I've run a +ve cable and a ground cable from the battery area. Still a little rust to fix up in the side of the trunk....one of those jobs for later.
The battery cable runs under the body and over the shock tower area. It is clamped along the top of the engine compartment along the side. This cable runs to the starter solenoid. The other end will be shown later, with the other wires that are in the solenoid area.
Now the fun starts! The metal box on the left is the computer from the car, normally mounted to the firewall in the passenger compartment. Since I'm not using fuel injection, I don't need the computer. Since I don't need the computer, I don't need the 30-40 wires that connect to it. That makes a lot less wiring to run through the firewall and into the engine area. It also neatens things up and saves a bit more weight. The black and white connectors, near the computer, are the ones that normally plug into the computer. I'm cutting those off and stripping out all of those wires. The other white connector (bottom of the screen) connects to a harness under the centre console in the car and joins to the instrument panel area; that one I have to keep.
I've peeled the tape off the harness in preparation for it's lightening. The large grey/black thing on the harness is where it passes through the firewall. This thing clamps on the harness, and then is filled with sort of hot-melt glue. A bit of a pain to take it all off, but once I remove that block, I can strip out the excess wires and there will be only about 8 wires to pass through the firewall, so I won't need that giant block.
You can see what it looks like with the plastic parts removed; there is the block of hot-melt glue left on the harness. Note that the wires are not connected at all in this area, they just were encapsulated in the glue/plastic parts. Now it is just a matter of picking apart the glue block to expose the wires. A heat gun helps to soften it.
So the block is all removed, the connectors to the computer snipped off, and all of the wires that were going to the computer have been removed. The bundle on the left is all of the wires/connectors that are not needed. The wire bundle on the right is what is left that will go into the car. Much simplified!
The Fiero's use fusible link wire in the engine compartment (modern cars use fusible links that look like a thin piece of sheet metal). There is nothing wrong with fusible link wire unless you run it very close to the exhaust, like they did with the '84 Fiero. This is what it ends up looking like. There are 2 pieces of fusible link wire running off this connector that goes on the starter solenoid. Obviously these have to be replaced. Because of the arrangement of the starter/exhaust with the V8 this will be farther away from the heat of the exhaust so it should not deteriorate like this. Then again, it did last 25 years so that isn't too bad.
This is a view looking up at the starter motor area (very nice to have the car up on a lift to work on this stuff). The large red wire is the main +ve battery cable to the starter solenoid. The wire with the yellow heat-shrink on it takes the battery power up into the main harness for the rest of the car, and also a lead runs off to the alternator. The thin black wire is a new piece of fusible link wire, also taking power up into the main harness.
This is the other end of the engine, showing the alternator wiring. Also you can see a ground cable I added from the engine block to the frame of the car. The #1 spark plug is very close to the alternator, but there is enough room to get it and the wire on and off. But remember how close this is, as it will cause a minor concern later.
This is just showing how I join 4 wires into 1. The large pink wire is the "ignition" wire. This is the wire that carries 12 volts when the key is in the "ignition" or "on" position, and also when it is in the "start" position. Since I need power to the ignition box (for spark), the transmission controller box, the electric choke on the carburetor, and also to the fuel pump relay, I've tapped all 4 from this one source. I use a small piece of copper, cut from the left-over tubing that I used for the cooling system, to crimp things together. Then it is soldered and wrapped with electrical tape or shrink-wrap. Oh, the large connector just below this is the main transmission control plug leading back to the transmission control box. This box will be mounted in the car, where the computer used to be.
If you can figure out what I'm doing here, you win a prize. No, I'm not making my own spark plug from an old pencil, but the pencil is sticking into the #6 spark plug hole in the cylinder head. Here is what is going on:
To set the timing on a engine, you set the engine so the #1 piston is at top-dead-centre (TDC) on it's compression stroke. Then you make sure the rotor in the distributor is pointing at the #1 spark plug lead and everything is fine and dandy. So how do you make sure the #1 cylinder is at TDC? There are a few ways, one of which is to take the spark plug out, put your finger over the spark plug hole in the head, crank the engine over with the starter motor, and feel when the pressure blows your finger out. No problem so far, this all works fine with this installation. Then you are somewhere near TDC on the compression stroke, so you line up the timing marks on the main engine pulley (the harmonic balancer) with a stationary mark on the front of the engine. Problem here! With this installation, you can't see the front of the engine since it is right up against the frame rail and covered by various things on all sides. So another thing to do is to put something into the spark plug hole and feel when the piston is at the top. Remember how close the #1 spark plug is to the alternator? Very difficult to get something in there. The way a Chevy engine works is that when the #1 cylinder is at TDC compression, the #6 cylinder is at TDC exhaust. So once we have the #1 cylinder near TDC compression, we can make sure piston #6 is at TDC and everything will work out fine. There was not enough room here to get a dial indicator in the cylinder, so this is what I came up with. One end of the pencil is resting on the top of the piston (#6, but #1 would work just as well if there was good access to it). The pencil is pivoting against the inside of the spark plug hole, and the rubber band loading it against piston. So as the engine is rotated slowly, the outer end of the pencil will go down as the piston goes up. I rotated it while watching the pencil and stopped when it was at the lowest point. Very low-tech, but it works. It might not be dead on, but it should be within a degree or 2.
It's stuff like this that takes a long time to figure out, but doesn't show much progress (kind of like most of the wiring). Of course if I was thinking ahead I would have set things up before installing the engine, and put some timing marks where they can be seen.
