket positioning 8. Finish welding up/boxing in upper control arm brackets 9. Powdercoating 10. Refresh the steering column (new ignition module, key cylinder, signal stalk) 11. Slap in a basic interior, even if it looks janky for now. 12. Take back one of the wheels/tires to Discount Tire and ask them to check it for the slow leak, as well as rebalance it (one of the freaking weights is already dangling loose! so wash the barrel before I take it up there). 13. Put as many miles on it as possible without getting too far from my house or Mikes, to catch any bugs. I suspect I will become very familiar with the I-40 beltline around Raleigh...
Also in today's broadcast, a lesson learned in buying/using plastic tubs to store stuff for car projects right from the start, and putting more care into fastener organization!
Some years ago, there was an "alignment in a bag" tool called QuickTrick, that I got cheap on a flash sale (I'm sure I posted about it. Someone wanted me to follow up about it once we used it. I think it was Will or Jncomutt).
So today Mike used it to do the alignment on the Fiero, after checking his garage floor for level with the largest freaking level I've ever seen. He said the kit was like another one he'd used before, but this one was a little more flimsy (the one he had used before ran around 800 bucks. I think I paid 200 or 300 for mine? It's been a while and I am not up to digging through my thread right now). It was functional though, and he said it was something that a person could use repeatedly, but they had to take care when tightening things up.
The drawback to the system is that after a measurement is taken, you jack the car up to make an adjustment, lower it, then drive the car forward/backwards a few times to get it to settle, then measure again. So not a fast system by any means. By the time I got to his place around 9:30, he had already put a few hours (and a few trips to the hardware store for fasteners of the proper length(s), along with spacers and such), and it still took us till about 4pm for him to finish. Thankfully the back was almost dead on, he only had to tweak the driver side. But the front was WAY off.
He then started working on mounting the shocks... annnnd I couldn't find the bolt "hat" that goes on top of the shock. And I couldn't find the rear shocks. He had me take some stuff home a few months ago, and I have one tub filled with nothing but Vette suspension parts, so I hope I find it in there.
I also knew we wouldn't have time to put on the spiffy not-Fiero side mirrors, so I went about putting my OEM ones back on. And again, I don't know why the heck I didn't just put the nuts on the studs of the mirror, but I didn't. I did eventually find them, but damn it was a lot of wasted time. I did put on the new 'gaskets' / bases for the mirrors that I got from the Fiero Store. However, since it's been almost 5 years since I took these mirrors off, I couldn't recall how to route the wire or get the harness side to it. lol. So I'll need to look for a thread here to figure out how to reconnect all that.
Technically it's only two weekends left before Carlisle. Once the shocks are on, we can throw on door panels, toss in seats, and jerry-rig the remaining wiring and it could be driven. There's still a handful of things that won't be done yet, though nothing that would harm the car from normal driving. It'll just be noisy and look really janky inside (no dash, messed up carpeting, etc).
I'm debating on skipping Carlisle. Mike and I agreed that the 40th is a must. He did say if I really wanted to go to Carlisle, he'd loan me his truck and trailer (which is a huge deal), and I could trailer it up there, and drive it around locally - which would be more tolerable, not long stretches on the highway with half the sound deadening and interior in the car missing, no A/C, etc. Obviously if I do that, I won't go on the club cruise.
Going would also give him a full dedicated weekend to work on his Fiero for the 40th. Since he's doing an improved 3800 swap (no plumbing pipe here), more of it is straight forward. He said he's also okay with cutting corners to get his car on the road in time for the 40th, but doesn't want to do that with my car, which I appreciate.
So we'll see. Next weekend will likely be the "Go/No Go" decision for Carlisle. Wish me luck!!
Mike mocked up and welded in all of the shock mounts. He also did the reinforcements for the upper control arm mounting tabs on some of them, I think there's still two left he needs to do.
Once the shocks were in, we cleared out all the boxes from the passenger side and we both jumped in, so I could drive it while he started doing some mobile tuning. My smart FPR was making it a bit challenging for him, as I had to let off the throttle or get on it, and the FPR would tell the fuel pump to spin up or slow down, it was making the FAST freak out a little with the fuel pressure readings, so he's working on that.
We did find that what we thought was a bad coil was just a lean condition, which was a relief! So we cruised around a bit, and he gradually dialed up the boost. So far he's also happy with the torque converter, too. The transmission is shifting into all gears properly, though he wants to go in and tweak the shift points now (since it's using default shift points for a 4L65).
Only remaining issue is getting the Tecomotive controller to play nice with the BMW pump. I think I mentioned how Rei helped us out, and I emailed the support guys with some questions and they were really great about giving me some step-by-step instructions and additional education, but the controller isn't behaving as they said it would during the programming phases. So while we were driving it today, the engine was getting pretty darn warm. Next weekend we'll set the unit on one of it's test modes (which doesn't require any special steps to do), which tells it to run the fan and pump at 100%. This will at least let us know for sure it can do the job, and then it's just a matter of getting the programing done correctly.
Next weekend I'll be out there on Saturday and Sunday. We won't have the A2W intercooler plumbed in time for Carlisle. Mike said we'd definitely get it to where he'd be comfortable with me driving it around on local streets, but he suggested I trailer it up to Carlisle and just drive it around up there. He didn't want me to have some issue and be stuck on the side of the interstate between the two locations. He simply won't have enough time to put enough miles on the car to make sure everything is going to be good for that long of a drive - and I appreciate his concern for my well being on that.
It does mean I need to start pricing out renting a truck (he'll loan me his trailer). Which also means I'll be selling some Fiero stuff, so watch the mall!
Now onto some pictures!
The Fiero sitting on it's new shocks.
The rear shock setup. This side doesn't have the reinforcements for the upper control arm tabs yet.
The front shock setup. Mike realized that if he welded in the adapter plate, it would make getting things unbolted a pain. Because if he used zip nuts (maybe the wrong term, those ones like the nuts in the stock Fiero engine cradle), and one broke loose (also like in the stock Fiero engine cradle...) it would be a real ***** to address. So he's going to be adding some additional mounting points to the adapter plate.
Well, after a few weekends of gradually putting on more miles on the car and working on the driveability tune... something has gone wrong with the transmission.
Here are the details on it, so any transmission experts can chime in.
Triple edge performance was pretty sure he had used a 2001+ transmission for my core. Last year (or the year before?) I picked up another late model 4T80 from the junkyard, and it's been just chilling. This is important later.
We’ve been putting some street miles on the swap (all 45mph or less, no highway yet) to do cruise tuning for the engine and monitor the transmission. The temp of the transmission never went above 170. We’ve put on about 20 miles, with the only issue being the transmission unexpectedly downshifting at one point for a few moments then up-shifting again (we were cruising on flat road, throttle position hadn’t changed).
Last weekend when we returned from our lap, I checked the transmission fluid level and it was still on the “check cold” marker, so I added two more quarts – we figured after 20+ minutes of driving it would have been up in the “check hot” spot.
Today we go to do the next round (Transmission temp never got above 145 for this trip). a half-mile down the road, we hear a whining sound. I left off the gas, then resume, the sound goes away. It comes back as we slow/speed up. We head back home, check fluid, and it’s almost to the top of the neck. We check the transmission lines going to the radiator, and it’s very warm, and the lines going back were slightly warm.
