Rick's V8 Fiero
This will follow the progress of putting a 350 Chevy V8 into a Fiero in place of the stock 2.8L V6. The car is an automatic, but the transmission will also be changed from the stock 3 speed auto (which is pretty weak) to a 4T65E electronically controlled 4 speed,which is hopefully strong enough for the V8. This is currently a work in progress; the website and the car.
This was the starting point, a 1985 Fiero. "Notchback", 13" wheels, 2.8L 6cyl engine. I think it was in March 2008 when I bought the car and brought it home. Oh, what about the red one shown at the top of the page? Well, I'll get to that one later, but this is the car that started the swap.
This was the starting point, a 1985 Fiero. "Notchback", 13" wheels, 2.8L 6cyl engine. I think it was in March 2008 when I bought the car and brought it home. Oh, what about the red one shown at the top of the page? Well, I'll get to that one later, but this is the car that started the swap.
First step, get it in the garage for the transplant. The Miata on the lift isn't mine, I was storing it for a friend. Of course they do make a nice swap project with a small block Ford....hmmm....maybe the next one.
The Fiero uses a rear frame cradle that holds the engine, transmission, exhaust system, and the rear suspension. So when everything is disconnected from the car, there are 4 bolts that hold the cradle to the main frame; undo these and drop it out. It has been dropped onto a wheeled dolly to get it out from under the car. Then it was hoisted up onto a pair of sawhorses to start taking things apart.
I took the rear body panels off to see how things looked. Ooops, much more rust than I thought. Oh well, just one more challenge. The upper frame rails were pretty much gone on the lower surface so they were cut out, on both sides of the car, and replaced. Also, the sheet metal in front of the wheelwell and behind it, again on both sides of the car, also had to be cut out and replaced.
New frame rails being formed from .065" wall thickness, 2" square tubing.
New frame rail and sheet metal welded in place. It was later painted black for rust protection. Little did I know that some of the sheet metal shown here, nicely welded in, would be cut out again to make room for the electric water pump...more on that later.
The original engine had fuel injection and computer control; the V8 will be carbureted so I don't need all of the brackets that are in the engine compartment to hold hoses, wires, sensors, etc, so I cut them all off to neaten things up a little. Besides, this saves 1 lb of weight (every little bit counts).
A preview of what is going in. The "Cox II" engine is a carburetted 350 cubic inch small block Chevy. A fairly stock "L82" engine, early 1970's vintage. Modifications include roller rockers (stock 1.5 ratio) and mild head porting. The water pump is deleted as it will be replaced with an electric unit.
The stock harmonic balancer must be replaced, since it is too wide and will hit the Fiero frame. It is replaced with a much narrower one. The problem is that the new one has a much shorter shaft portion and does not fully bottom onto the crankshaft step; a spacer is needed to go on the crankshaft first. Since I don't need the old balancer, I made a spacer from part of it. I chucked it in a lathe...
...and cut off the shaft portion. This gives me the basis for a spacer that has the correct inside and outside diameters, and also has the keyway cut in it to clear the key in the crankshaft. Yes, I'm only using the small piece that is lying on the lathe bed.
A bit of turning on the lathe to get it to the correct thickness (and opening up the bore very slightly so it will slip on and off the crank easier) and it is done. This piece slips on the crankshaft against the timing chain sprocket, and the harmonic balancer pulley will then bottom onto the spacer.
Perfect fit! Actually, it is maybe a bit too thick still, but I'll wait until I trial fit the engine onto the cradle and into the car to see how close the balancer comes to the frame of the car. I can still take off a little to move the new harmonic balancer closer to the timing chain cover (but not much closer).
Timing chain cover back on with the new harmonic balancer and the front motor mount bolted on. This mount will be welded to the cradle to support the front of the engine. The other mount points are transmission supports. It took a fair bit of effort to figure out how to support the engine onto the engine stand by the front of the engine; they are normally supported by the back end.
This is why I needed it supported at the front. There is an adaptor plate that bolts to the rear of the engine to mount the transmission to. The engine and transmission bolt patterns are not compatible since the tranny is a front-wheel-drive unit and the small block Chevy was never used in a front-wheel-drive vehicle. Yes, the Fiero is a mid-engine car, but this is really a front-wheel-drive engine and transmission unit that is just moved back a few feet. The Chevy engine will of course be mounted sideways from how it would normally sit in a front-engine, rear-wheel drive car.
The oil filter shown in the pictures will be removed and a starter motor will be fitted in that space. A remote oil filter unit will be plumbed in where the existing filter attaches to the engine block. There is also a new alternator mount and a few other things to do before the engine finds its new home.
The oil filter shown in the pictures will be removed and a starter motor will be fitted in that space. A remote oil filter unit will be plumbed in where the existing filter attaches to the engine block. There is also a new alternator mount and a few other things to do before the engine finds its new home.
Transmission bolted to adapter plate for a test fitting on cradle. Those very observant ones will notice that the adapter plate is thicker now. This is the proper plate for the automatic transmission; the previous one was for a manual transmission. You have to use the original Fiero flexplate, the Chevy one will not clear the transmission where it wraps around beside the engine (guess how I know this). You can't see it in this picture, but the front-wheel drive transmission wraps around the far side of the engine.
Engine/tranny sitting on the cradle. The header dumps pretty close to the tranny on this side, so it is going to be a bit of a challenge to make an exhaust pipe that clears but isn't too restrictive. The engine has to be moved a little to the left or the pulley will hit the frame in the car. Electric water pump has been mounted. The normal belt-driven water pump won't fit once the engine is installed.
