OK, now on to the finicky stuff. This is the starter motor, fitted to the adaptor plate. Normally, the starter on a small block Chevy mounts on the other side of the engine. With this installation, the transmission blocks that area, so the starter has to go here. Of course this is where the oil filter normally sits with the Chevy block, so that has to move too.
First problem. This starter is really meant to be used with a swap kit using a manual transmission. Since the adaptor plate is different with a manual transmission, the starter mounts differently on the two swaps. Since this is what I have, and I don't want to buy the correct one, I'll rework this one to make it work. You can see here that the gear is not engaging properly with the large ring gear. The starter has to be moved farther away from the large gear. Easiest way to do this is to machine some material off the starter mounting block.
The starter mounting block on the milling machine. It is really a useful thing to have when doing this kind of work. The one I have is a combination mill and lathe. Here I'm taking a little material off and then will trial fit it (and ended up taking a little more off).
Much better. Good alignment of the 2 gears now. It may not look perfect in this picture, but the bolts aren't tightened up and that will pull it into the correct position.
Since the starter goes where the oil filter normally is, an adaptor is used with a remote oil filter. The centre hole is plugged, and an elbow is installed that will just clear the starter when it is in place. If it looks kind of like a plumbing fitting, that's because it is.
This is what it looks like with the oil lines in place. The hole that was plugged (in the oil filter adaptor plate) leads into the same place as the threaded hole in the side of the block, just above the filter housing. So this side location is used for the other hose. Several plumbing fittings make it all work. The other end of the hoses will go to a remote oil filter mount.
Everything in place with plenty of room. OK, not plenty, but enough. I had to mill a little material off the centre fitting on the oil filter adaptor plate to give a little more clearance with the starter. An oil leak is fairly disasterous to the starter motor in this application, so I hope I have everything sealed up well.
Time to get the transmission mounted up to the engine. Fairly major problem encountered right away. This is the torque converter from the 4T65E-HD transmission. It is a bit larger than the non-HD one, and is also a different shape. Notice how it sort of bulges out as you come in from the bolt holes. Also, the bolt holes are at a slightly larger radius than the other torque converter, so the flexplate will have to be redrilled for these holes; this is not a big deal...but...
This is the flexplate from the Fiero engine/tranny. Ignore for now that it is mounted on a milling machine, and not the engine. The mounting holes for the torque converter (known from now on as the TC to save me some typing!) are the ones on the flat portion, not the raised pads. This normally is not a problem as the TC that comes with the Fiero does not bulge out in the back and is smaller than the one from the 4T65E-HD tranny. If the HD TC is mounted on these pads (which happen for some reason to be at the correct radius) then it will stick too far back and will hit the tranny bellhousing. So it has to be mounted on the flat portion, by redrilling the holes at a larger radius. The problem is that the pads hit the back of the TC before it sits on the mounting holes. So some of this raised pad area has to be removed.
This was my first attempt at milling off the pads. Since I only have a small rotary table, it wasn't really secure enough and was jumping around a bit when milling
Fortunately the lathe is large enough to swing this diameter, so this was a better way to do it. Also, it chucked from the centre hole of the flexplate, so it was automatically centred. With the milling, I had to carefully centre it to make sure I wan't affecting the balance too much. The only concern here is that it is an interupted cut, so I went fairly slow and stopped often to check the progress. But it did work out nicely.
This is the flexplate with the machining finished. It is sitting on the TC to show that it now sits on the mounting areas and doesn't hit the 3 pads. I drilled 3 mounting holes at the proper radius and cleaned up the machined edges around the areas that were removed.
This is a close-up of one of the areas where the pad was partially removed. The edges have been cleaned up and it just clears the TC, that you can see through the opening.
There are 2 dowels pins that align the transmission to the adaptor plate. They are drilled out since bolts pass through them. I found that the holes in the adaptor plate were a little larger than the ones in the tranny, so the dowel pins were a little loose. I made up some new dowels with a small step so they fit properly in both the tranny and the adaptor plate. The "stock" dowel is shown between the 2 new ones.