We figured I overfilled it, aerated the fluid, and that caused the issues. We leave the cap loose and let it sit for a few hours, then use a fluid pump to pull 2 quarters of fluid back out.
We start it up, back into the street, and it won’t go into gear. Any gear. Putting it back in reverse also does nothing. I shut the car off, restart it, same same issues. While watching the TCU on the laptop, the TCU wasn’t seeing any request come in for it to go into any gear. We shut it off, unhook the transmission pigtail to get it to go into “limp home” mode, which it does, and we get it back to the garage.
Here’s where it got worrisome. As we were testing it (we were constantly checking fluid levels and watching the transmission fluid temp), when it warmed up enough (around 150), even “limp home” mode stopped working!
We shut it down, let it cool off for a few hours, left the harness disconnected, limp home mode worked and we moved it to it’s parking place for now.
While we were waiting for it to cool off, we start looking up teardown videos on the 4T80, because hey! We have a donor!! Mike says that we're looking for a pressure manifold switch. We watch the teardown video which is of a late model 4T80, and it doesn't have it, just the shift selector switch. Odd. So we look at the pigtail on my junkyard transmission, it has more pins than the pigtail on my transmission. So Mike thinks I have an earlier 4T80, which does have this pressure manifold sensor.
So I'm going to order the pressure switch and two new solenoids, I also emailed Triple Edge Performance and gave them the above info, asking for any insights.
This sucks.
Next thing, I finished rebuilding my headlights with Danyel's 60mm buckets. I get everything installed.... and the headlight cover on the passenger side collides with it when closing the hood, scraping through the powdercoat. *sigh*.
I texted Danyel and he was very kind in giving me some ideas and asking for more information. At the end, we discovered the bucket itself needed to be 'bent' to move it over. I have no idea how it was bent off from it's intended center to begin with.
For now we are leaving the headlight covers off, partially so we can make adjustments to everything else with the hood/lights, and partially to help let hot air vacate the radiator area for now.
We also can't find the instrument cluster we saved out of my car, so I used the cluster from the donor car (which is missing the RPM needle), and hooked up the connections and bolted it in place today --- mainly so I would have mounted switches for headlights and trunk popper, and could see my fuel gauge. For the near future, speedo and temperature information is going to come from the laptop talking to the FAST and TCU. Mike has a car laptop stand that he thinks he can adapt and install as a temporary measure, and he has a car power inverter he can loan me.
So yes... this interior is almost exactly how I was expecting to show up at Carlisle (just wanted to get the horn working)... and likely this is how it will show up this way at the 40th. I *might* have time to add interior door panels and install the awesome 3D Printed skeleton I have.
Last thing that threw me off when I was testing the headlights. I hit the switch, they flip up - yay. I turn them off. They go down a little (maybe 10% of the way?) PAUSE for about 2-3 seconds, then finish going down. The headlights both do this at the same time (so at least it's uniform!). It's very weird. Anyone seen behavior like that before?
This weekend was a solid 21 hours of busting things out on Mike's 3800 swap, which includes the '88 cradle swap with it.
Yesterday we got the cradle with the engine in, Mike finished up the exhaust, I did an oil change and transmission fluid change, and started doing the brakes for him. We discovered both of the '88 rear calipers he had were toast. Boots destroyed on both, using the little twisty-tool thing to spin the piston down, we couldn't get it to seat all the way (enough for pads to fit on the rotors) before it bound up, and it making some "crunchy" noises along the way. So he's going to order calipers from the Fiero store tomorrow.
Coolant lines in his swap are all connected, we're just trying to find the strut tower "retaining rings" now. I did reach out to CowsPatoot to see if he had a spare set laying around. He's gotten some of the wiring done, he's going to work on it after work as much as possible this week to finish the wiring.
We also need to solve for the F23 shifter cable that I originally got from California Push Pull. Mine is badly seized up. We sprayed in some PB Blaster and worked the cable for about ten minutes, but it still takes about 10 pounds of pressure to move the gear selector side to side. I had seen some threads where people were asking about the length of the cable they needed to order for the F23 swap. The one I have is 72" eyelet to eyelet (... err, eyelet to ball joint center?). Mike wants me to get one 75" long so he can route it behind a heat shield he made .
Next weekend we'll be pulling my transmission to solve the mystery of the version. I have an updated copy of the software that talks to the aftermarket TCU, and it (now) includes a base config file for both revisions of the 4T80, which will simplify things for us greatly. It also makes me wonder if the TCU was sending conflicting commands to the Transmission. The earlier 4T80 used a pressure manifold setup, newer ones didn't. I don't know enough about transmission commands/mechanics, but I can imagine (and I am likely wrong), that an "old" command being sent to a new transmission, and the new transmission internals going "uh, no, we're doing this instead" can make for a bad time.
Mike said the inside of the junkyard trans I opened last week looked super clean, and he's inclined to just slap that one into my car. I'm a little iffy about it, for a few reasons including a notorious bushing/seal issue with the 4T80 that would make it leak like a sieve when driving. He said he'd slap new seals in there, too. Soooo. I dunno. I'll get those seals too and we'll see what we're dealing with next weekend.
He is still optimistic that we'll be driving my Fiero up to Michigan for the 40th. I'll be happy if we can trailer it and move it around on "limp home" mode. I told him I'd almost rather trailer it regardless, especially since we'd like to throw it on the dyno up there and (likely ) won't have time to do any dyno tuning down here... and if the transmission goes again... lol
We started Saturday working on Mike's 3800 swap, and made a lot of progress. He had the engine back in the car and I helped him with some odds and ends, like getting the shift cables hooked up and testing the range while he checked what the transmission was doing, so we could adjust the cables accordingly. We finished up at 11, changing to work on my car after lunch.
We needed to pull my transmission so we could inspect it for any damage after the odd behavior we had last time. All research on the symptoms indicated the pressure regulator solenoid was going bad.
Taking the transmission out was also a bit of a design test. Mike was fairly certain we could take out his removable upper control strut. So we went about disassembling the suspension on the driver side, unbolting the transmission from the engine, unbolting the flexplate, all the usual stuff that you need to split the engine and transmission. Mike was happy that a lot of his design concepts worked, it made getting to all but two bolts really easy.
We then tried to slide the transmission out through the driver side wheel well. Unfortunately, the lobe of the transmission has a flare that interfered with the engine. The body of the car kept us from pivoting the transmission in a way to clear it. So we wound up having to drop the cradle. You can see that flare in this picture.
On another forum I had found a thread that was talking about the 4T80 in depth, and mentioned an oddity that I haven't yet confirmed anywhere else. It stated that the 93-99 used a different signal for the pressure regulator solenoid (I think voltage reference?) and in the 00+ they switched to PWM. The article said that a 00+ stock ECU would run a 93-99 4T80, but the PWM would burn up the pressure regulator solenoid eventually. Here’s where I doubt that tidbit on the signal change – the part number for the pressure regulator solenoid (24220158) shows on Summit Racing as cross referencing across all years of Caddy’s that had the 4T80E. I would think that GM would have needed to switch part numbers if there was a concern of them getting burned up by the ECU.