This will be the front side of the engine when it is mounted in the car. The starter and remote oil filter adapter will fit in the space just behind the header exit.
Engine/tranny is now sitting on the cradle and showing a problem. The engine is too far to the right side, as it will hit the frame rail in the car. Has to be moved over to the left about 1 1/2".
A bit hard to see, but here is the other end (drivers side, showing the transmission). The transmission is actually touching the cradle here, and it hasn't been moved the 1 1/2" to the left yet. The engine cradle will be notched to allow the tranny to move over a little, and the frame in the car will be notched to clear the harmonic balancer pulley. Things have to be positioned just right, side-to-side, to get the engine/tranny to fit. But it will fit.
This picture shows a mocking-up of an exhaust pipe to see how much room there is (or isn't). This is a piece of plastic tubing from a dust collection system; it is 2 5/8" in diameter. With the bend shown it just clears the transmission. The bend could be tightened up a bit without being too restrictive. At least I've convinced myself that it isn't an issue.
Back to the harmonic balancer pulley. It has to be as close to the engine timing chain cover as possible, to minimize the notch required in the car frame to give it clearance. I put some modelling clay on the timing chain cover and installed the pulley, and then took it off. By measuring the thickness of the clay, I could see that the pulley could be moved about .10" closer to the cover.
Pulling the spacer out would mean taking off the cover again, so I took the easy way out and machined the shaft portion of the pulley; ends up doing the same thing, letting the pulley move closer to the engine. This is an action shot! If you look closely you can see the machining curl coming off the tool. I machined .10" off the shaft.
The pulley back on. This is as close as it can be to the engine; there is about .010" clearance with the timing chain cover. May not look like it, but the closest it comes is the "nose" part of the cover which is inside the pulley diameter (you can see this in the other picture with the clay).
Engine/tranny assembly on the cradle. This should be very close to the final position, according to all of the measurements that I took. The front of the engine is supported on this mount, and several more will be made up. They will all be solid mounts, no rubber. The Fiero has rubber isolators between the cradle and the car frame so that should provide enough isolation from the engine vibration. I am replacing the rubber isolators with polyurethane since the rubber sometimes lets things move around a little too much, and the rear suspension arms are mounted to the cradle; thus movement of the cradle means movement of the suspension arms.
It fits!!
This is the first of many, many, test fittings. It may be a little hard to see what this is showing. This is standing at the drivers side rear wheel. The rear window of the car is at the left and the trunk (which is behind the engine in the car) is at the right in this picture.
This showed me a number of things. The forward header was hitting the heater hoses that run up the forward bulkhead. The alternator, while not being attached here, was going to foul with the fuel lines running in the same area. The frame notch was marked for cutting. The valve covers had to be removed since they were the very tall ones (all I had) and the forward one was hitting the deck lid hinge box on the right side of the car. OK, time to pull the engine again and take care of some of these things.
This is the first of many, many, test fittings. It may be a little hard to see what this is showing. This is standing at the drivers side rear wheel. The rear window of the car is at the left and the trunk (which is behind the engine in the car) is at the right in this picture.
This showed me a number of things. The forward header was hitting the heater hoses that run up the forward bulkhead. The alternator, while not being attached here, was going to foul with the fuel lines running in the same area. The frame notch was marked for cutting. The valve covers had to be removed since they were the very tall ones (all I had) and the forward one was hitting the deck lid hinge box on the right side of the car. OK, time to pull the engine again and take care of some of these things.
This is looking at the forward bulkhead from inside the engine compartment. The 2 large lines in the middle are the heater hoses (remember this is a mid-engine car, so they run forward to the radiator). The smaller, very rusty lines, are the fuel lines and filter. They run to the tank which is the lump just to the left of the heater hoses.
I've relocated the heater hoses out of the way of the exhaust header. Also, I've taken off the fuel lines, both the pressure and the return line, and the filter and all the retaining clips. Neatens things up a bit. I'll make up some fuel lines later and run them where there is more room.
OK, it fits even better now. The heater hoses clear the header nicely. The bad news is that now they hit the alternator. Oh well, I'll have to move them again...no big deal. The new valve covers (picked up a set at the annual Barrie swap meet) just barely clear the hinge box, even with the box cut down a little. Also, I put a carburetor and air cleaner on to take the picture and noticed how high the engine sits.
The reason for the interference with the hinge box and the engine sitting too high is because I used the upper mount holes in the front engine mounting plate. I'm going to lower it down to the lower set of holes and re-do the tranny mount to lower that side as well. This may mean moving the engine/tranny a little to the right . The notch I cut in the car frame (to clear the engine front pulley) is fairly small, so I can cut it a little deeper to accommodate the engine position plus any movement when it is running. This will also lower the centre of gravity of the engine/tranny package, which would be a good thing as well.
The reason for the interference with the hinge box and the engine sitting too high is because I used the upper mount holes in the front engine mounting plate. I'm going to lower it down to the lower set of holes and re-do the tranny mount to lower that side as well. This may mean moving the engine/tranny a little to the right . The notch I cut in the car frame (to clear the engine front pulley) is fairly small, so I can cut it a little deeper to accommodate the engine position plus any movement when it is running. This will also lower the centre of gravity of the engine/tranny package, which would be a good thing as well.