Since you can't see the conventional timing marks with this installation, here is one place to put them. This is a shot from underneath the engine/transmission, looking at the flexplate (remember this being machined a few pages ago?). I filed a small mark in the transmission housing and put some white paint in it. I also made a white mark on the flexplate, with the engine still set at TDC compression on #1 cylinder. The only problem is that to set the timing you have to be under the car with the timing light, with the engine running; should be fun setting the timing. But this really only has to be done once, so it shouldn't be too bad. For those that are following all this, I only need this one mark, since I use a timing light that lets you set the timing on it, and then basically "zero" the timing marks. Normally you would see several marks, for TDC and maybe every 2 or 5 degrees before this up to 15 or 20 degrees.
I forgot about the last engine mount. It's more of a steady-rod, at the back of the engine, going from the frame to the cylinder head. The thread in the cylinder head is smaller than the holes in the rod, so I made some spacers. I actually made these a while ago and forgot about them.
You can see the rod installed here. Goes from the mount I welded onto the frame cradle (seems like ages ago) up to the back of the cylinder head.
Another exciting phase! Time to make an exhaust system. This is what I bought from the Barrie auto swap meet some time ago. I bought 2 fairly large mufflers and a bunch of 2 1/2" mandrel bent pipes. I really didn't have any particular plan in mind for the exhaust system, but this seemed like a good bunch of stuff to get it started. I want a fairly free-flowing system, but don't want it loud; hence the fairly large mufflers. Of course it will be a challenge to fit these in, but that's where the various cutting implements come into play.
You can see that the Fiero has a trunk that hangs fairly far down. Also, it sort of tapers at the bottom. With this in mind, if I cut away a few inches of the trunk at the bottom, I can fit the mufflers in that space, and really don't lose too much trunk space since it is the bottom tapered part that is gone. So, out with the cutting tools!
You can see some various wire hanging down at the back and at the right side. Not too sure what these are for, but somebody did a really lousy job of wiring the tail lights, so I'll go over that and fix it up later.
A few minutes later, and room for mufflers. It turned out that the air body-saw was the best tool for this (the Henckels knives just wouldn't cut it). Later on I'll make a new floor for the trunk, and insulate it from the exhaust heat.
I made up a couple of these clamps to aid in holding the exhaust pipes together for welding. Cut a section of pipe, cut it into two half shells, and weld 2 hose clamps to it. You slip this over the 2 pipe sections you want to weld and it holds them in position, while leaving a window for 2 tack-welds. I can't claim that I came up with this design (well I could, but a few people would know that isn't true), I found it on the net somewhere). As it turns out, I didn't really use it as much as I thought I would, since my system is mostly bends with very little straight, and this works great for straight sections, but not so good on bends.
This was the fist part I made. This goes from the forward header down under the frame cradle towards the rear. This is MIG welding, using gas. I was using gasless flux-cored wire for all the engine mounts, but went back to solid wire with gas for the exhaust; it is supposed to be better for thin material. It certainly worked well for this. The weld bead does not look continuous, since it isn't. I weld small sections around the pipe to minimise distortion due to the weld heat/cooling.
The pipe bolted in place. Looks pretty good. Of course this is probably the easiest part of the whole exhaust system; the parts get trickier as they get closer to the mufflers.
The oil filter lines will be secured out of the way of the exhaust, and maybe even wrapped with insulation.
I had a heck of a time trying to hold the mufflers in place to see how the various pipes will run; they kept falling down and ticking me off. The pipe that was shown previously takes a jog up to the muffler on the drivers side. The muffler will be pulled up higher than what is shown here when I put an exhaust hanger on it. The real trick is going to be to get the other side to run from the rear header into the muffler on the passenger side. I've just started working on it and I'm sure it will work, it's just a matter of how tight the bends will have to be to get it to work, while clearing the muffler and pipe for the left-side system. From the outside ends of these mufflers there will be short 90 degree pipes to aim the outlets out the back of the car. I may make a fiberglass piece to drop down off the rear of the car to cover the mufflers; sort of like the Corvettes do, with just cutouts for the tailpipes.
These are the 3 parts that make up the complete exhaust system (complete except for the tail pipes). These are all final welded now. On the centre one you can see a welded-in threaded adaptor; this is for an oxygen sensor. It isn't needed for running the engine, but it will be used for a wide-band air/fuel ratio meter. This will display the air/fuel mixture in the exhaust and allows the carburetor to be tuned to optimize the mixture. The section on the right took a number of tries to get right so it would clear everything; a lot of tack-welding, cutting apart, trimming pipes, and re-welding.
This is with the complete exhaust installed. The tail pipes are just temporary but give the idea of what it will look like. The final ones will be stainless steel and will be trimmed to right length and be aimed properly. Also, the muffler on the left needs to be pulled up a little at the right end to bring the inlet pipe up a bit. I think the best way to do this will be to weld a piece of metal across the bottom of the trunk and put a clamp on the muffler bolting it up onto the welded piece. The exhaust hangers at the outboard side of the muffler need to be redone to hold the mufflers while allowing a little bit of flexing.
I haven't installed the oxygen sensor yet, but wanted to seal up the exhaust system, so I needed some way to temporarily plug up the hole. The thread is not a common size and I couldn't find a bolt to fit it (I think 18mm spark plugs fit, but didn't have one handy). Can you see what is under the hose clamp plugging the hole? Here's a hint; it only cost me $.25.
One last change before the engine is ready to fire up. The Holley carb that was on it had a problem with one of the floats. With the fuel pump running, fuel was leaking into the intake manifold from the secondary system; it was actually more like pouring in rather than leaking. Since I had to take the carb off to check it out, I put a Demon carb on that I had. Even though this one hadn't been used in several years, it didn't seem to be leaking internally or externally.
So, I think that everything is in place ready to give the engine a test!
So let's go on to page 10 to see what is next....(click here)