This meant we needed to confirm which transmission I had. Triple Edge Performance was pretty sure all of their 4T80 cores were from year 2000+. Of course he had built the transmission for me 4ish years ago, so he was going by memory. We put on the Kent-Moore transmission arm, loaded it onto Mike's transmission stand, and let it drain, ready to open it up and start an inspection. Here it is, draining.
Identifying if a 4T80 is an early model or late model is pretty easy. The early ones had a manifold pressure switch in them. Late models they upgraded the range selector switch with more electronics to also do the work of the manifold pressure switch. We took off the pan, and there was the manifold prssure switch.
The good news is, all the clutches looked good (just some very light glazing), nothing in the pan, the pumps are fine. The fluid was a little dark – likely from the overheating of the pressure regulator solenoid. So we replaced all the solenoids (pressure and shift) and filters (might as well).
After that was done, we put everything back together on the cradle, getting it ready to go back into the car.
... here's where I'm a little angry at myself. In the past few weeks, I had been trying to find an actual 4T80E bin file that would work with the software that TCI uses. We had worked with a former TCI engineer and modified a 4L60 bin file to run my transmission. And maybe there's something in there with how that transmission interacts with it's pressure regulator solenoid that caused the issue.
The software is not proprietary. I found another company that uses the same stuff with their 4T80 controller. Strangely, their download didn't come with any preloaded bin files. Interestingly, they had an updated version of the software on their site as well. I download that, and it has TONS of base files, including two files for the 4T80 (denoting the year ranges). Thrilled, I played around with the software, which was just a 'smoother' version of their last version, with a few menu changes.
So after the engine was in, I gleefully hook my laptop up to the transmission controller, I tell the new software to connect. It tells me no controller could be found. Disappointed but not deterred, I figure "Okay, I can take this file and open it with the older software!" Nope. When I was checking it out and saved the file I failed to check the extension of the bin file. It's different. .TCU versus .BIN.
The new software doesn't have a "save as" a .BIN. Changing the extension doesn't work.
Of course, this is all discovered about 5pm on July 3rd. So no getting in touch with tech support or sales with questions. Tomorrow morning I'll be calling TCI and asking them if their product officially supports the 4T80 or not (a dragzine article where they spoke to people from Edlebrock/TCI said it did support it, but it's not listed on their site). If they say yes, I'll ask for the BIN files. If they say no, I'm going to call the second company and see if they have .BIN files for the 4T80.
If they say no, I'll talk to them about their product, and make sure it interfaces with FAST so it can get the needed inputs from FAST. I suspect trying to split wires from TPS, RPM, etc could be problematic.
If I have to buy a new controller, it's likely Mike won't have time to rewire everything to get it in, much less us have time to put all the miles on it that he wanted to make sure it'd be safe to drive to the 40th.
Fingers crossed the second company will send me a .BIN file for the shared-version of the software, and that solves the issue. Even then, not sure how things will go, there's still a few things we need to fix. While I still plan to be at the 40th, I'm preparing myself that it'll be as a passenger with Mike in his Fiero, or our mutual friend Chug in his.
[This message has been edited by Trinten (edited 07-04-2023).]
So I reached out to TCI today, citing the Dragzine article and asking about 4T80 support. In short, they said "nope".
Okay, onto the next company, PCS. I call them (you know, before I spend money this time). The sales guy was transparent. "Technically it'll run a 4T80, but we don't officially support it. One of our dealers does though, I think. Here is his information." (the conversation was longer than that, covering my ECU, if their unit 'speaks' the same canbus language as FAST, etc).
So I asked why they had two software packages, and why one was showing a list of supported transmissions (including the 4T80) and the other didn't list any. His answer was weak at best, but I didn't push it at the moment - he said that the later revision software was for an older product they don't sell anymore, and when they send out the units and the software talks with it, then it lets you see the bin files (I know this is BS, but again, I let it slide for the moment. Especially since they don't officially support the 4T80 and I need to get a BIN from the dealer anyway). This was the sales department, so I wasn't expecting them to know all of the technical details.
So I call the dealer. He says "I'd need to make you a bin file." "So you haven't had it on any 4T80s yet?" "Not a 4T80, no. But I know it can do it."
Well, given my options are running out (I do have a THIRD company bookmarked), I ask him "Can you get it all to me by Friday? I need the controller, terminal kit, pins, everything." "Yes, do you need it there early?" "no, just sometime on Friday."
So there goes the money I indirectly saved by not being able to go to Carlisle. Friday I'm going to follow up with him and see if I can bribe him (literally) to be available on Saturday if we have any questions.
Do I think it'll be ready to go to Michigan in time? ... depends on when Mike is planning on going up that way (he's supposed to make some other stops to see friends up that way before the show). The odds are bad, but I'll be happy to be wrong.
Despite putting in about 20 hours a weekend for the last month (though some of that was on Mike's 3800 swap, which had it's own issues), we weren't able to fix my transmission in time.
On July 3rd when we finished putting everything back in the car, we were so whipped we didn’t check anything outside of making sure the car started.
On Wednesday the 5th, because we were pretty certain our issues were born from our aftermarket controller, I chased down another vendor who had a solution where they cited the 4T80. I called them, they confirmed the hardware would handle it, etc. etc. So ordered it.
To skip ahead, before we tried out the new controller, we checked the lines through the car and transmission coolers – no obstructions (this was a recommendation from Triple Edge Performance). Then we started up the car, let things idle for a few minutes, and loosened the trans fluid return line, fluid was coming out pretty rapidly on the return line. We snugged that back up.
We checked the fluid level for “cold”, it was good. We then had a face palm moment. We didn’t test “limp home” mode back on July 3rd. We try all the gears without the computer hooked up to it, and nothing. The car just sat there. We even tried really giving it some gas (slowly depressing the accelerator, of course, just in case).
We did shut it down and hook up the computer for other diagnostics. The new PCS controller does interface with FAST XFI (yay!). However it was showing the same odd information on the gears as the old controller. The software should show "N" when it's in Park or Neutral. Instead, it thinks it's in 1st gear. There's also a "Shift" box with the number 2 in it. We don't know what that means. I asked the new guys we're dealing with. So the computer is saying that the transmission thinks it's in gear, when it's not.
Mike wants to swap out the entire lower valve body assembly into the late model 4T80, he really likes the idea of the manifold pressure switch over the electronic range selector switch. He just thinks that even though they have their own issues, a hydraulic driven part is a better diagnostic than hoping an electronic part told the correct shift solenoids to turn on, and wondering if the problem is the solenoid or the range selector electronics. This would effectively tell us if the upper manifold has some undiagnosed issue. It seems like a lot of effort for that, so I also emailed Triple Edge and asked for their insights on this.
Over the week, Triple Edge did update me on something that I read that was wrong (that's right, there's bad info on the internet!) GM 4T80e didn't switch over to a different style Pressure Regulator Solenoid, they switched to a PWM driving TCC solenoid! Thankfully, the new controller can easily be switched to run the later model TCC (I asked the dealer about that, he guided me to where to change it in the software). So that can be changed regardless of what we do.
