’87 Duke to 2.8 Conv.

'87s are an "easy" (cough) year to swap, as a lot of the parts were the same.  It's the first swap I did, about 12 years ago.

Having a wrecked donor car is the easiest, but....

You'll ideally need the WHOLE harness.  I'm talking everything except the front (underhood) compartment.  You can bodge it, but I prefer doing it the right way.

ECM, engine, exhaust, mounts, fuel tank (or just the pump, and some feel it's the same pump, but they are different part #'s), cooling crossover pipe....  the list goes on (see why I say donor car is easier?!).  Technically, the L/H main coolant pipe is also wrong, but that CAN be modded to work, and it's such a huge pain to swap.


Ummm...  still wanna do it?  

Well, frankly...  just give up on modding a duke.  Short of tossing a 150 shot on it, and remembering you'll probably never see the bottom of the bottom before you're picking up the bits.  

With a donor car of the same year (87/88 makes it MUCH easier, and gives you a better source of spares like headlight motors -- but at worse use an '86, just don't use an '85) it shouldn't be that bad.  It's pretty much a bolt in (except for that l/h coolant pipe).

You can gut the whole interior and swap the harness in about 4hrs.  Then take your time, clean it all up and reassemble.

The engine...  just yank the complete cradle, tranny and all.  Mod the l/h coolant pipe to the same rough length as the V6's one. Stuff the assy into the hole where your duke lived.  Attach wires, hoses, etc.  Done.

I'm over simplifying of course, but not much!

Just remember...  someone put it together by hand at the factory. Just use common sense and reverse the order of what they did.  Don't take shortcuts, don't cut anything, etc.

Read this thread in its entirety, this is the exact swap that Dawg did we swapped in a V6 into his 87 Coupe 5spd.  There are parts lists and 3 pages of photos and updates.  He loved the V6 5spd combo so much he went and bought a send Fiero to play with. Then took his first car apart and used it to maintain the 2nd car.   Going from a Duke to a V6 will be the best thing you can do if you want to keep the car for a long time.  In the end rebuilding a dead duke is more costly than installing a V6.  Don't get me wrong, you do end up opening up a can of worms, you WILL find a lot of little jobs to do while you are in there, as you will see in this other thread.  Rust that you didn't know about, wiring that might need to be repaired and so on.  Its not hard at all, just time consuming.   

Link to the thread.

http://www.westcoastfieros.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=159 6&KW=dawg