My 3800 SC1 swap

Success!


The trapped nut on the drivers side broke loose inside though, but still held in enough for me to get the cradle off but I will have to cut into there and fix that up. The cradle itself has a couple nicks and dings but is in good shape overall and pretty rust free.

I started working on making templates for my alternator bracket and a tensioner pulley bracket.


Thats my plan, the alt in the lower right and the tensioner up above.
There is just enough room for about a 1/4" plate against the side of the head, I will probably have the hole threaded in the plate itself as well as a bit of a nut sticking up into the back of the tensionner housing. There is enough space to grind out for a nut just so there is more thread for the tensioner to hold onto.

I'd use something stronger than a red string as well.

 

Haha i guess I should make the alternator
mount out something other than cardboard
too:p
The other day I started working on the
mounts. I got 2/3 mounts working and lined
up but the front engine mount still needs
some work. The mount I got off the minivan
puts the rubber centered beneath the
balancer but the mounting point on the cradle
is offset 2 or 3 inches towards the front of the
car.

D_sensitized wrote: Also, isn't there supposed to be some sort of rubber or bushings here? the cradle was just bolted to the frame with nothing in between is that tube supposed to be welded in?

It's an '88 thing.  They did away with the flex in the cradle there by solid mounting it.

WitchHunter Performance down in Washington State are highly regarded and charge $19 per injector.

 

Thanks Patrick,

Their site says they no longer ship to Canada though. I sent them an email asking if they would send it to a PO box in Blaine I may be able to use.

We'll see how it goes.

I sent them an email and the P.O. box in Lynden (not blaine) will work fine, I will just need to pay washington sales tax.I will send them out tonight.

I was tinkering around looking through all the stuff that came with my engine, I will need to figure out just what parts of the wiring harness I actually need since I have just about every wire from the donor car minus what goes into the doors and under the seats. (I even have some turn signal bulbs and all the way to the plug for the rear taillights harness as well as under the dash behind the radio, HVAC etc.)


This shows some engine bay wiring beyond a firewall passthru. 3 plugs off this section plug into the transmission


more stuff:




I still don't completely understand just what I'm supposed to do for making a wiring harness. I know I just need the C500 and C203 connectors from the fiero but I don't really know what to do with the ECM wiring. I found this thread http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Archives/Archive-000001/HTML/20070 315-2-074653.html on PFF that seems to be usefull but i don't know if it's much different being obd2 and I have obd1.
tips and advice appreciated.

I went through the engine harness to track down all the plugs for sensors etc and have those all figured out but 1.


2 wires, black and green, down near the front of the engine( the one on the left with the wires exposed)


In the meantime I'll reread that PFF thread and look around for more info to help me.

Got the engine bolted to the cradle today, and just put more off the bolt ons back on.

Injectors have been cleaned and are on their way back.

I was making a list of things that still need to be done/figured out.

-Pulleys
I got everything pretty much figured out, just need to get some steel plate for the tensioner bracket and when the alt is mounted I can find out what length belt I will need. I will leave some play before finalizing the alt bracket to put it in a good position for a common length belt.

-Coolant lines
For these is will be mostly stock, stock tstat, heater core running off the stock line in the intake manifold and putting a filler neck straight up off the now unneeded heater core return.

-Wiring
Still don't really know how I will be doing this, I got a bunch of wiring diagrams with the motor but they are for a oldsmobile 98 not an 88 so it won't be much good since things arent in the same spots.

-Axles
I have a few axle bits lying around so I will see what I can do with what I have and if not I will probably head over to pick a part to get anything needed. There are lot's of threads about them on PFF

-Throttle/shifter cable
I will need to get the engine in the car to see if the stock cables are long enough to go the routing I am thinking of so will wait on these. Hopefully the shifter bracket from the fiero trans will be short enough to fit next to the exhaust crossover. I will still need to dent into the heat shielding though.

-Misc
I can no longer mount the coil pack in the stock location since my belt tensionner is going there so i will mount it on the side of the other head, I can still use the stock bracket but might make a nicer one later down the line.
I will need to get enough fuel/vacuum/coolant lines to make everything meet up.
Get new rear cradle bolt for the one that stripped when it came out and cut into the frame so I can weld the trapped nut back in that broke loose when I took out the cradle.

-Exhaust
My plan is to have a small catalytic converter right off the manifold pointing down, then T off to 2 mufflers, one on each side and out the back.

-Intake
For now I will probably just route it to the stock airbox but will eventually make a better one when I get around to making sidescoops for the car.

Lemme know if I'm overlooking anything. I will still need to buy stuff like all the fluids, spark plugs etc.

I got the injectors back from witchhunter performance. Actually they
got picked up from lynden last Tuesday so from the time I sent them
out to when I got them back was no more then 8 days. And it looks
like they did a good job. The injectors weren't too bad for the most
part, before was about 3% variance and after was 1%. I got some
shiney go fast red paint on and installed them. Sorry, I didn't have my
camera when I installed them so I'll get some pics later.

Looking at the back tranny mount, it's skewed towards the front of the
engine a bit so I gotta pull it a off the cradle and widen the holes to
move it over enough.

I got the last gasket I needed from lordco today (throttle body) so I can
get the whole engine together now minus belt.

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get my alternator bracket bent up and
installed and then start the wiring harness.
I'll try to remember my camera this time :P

update:
been working on wiring mostly lately, alternator bracket still needs to be mounted but the holes are drilled to mount the alt to the bracket.

I'm adding a firewall plug to the wiring which I know makes things more difficult for me since I pretty much have to make 2 harnesses (for each side of the firewall) but I like it better this way.
I'm using the firewall plug from the donor car (pics earlier) but since none of the trans wiring went through I need some more connectors which I'll probably pick up tomorrow.

Some wiring questions:
Oil pressure sending unit- is it just wired the same as it was stock on the fiero? I'm going of the diagrams on the GMtuners website and it doesn't mention this.

one of the wires off the TPS pin B I think. I got the other 2 wires done but I don't have anything that says where this one goes, is it needed?

The sensor in the oilpan- again, I don't have anything that says what to do with it as I don't have the diagrams from the donor car.

There's 2 plugs coming from the gear selector electronic dealie on the transmission around the shifter, I know what to do with the 4 wire plug, but nothing says anything about the other larger one, 6 or 7 pin i think, one is a larger gauge yellow wire.

I will get some pics tomorrow or the day after of the connectors in question if no one knows which ones I'm talking about.

The wiring diagram I'm going off:
http://www.gmtuners.com/files/94-95_C-H-G-U_3800_PCM_Fiero.p df
I know it says obd 1 for series 2 engines but if it's all the same electronics it shouldn't matter should it?