We did discover that the heat from the headers had started to melt the shift cable. Check this out:
So we have been hunting for a solution, and we came up with one. I broke off that molded end, Mike threaded the metal cable under it, we screwed on a ball joint end rod, and then he took out the staked ball fitting on the gear selector (which was too big for this ball joint end), and we used a bolt and some other hardware to connect it all together, making sure the travel was working. I didn't finish putting back together the shifter cable holder in the engine compartment - there was other stuff to do once we realized my car was not getting there on it's own.
Instead, it'll be arriving like this.
The Z06 wheels did widen it up just a bit more than Mike hoped. It barely fits on the trailer, and we had to come up with an alternate solution to get the other ramp mounted to the trailer. Good times.
[This message has been edited by Trinten (edited 07-09-2023).]
Well, late yesterday Mike managed to get his 3800 swap working. He drove it around last night and will be driving it to work today (which is also over an hour towards the 40th compared to where he lives).
He offered to pick me up in the Fiero on the way to the 40th (I'm another hour closer than he is). However I declined. Between both of our luggage and emergency tools, parts, and fluid that he may need for any roadside repairs, I just didn't see how it would all fit in the car. He wasn't comfortable with me driving his truck -- if I pushed I'm sure he would have let me, but I also know I do not do well on long drives by myself (I get tired very quickly when in a car for more than a few hours, and need to stop to walk around, do something else, talk on the phone, etc. then get back on the road). So this also ruled out me asking him to unhitch his truck so I could rent a trunk to tow his trailer.
Instead I managed to find round trip airfare that was less than what I would have spent on gas on his truck. It sucks that my car won't be at the 40th at all. At least we could have started it up and people could have checked out all the finished modifications that Mike came up with over the years. A few of which he had done by the first time we were at Carlisle and we noticed the idea was borrowed by another person by the next year after they saw it and talked with Mike, lol.
Anyhow, I'll be landing in Detroit tomorrow morning. See you guys soon!
So when I got back into town on Monday evening I stopped by Mike's. We unloaded my car from the trailer, and I did some datalogging per the new TCU dealer's request. Mike also hooked up his line pressure tool to the main line pressure test port on the transmission.
When the engine starts, the transmission pressure is at 90 PSI. Shifting through the gears, it drops to about 40 PSI and stays there, even when revving the engine. Going back into park then into gear again, pressure dropped even lower, and again didn't move.
So while an issue with one of the pumps is possible (and is Mike's bet on the problem), Dave (Triple Edge Performance) also pointed out it could be a failed stock pressure regulator valve or boost valve.
Both of them agree that a complete teardown is needed at this point to go through it. So going to see if it'll be easier/cheaper to find a local shop we trust or arrange LTT shipping back to Dave.
Dave is still insisting that this is a late model 4T80, however the internals don't line up to that, nor does the wiring. Even the pigtail on this one was different than on the late model we got from the junkyard.
The TCU dealer sent us the wiring diagram for the late model, Mike is going to build another harness for that, and we're going to swap in the late model transmission and see how well that one runs for now.
This Saturday we'll clean up the garage (we thrashed it pretty bad the last few weeks trying to get stuff done), then move the late model in there to get ready for the swap.
Thanks Will. Things happen! I'm not going to let this discourage me, it's not unsolvable. It's just a matter of time (and money), and finding the right answers.
Dave has been great with emails and trying his best to help us out.
Mike pointed something out to me that I didn't consider. Our connector to the transmission was wired up by us, it only has the connectors in the positions to control a 94-99 4T80. Mike said that the wiring differences between the 94-99 and 00+ meant if it was a 00+, how he wired up the connector means the trans never would have worked at all.
I sent that info to Dave along with a comparison of how the two different pigtails would need to be wired.
I've also found some other 94-99 transmissions locally. One at an LKQ, and a few on Car-parts.com from places that pull it for you at comparable prices (especially after taking into account our time to pull the transmission in the junkyard).
LKQ offers something of a "warranty", where if the part doesn't work, I can return it for a refund, this is listed on their price list for Transmissions. I'm going to see if any of the car-parts places offer the same. If they do, then I'd rather get the transmission from one of the places that will pull it for us. So I'll be making some phone calls tomorrow. The plan right now is to acquire the next transmission on the weekend of August 5th.
Mike was also willing to build a whole new harness for the 00+ transmission I have, buuuuut the TCU dealer hasn't told me if the BIN file I have now will work (with or without changes), or sent me a new one. So I'd rather save Mike the time and plan on getting another 94-99 for now.
Things have been going a little slow this month. Now that the 40th is over, Mike and I didn't feel the need to thrash on this every weekend to try to get it done. Which works out for him too, he has other side projects for other people, plus his own stuff to work on.
A few weeks back we got ready to drop the cradle out. I took the opportunity to see if my modified A/C hose was going to work... not quite. The hose shop that had done it for me originally had the hoses twisted up, and when I asked them to fix it, they did it by cutting the big hose in the middle, then using the grommet things to stitch it back together. That section 'crimps' the hose after I route it now, and the smaller hose is a few inches short. I'm also not a fan of how close the bend comes back in towards the engine/fuel assembly on the compressor side. Here's a pic of that.
And frustratingly, I've lost the THIRD freaking Fiero-side AC hose uber-long bolt of doom that holds that fitting on there. THREE OF THEM. I hope it's in one of my plastic totes.
Mike suggested I buy the Vintage Air kit, and he'll just cut and weld on the ends for the Fiero and compressor. So I'll do that,
Once that was done, we dropped the cradle. A week or so later I picked up a "tested, working" 4T80e from Marsh salvage yard on the 10th. To be on the safe side I still ordered new shift solenoids, TCC solenoid, and PCR solenoid, along with new filters.
Yesterday I went ahead and started putting the new parts in, and we modded the 2-3 accumulator piston to give it a firmer shift. It was a good thing we did, we found a crank in the upper valve body cover (I didn't spot it when I got the transmission, and neither of us noticed it... until we turned the transmission in the stand to drain fluid and it started coming out of the crack.
We also found the main cushion spring behind the 2-3 accumulator piston was BROKEN. I guess for them "working/tested" means they started the car, put it in drive, and it moved forward a few feet at idle?
After we put the new parts in, we went about taking the engine off the cradle so we could remove the transmission. We then drained that the best we could, and swapped upper valve body covers.
The 'new' transmission is now married to the engine and it's back on the cradle. There's still some things we need to finish fastening/reconnecting there before the cradle goes back into the car, we just ran out of time.
Here's a random pic I took when we were ready to pull off the 'old' transmission.
I'm not sure when we'll be working on it next. Each of us have different things going on in the upcoming weeks, so we're going to need to look at things week-by-week.
We are also chasing pinholes in the main/long coolant tubes that run under the car. I asked Mike if he wanted me to get Rodney Dickman's repair kit for it, instead of chasing pinholes to weld up, then putting in more distilled water to check for leaks, drain, repeat, etc.
As a ha-ha for the day, a few weeks ago I was playing Wasteland 3, and one of the quirks for your character is called Grease Monkey. Part of it says "Maybe one day you can retire and build that '86 Fiera you've always dreamed of." lol They likely couldn't use Fiero because of copyrights. The text is also really blue in the picture because apparently my TV is not calibrated right. It looks correct to the naked eye, but when taking a picture with my phone, it's like I have a blue filter over my screen.
I was out at Mike's two weeks ago, I didn't make a post about it because basically we were just finishing putting everything back on the cradle and putting it back in the car. However at the end of the day, we left the transmission unplugged from the controller and did a quick "limp home" test, and it worked! So we were feeling pretty good overall.
Yesterday Mike finished closing up the pinhole leaks on the factory coolant tube, so today we finished topping off fluids and connected the transmission controller...
And the car wouldn't move. Discouraged we took a break and over lunch talked through it, and reached these conclusions:
1) This transmission shares no internal parts with the previous one. So it's a really wild coincidence that two transmissions have the same odd behavior. 2) Neither transmission has worked with the new controller (we bought the second controller about 10 days before the 40th Fiero Anniversary, wired it up, hooked it up, and saw no change in the odd transmission behavior). 3) We now had a mix of different vendor components involved (and FAST likes to use their own wiring schemas in places, including non-standard wiring colors. Thanks FAST.)
So this lead us down the road of tracing wires. We get back and start doing just that, ohming out each wire, going by the wiring diagram provided by the current TCU company. Sure enough, we start hitting some oddities.
I don't recall all of them, but three wires were not in the right place, including one of the 'Range' wires that goes to the internal pressure manifold switch. Well, this could be an issue. So now Mike wants to make sure we have this rock solid, he gets a pad of graph paper, and starting at the first junction from the TCU in the bulkhead, he draws a little representation of the connector to mimic pin layout, and I rattle off what color and what purpose each wire there is supposed to have. We then move to it's coupling side inside the cabin, same thing is done here. Then cabin to rear bulkhead, then the pigtail from the bulkhead to the transmission (the FAST pigtail). That was the only spot where things didn't line up.
So we noted that as well, and I took pictures so I can put them in a spreadsheet and print out a copy to have handy, just in case. Mike says "we can hook it up, but I don't think it's going to move. We might have damaged the pressure control solenoid, or the manifold." but it didn't't hurt to try. So we reconnect everything, I start up the car, put it in reverse, take my foot off the brake.... AND IT MOVED!
I look at Mike, he has the same surprised expression. He tells me to hold down the brake and give it a little gas, to see if it torque loads. It does. He has me test Drive, it works. Fantastic!
I shut it down, get out the tuning laptop, we button things up so we can go for a test drive, I hook up the laptop, bring up the software. I asked if he wanted me to log the test drive... I should have logged it.
As he backs up to give room to get around another car in his driveway, everything is showing correctly on the laptop (something it wasn't doing before with the old controller, it wouldn't always correctly report what gear was being requested and what gear it was in, often either reading "N/2" or "N/N". But in this case, it was showing it knew it was in "D" and said "1" for the gear. We ease down the street.... no VSS signal. We did not have this issue on the previous transmission. So we may have to double check the wiring for that again, as it goes off into another pigtail.
As we're creeping down the street, the laptop starts showing weird stuff, suddenly it says that "N" is being commanded, and it's in "N". Uh, no? I mention it to Mike, he fidgets the gear selector, and "D" shows back up... a little further down, it says "R" is being requested!! The car is still moving forward, but now is flipping between N and R. As we get back to the house, the car is slowing down with the same throttle/RPM input. We get to the parking spot. Rack through the gears... laptop sees no change. It's in "N".
Once again, the car will not move under power when hooked up to the computer. We leave the engine running, transmission temp reports 108 degrees. We take the dipstick out, it's at the "Full" mark for the cold level, mike puts his finger on the fluid and confirms it's just warm. We shut it down for the day.
When I'm out there next (which may not be till the end of the month), he wants to do Key On, Engine Off testing, and manually jump the Range switches to see what the Laptop sees. Same with the Solenoids. We'll also do the pressure test that we did on the last one. Right now he thinks the wiring issue may have damaged that manifold... which of course is on the lower valve body, so requires taking the whole drivetrain back out, split them apart, drain the transmission, put it on the stand, flip it over, etc etc etc. Which is basically a two-to-three session job.
If it's just the Pressure Control Solenoid, that is on the 'upper' valve body, which with the design of Mike's cradle, we can get to by just removing up the removable frame rail on that side (and 'just' also means unhooking the control arm, brakes on that side, etc... still easier than taking everything back out). Still need to drain the fluid and such, but still a much easier part to replace.
He's annoyed with himself that we overlooked the problem from the pigtail, when we put the new TCU in, we checked everything from the TCU up to where the pigtail plugs in, but not through the pigtail itself.
I was back out there sooner than I expected. No complaints on that.
Sadly... today ended on a down note. We finished checking all the wiring today, this time going from the pigtail all the way to the TCU connector. Found we had the VSS on the opposite side of where it was supposed to be (and a ground was in it's place, so no harm there). We flipped those, started the car up, did a little back/forward in the driveway, all good. We hook up the pressure gauge and check it in the driveway, again doing just a little bit of motion, pressure is staying good!
I hop in, excited and thinking "This is it!" ... which over-rode my normal pragmatic approach to things and this time I failed to think to log the trip. Sigh.
So we start down the street, everything on the computer looks good. Seeing the right gear position and so on and the VSS is working, but waaaaay off. WAY off ( we were properly close to 20mph, and it said we were going 8mph). We saw this on the tune we tried to use before on the last TCU, and had messed with a field to get it closer to right. So we get to the end of the block and turn around, and as we head back, Mike says 'we're losing power' and he glances at the pressure gauges 'we're losing pressure, too'.
We get the car to crawl back to it's parking place and shut it down to "cool off" (fluid temp was at 110. Not even operating temp, if I recall right).
So I'm crestfallen. We let it sit for about an hour. During that time I also tried to remember where I found that setting in the computer to change the VSS calc on our original tune, I couldn't find it. Mike found a place he thought might be it. I changed the value from "2" to "8" (early in the year when I solved for this, I had done a bunch of digging on my phone and found some math equation to actually work it out, here I was just seeing if it's the right field).
I hook the laptop back up to do a log, and it was still doing the low pressure thing, so we just backed up/went forward in the driveway a little bit. VSS was either worse or not affected by the change.
So at this point, we are stuck. If it was electronic, why would the issue not present until it starts to warm up? And why would it fail to go into Limp Home mode until it 'cooled off'? And the same symptoms on two transmissions, with two different controllers, and two different tunes. There is nothing the same between the setups.
Is it possible I managed to get a second transmission with the same mechanical (unknown) flaw as the first? Sure... but come on, what are the chances?!
I'm going to ask Mike to ohm out the electronics in the first transmission for the sake of recording the values. I told him that without a real direction, there wasn't much sense in throwing spaghetti at the wall. So after he gets those values, he's going to get a pallet for me to put my first transmission on, and we're going to arrange to get it back to Triple Edge Performance to do a tear down, reassembly, and I'll ask him to put it in his 4T80 swapped car to put miles on -- hopefully he'll say yes once I say I'm more than happy to compensate him for the time of doing that swap (twice).
In the meantime, I'm going to try to dig into the kitbashed 4L60 file we had and try to find that VSS setting. I did find that the software has a way to compare two tunes to see if values change, I don't know how in-depth it is. I played with it a little today, and while it does show values, you can't double-click on it or anything to go to that menu, you have to know what it's talking about and where to drill down to get to it.
Also, there's another build thread here with a guy using a 3800 with a 4T80e in his swap, and the Terminator Max ECU/TCU. He seems to be making better progress than us. If he gets his setup to run properly using that, I'll politely beg him for a copy of his .bin. Then check with the TCU dealer to see if he can "read" a Terminator tune to duplicate it to this my TCU, or ... yes, I might just sell all this FAST and PCS stuff and buy the Terminator max and mod the aforementioned .bin to play nice with my engine, since the transmission will be solved for.
We are both hoping this is something simple and easy and Dave (Triple Edge) goes "found it!" then we can do the same in the one we have here.
I really don't want to go back to a manual, and have no interest in the 4T65. They couldn't hold up to the stock LS4 in the GXP for very long, I can't imagine it living long in my car with the abuse we have planned for it.
Still trying to iron everything out with the transmission, but we saw some improvements this past Saturday. I reached out to the manufacturer of my TCU and asked if there were any training or detailed Help materials on their software - they said no and I could just ask them. I find it tough to believe as they (seemingly) are using off-the-shelf software that they license and brand. I just haven't been able to figure out who that B2B company is, yet.
The email chain with them was a little painful, but they have to assume the customer is asking a simple thing in the wrong way. So when trying to find out details on where to change VSS Input (transmission to TCU) settings, they reply back with where I can change the PPM for the Speedometer. So a few more emails and screenshots later, they guided me to where I needed to be. I had found this setting when playing with the software for the FAST/TCI unit, but that was nearly a year ago, so I couldn't remember. Hence the questions.
While we were doing testing/fixing with the engine, I took a few videos, including one of the transmission pressure going bonkers while the car was just sitting at idle. If there are no settings for the Pressure Control Regulator solenoid in the TCU, then we will probably replace it. It's really inconsistent. Sometimes it'll sit rock solid (for a little while) at 120 or so... other times, it'll wave wildly.
Besides a little good news on the transmission, we started cleaning up some wiring. I discovered that Rodney's window motor kit instructions didn't blatantly point out that you need to flip wire colors (blue does not go to blue). So Up and Down on my window controls was reversed. Easy enough fix -- and it means I need to update that in my instructions I send out, and update it in my thread on that in the Mall.
We also wired up the aftermarket power door lock actuators that I installed a long time back, They work so beautifully.
Mike prepped the replacement steering rack to go in, when we swap that, I found a company that rebuilds C5 Vette steering racks, they have all the right pieces to stop them from leaking, so it'll be going to them.
Last thing Mike did was work on the cold start tune. Right now when you crank it, you have to give it a little bit of throttle and hold it there for about 30 seconds, or the engine will die off. So Mike added a little bit of fuel to one of the tables a few times, doing some repeated shut-down/start-ups, until he figured the engine was too warm to properly test it further. More of that next time.
I still need to reconnect my power mirrors. But the connector fell someplace down in the door, and I've just not bothered to take the mirror back off to try to fish the connector up with mechanical fingers.
Though at the 40th I did see a Fiero where the owner very cleanly modded his mirrors to install the turn-signal flasher -- I stopped by a few times but never met the owner. If anyone knows who owns this Fiero or who did this Mod, please let me know!
Here's some other pics of that same car, if anyone knows who it is. Also the person crouching in the one picture said it was not his. I thought maybe the trailer would help identify the owner, though some of the other little touches pictured below are semi-unique.
Things left to do: 1. Get the transmission to behave. 2. Build a new harness for Danyel's twin 60mm headlight buckets, with the changes we made to the frunk the harness I got from him won't work (it'll be going up for sale in the mall eventually!) 3. Run hose and mount pump for intercooler. 4. Misc. wiring (side mirrors, cleaning up wiring up front once all this ECU/TCU nonsense is settled, etc). 5. Idle tune, street tune. 6. Reconnect with a guy I met at the 40th who did successfully swapped in the Turbo Sunbird cluster, and said he'd be glad to help me out (yes!) 7. Dyno tune.
[This message has been edited by Trinten (edited 10-02-2023).]
I finally bothered to move the videos I took a few weeks back off my phone to my Google Drive. Here is the one that makes us think the Pressure Control Regulator solenoid might be bad or dying in my second transmission. This was taken at idle, everything cold. It didn't do this every time, just sometimes. It also did it sometimes while moving, other times it was rock-steady.
As we are currently out of reasonable ideas to address the transmission or test out anything else to fix it at the moment, we've been working at the list of remaining stuff that was needed to be done. I've also started including some of the "not necessary" stuff to give Mike options for what he wants to work on when I go over there (which is a little less frequent right now).
This Saturday he finished making the new harness for the twin 60mm headlight setup I bought from Danyel. I had bought Danyel's harness when I got everything else, but with all the changes Mike made up front, his harness wasn't going to route correctly anymore. Also Mike didn't like that the relays weren't weatherproof style ones, even if they were in a place that shouldn't get much water.
So I ordered all the various connectors, and some more wire (larger gauge than the hundreds of feet I bought for all the control stuff), and an inline fuse setup. So Mike wired all that up, and the headlights now not only go up and down, but turn on and off. It's the small wins.
On that topic, I'll be putting the harness I got from Danyel up for sale in the mall!
I have the dreaded "key-on, single-swipe-wiper 'feature'". I know there is the Rodney capacitor fix out there, I read someplace else it was a good fix but not an ideal one. I also read on the MANY threads here that the causes could be either from the wiper control board, or the wiper switch in the column (not the actual control stalk... which I have a NOS one of those that will go in at some point).
So I hunted down the wiper control board, which came with the plastic cover... which was bigger than the OEM one. The old plastic cover literally fits inside it. See the pic after this paragraph. So I used the old cover. The problem is still there. So I'll be getting the wiper switch from the Fiero Store. I have pretty much everything to do a total column rebuild, new wiper stalk, new ignition... module... thing... (damn I'm technical). New lock cylinder (an ear is broken off on mine), and soon to have wiper switch. That'll be a future endeavor.
I also need to find all the parts to use my horn. In addition to the little spring that fits in the hole, I think I'm missing other parts. If anyone can let me know what other pieces go under the horn button -- and if you have any for sale!! -- I would appreciate it.
When the weather cooperated, we pulled out my steering rack that was leaking. Thankfully it did not require dropping the front cradle or any tubes/lines besides the ones going to the power steering pump. We discovered one of the boots on the new tie-rod end on the old rack had already broken through (it was a Moog part), so this was two-fixes-in-one. The new rack slid in without much issue. I filled the EHPS pump and tested the system; power steering is back and working with no leaks.
Downside is the OEM fuse for this pump was 50amps. The auxiliary fuse box I'm using is rated for a max of 100amps at any given time. So Mike doesn't want to put a 50A fuse on it (we were running it with a 30A before, and it popped when fluid got low from the leak). I might ask Mike if he wants to switch that to an inline dedicated fuse, but I know he won't want to because that'll make the front more cluttered, and he's trying to keep things orderly.
Other "while we figure out our next step with the transmission" items include:
1. Getting the keyless entry wired in (which I've had forever).
2. I found the LED 3rd brake light panel, so I need to get that wired in. The ends of the wire weren't terminated, so I need to figure out what kind of plug to buy for that, so we can fit into the OEM Fiero Connector. If anyone can point me to an unterminated connector kit for this, again it would be appreciated!
3. Finish routing the intercooler water hose and figuring out where to mount the intercooler pump. I suspect that, short of rebuilding the intercooler tank to be smaller so we can use that space, I'm going to have to get a smaller pump. We were going to repurpose the EWC pump from Moroso that I had on my last Fiero.
4. Wire clean-up in the cabin
5. Fishing up the power mirror connector so I can hook up my power mirrors in the meantime (I think this one is going to be a pain).
6. Hunt over the car for anymore rubber stoppers/bumpers I can replace. I got the ones in the door area done. I spotted a few missing where the headlight covers go (they are currently removed). Most of the others are there.
7. Install the LED 'underlip' lighting in the trunk. The current intercooler air tube covers the old Fiero trunk light, so I got flexible LED ribbon that I'm going to mount under the lip/edge of the trunk, right near/under the seal, running it all around the trunk, and wire it up.
I'm sure there's a bunch more I can't think of right now. Unrelated, I wish I enjoyed driving a stick. I could have had my car on the road already, and I wouldn't be so envious of FieroGuru.
Hey Trinten, I've been following your build from your engagement with Fieroguru and now Mike. I have stalled on my own Fiero project somewhat and was curious whether you started a whole new harness with your LS project or if you have modified the harness that Guru had done. If you and Mike fashioned a new harness I am interested in purchasing your Guru harness. It would be perfect for my project, 350 sbc mated to F40 six speed with TPI induction. Please let me know. Thanks.
Mike made a new harness for this setup. The harness that FieroGuru made for me was sold with the engine, PCM and F23. I saw the person who bought my setup had put it up for sale in the mall some months ago, I guess life got in the way and he realized he wasn't going to get around to doing the swap on his Fiero.
If you're looking for a "drop in swap", it doesn't get much closer than that. Some mods to the cradle for mounts, a little clearancing in the engine bay, and it'd be ready to go. Fieroguru's harness did also use a relocated C500 connector, so there's that too. But if you didn't mind doing some splicing, you could keep the original location.
If the guy selling it is willing to part it out, he might be willing to break up the set if you don't need the whole setup!
While I"m here, I haven't posted much because we really haven't done anything recently. We dropped off one of the transmissions at a shop for them to tear into and see if they can find a problem. He suggested that we unhook the pressure control solenoid wire from the harness but leave the rest connected so we could log the transmission in that situation still, try to get some other ideas of what's going on with it. We haven't gotten to that yet because of scheduling issues.
In the meantime while we're waiting to do that and hopefully hear back good news from the transmission guy, I got everything together to do a steering column rebuild/refresh, so we'll probably tackle that, and we're picking at cleaning up/finishing up some wiring.
Mike had me get an in-line fuse holder for something... and I sadly got the wrong style, so it'll be one more type of fuse I need to keep in the car (it's the ones that are smaller than the standard in-cabin fuse box fuses). I didn't check this till after Mike soldered the darn thing in place...
Update on my stuff and Mike's Fiero, since there's not much with mine right now.
Dropped off the Triple Edge Performance transmission at a shop back on December 9th. The guy is a former GM transmission tech and now has his own shop. He was up front that he was pretty backed up and it would be a while before he could get to it.
When I told him what was going on, he thought it was pretty strange, especially how the transmission would still act up in limp home mode. One of the things that came up was "are you sure nothing is wrong with the torque converter?"
... no. Didn't even think of that. Afterall, it was put together by Precision Torque Converters... though it is a hybrid, their 4T65E billet case with 4T80E guts... so... maybe?
I talked to the shop on Friday, he hadn't gotten to my transmission yet but said he should have it done by March. We're still hopeful he goes "found the issue!" If he doesn't, then we'll send the torque converter back to Precision for them to go over. Depending on timing, we'll either wait to hear back from Precision or we'll put a stock converter in there.
Onto Mike's stuff!
So at the 40th, he was hearing some odd whining. Unfortunately I told him it sounded "something like that" when I had the F23 in my car (though that was a 5+ year old memory). Not long after he got back, the whining got worse, and the transmission pretty much locked up.
The issue? Bearings on one of the synchros went completely bye-bye, and cracked through the bell housing.
This past weekend we finally took the transmission apart. After pulling the synchros out, here's what was left.
That's right. Just the chewed up bearings. The racer is GONE. Crazy.
There was also some chipped teeth on the input shaft:
And there was some nicked teeth on the third synchro:
It's tougher to see after I resized the picture. It's right about the middle of the teeth.
The HTOB was also completely trashed, I don't have a pic of that.
So while Mike was hunting for another F23, he had put in a Getrag 5 speed. About a month ago, that went BOOM.
So he parked his Fiero and lamented just how weak the getrags were, and tracked down another F23. It was out of the same year/make as mine was, and he was eager to put it back together...
So he put it in with the new HTOB and the spacer from his last HTOB, and the clutch and pressure plate (which were sporting some scars from material getting in there when the bell housing tossed some metal).
He was in his IDGAF mood, so just threw it all together. We started it up Saturday, transmission was in gear, and the car tried to lurch forward. So he puts it in neutral, and with the clutch engaged, we hear a 'chattering'. He presses down the clutch, noise goes away, but it *appears* the clutch isn't disengaging.
A quick email to FieroGuru and he pointed out that with the HTOB, it can extend far enough to disengage, then wrongly re-engage in over-travel by pressing directly on the pressure plate fingers and push them into the clutch disk (thank you, FieroGuru!!). So we'll definitely need to do measurements.
So at some point we're going to drop Mike's engine cradle again and we'll do some measurements. He wants to move the LSD from his last F23 into this unit anyway, so we might do that, or if we find other issues in this F23, hopefully we'll have the right 'good parts' between the two to put a single good transmission together.
I'll have to print up all of the stuff from Emc209i when he did my F23 swap, I don't recall if anything in the bell housing had to be ground down for clearance for the clutch/PP. We did see what looked like some grinding spots, and it's too precise to have been damage from when the transmission faltered. Also need to see if he noted all the steps on how to properly measure everything. Mike probably knows but I don't.
[This message has been edited by Trinten (edited 02-05-2024).]
The Fiero moved under it's own power today -- enough that we were doing tuning on the engine and transmission!
I talked to the transmission shop last Friday. He apologized that he hadn't gotten to the transmission yet, but said "walk me through it again." and I did, and asked him if it could still be the torque converter. He said "No, if you have pressure when it's dead cold, then that rules out the TC in this setup. Did you get a chance to do that test driving it with the pressure control solenoid wire disconnected?"
I admitted we had not. So Mike and I did that today. The pressure was good on start up, so we first drove it around the neighborhood... all was working. So we go down the road. All is working. I'm watching the TCU command changes and the transmission is executing them. The converter locked up at a speed Mike wasn't happy with, so when we got back, he did some tuning on the transmissions shift points and when the converter would lock up, we drove it again, he was happier with it but wanted to do more with the converter settings. He wanted to get some tuning done on the engine now that that transmission is behaving.
So we drove around on the streets for a total of about 90 minutes while he did tuning. He found my car does not like to be anywhere near lean. At one point we had 14 pounds of boost going and the A/F ratio was around 13 and it was not happy. He's also leaning how to tune it in conjunction with the FueLabs smart FPR, which increases fuel pressure as it reads boost.
The nice part is, tuning it on 93 octane, the duty cycle of the injectors was maxing out around 22%, so I should have plenty of room for when we put in the E85 for the race tune.
So tomorrow I'm going to call the transmission shop and let him know what happened. Mike was wondering if we somehow wired up something wrong, but if that were the case, something else wouldn't have worked. As it is, with the Pressure Control solenoid going full-bore all the time, everything was working!
If it is a bad solenoid... it means I had One go bad within about 50 miles (Triple Edge performance original one), the OE replacement bad out of the box, and the one that came in this junkyard transmission is also bad. That seems like a big coincidence, but the car that this transmission was in was in the junkyard for a reason, and Caddy repairs on the transmission are all pretty nuts because most of them require dropping the cradle. So the caddy owner could have been like "it's going to be how much? Nope." and junked it.
Anyhow, back to the engine tuning. Still working on getting the hot and cold startups dialed in. It looks like we'll have to play with the set screw on the throttle. Sometimes it would die out sitting at a stoplight, which was nerve wracking. Down low power is great, turbo spools up pretty quick. The cruising drive-ability is all dialed in. So right now it's tuning for aggressive acceleration, and fixing lean conditions when we get north of 3900 RPM.
The exciting part is, this means that unless we get another curve ball.... I'll be able to drive my Fiero to Carlisle this year!!
I called up the shop today and told him the good news, then added “Explain it to me like I’m 5. Why did that work, but the transmission still wouldn’t even have pressure when we put it into limp home mode?” Here’s what he said: “Well you were going into limp home after things started to warm up. That pressure control solenoid runs off of voltage reference. What can happen, though rare with GM, is the solenoid will start to stick, so it reduces pressure, but then can’t bump it back up. That’s why it would start to behave for a bit when everything cooled back off. And since you disconnected the wire, it was commanding full pressure the whole time, so it never had a chance to stick.”
He said driving it with that wire unhooked isn't likely to cause an issue, though he didn't want to recommend it. He did say he knew plenty of Cadillac owners that had the issue where the transmission would start to slip, so the computer would go to full-pressure to compensate and throw a code, and because of the repair costs, owners would just clear the code when they had to go in for inspections and drove it that way for years. lol
I asked him to go ahead and replace the control solenoid in the transmission he has. I called and gave the info to Mike. Mike then said "well now that we know we're going to be getting a good transmission back, we can really thrash on this one and see what it'll take!"
I told him I didn't want to do that until after Carlisle, because if the trans did fail, he would be hard-pressed to have the time to swap in the other transmission -- because we don't have the 'spare' back yet, and he's got two Grand Nationals he's trying to finish in time for the Grand National meet that takes place in May at Bowling Green. He then (reluctantly) admitted I was right. So dyno tuning will have to wait till after Carlisle, we're excited to see what happens though!
Mike isn't sure if he's going to have time to do the Sunbird instrument swap. Right now I have a beat up, half-broken instrument cluster in there, just so I can turn on headlights, pop the trunk, and see how much fuel I have left. Mike has one of the small data-logger / display units for the Fast XFI. He's going to let me borrow that, we're going to clip it to the top of the instrument cluster shroud and set it to show me speed, engine temp, voltage and transmission temp.
Oh, and frustratingly, I have an inconsistent Phantom Wipe still after rebuilding the steering column. I haven't disconnected the wire from the stalk to see if the problem is there or with the Cardone wiper control board. That's on my list.
All in, we probably got around 75 miles in today. It's tough to say... since my trip and odometer aren't hooked up yet. lol.
It's challenging to tune with the Fuelabs Prodigy fuel pump and adaptive Fuel pressure Regulator. We had some odd pockets, especially around idle, that we had to make a little rich because when we first stepped on the gas (lightly) to get rolling from a stop, the fuel pump wouldn't quite spin up fast enough, and the engine would lean out and die.
We also had some odd flat spots and stumbles. We aren't sure if it's from the tune... or from the fact that the fuel pump "kinda-died" on our last trip. What do I mean by that? Well, it still makes noise, but it's making a very strange noise, and the car won't start. Has plenty of fuel. We towed it back to Mike's and in a few weeks we'll check the pre-pump filter and post-pump filter, and then do a flow check with the pump by itself.
Fuelabs has a "lifetime warranty", and they shouldn't say my pump died from "wear and tear" (one of their exclusions), it has less than 150 miles on it! So if it is the pump, it'll be going back on an RMA.
In the meantime, here is a really short video of the car going down the street. We didn't do anything obnoxious, it is a residential area. Mike said he would find his go-pro and charge it for next time.
Good news, after doing some reading and talking to Fuelab, we've identified the likely problem. The tank Mike built is non-vented. The cap I picked up was... non-vented. Apparently these systems do not like being in a pressurized environment. We put a vented cap on there, and drove it around today for another couple of hours to do tuning. Only on rare occasions when we would come to a stop would I hear the pump get a little louder for a moment, then quiet back down. I'm guessing this was as the pump was slowing, pressure causing an issue, and it must be right around the tipping point of the gas caps venting spring.
When we stopped for gas, there was still a small hiss when I took the cap off, but nothing like last weekend. When my gas gauges reads at 1/8 a tank, I've still got about 5 gallons of fuel in the tank. I don't even plan on running it down to "E", but at least now I have an idea of where that is, and once I can start tracking mileage and figure out my MPG, I can do the math. In the meantime, I have a metal jerry-can that holds 5 gallons that will be going with me on long trips, just in case.
Mike charged his go-pro and recorded a variety of videos. The GoPro on the sunroof, driving over it, panning the engine, drive-bys, etc. He's going to put together a short montage video. I asked him if I could have the full videos so I could post up some of the others in their entirety if I really liked them.
The engine tune is now really solid for cruising and highway. Cold (and semi-warm) starts are still a little tough. This car will idle smoothly and stay running just fine at 950 RPM... after it's warm. Until then, it's picky and will fall on it's face if you're not giving it a good dose of throttle.
The transmission tune still needs a lot of work. Finding when 4th should come in, when the TC should lock up, etc. Right now there are still some pockets with 3rd where the RPM is too low and the car will shudder. So turning all of those shift points is going to take a lot more driving.
Here's our immediate checklist: -Finish modifying the AC hoses (Again). -Replace the orifice tube and pull vacuum on the AC system to make sure it holds. -Put the intercooler reservoir back in (AC stuff needs to be first. The reservoir makes it impossible to get to). -Get the water pump for the intercooler mounted and wired -Route hoses for the intercooler. -Clean up more of the wires under the hood, modifying the electronics mounting to hold the PCS TCU. -Put in the Rodney Dickman door hinge pins (I hope I can find them...) -Work on the TCU tune. -Proper alignment (alignment in a bag got us close, but there's still some fine tuning to do)
Once that stuff is done, Mike wants me to start driving the car home and out there to work on (it's about 70 miles each way). If I'm going to drive this to Carlisle, it needs some dedicated highway time to make sure it's going to behave, and happen in circumstances where Mike can roll out with his trailer if something goes wrong. Three months is less time than most people think on something like this.
[This message has been edited by Trinten (edited 03-24-2024).]
