Ok as much as I have worked on Fiero's I have not touched a 4cyl Fiero in 10 years. Everything I do and work on for people has been V6 cars. Usually when a 4cyl car blows a motor, I tell them to send it to wrecker and start with a V6. However this being an 87, in good condition, no wrecks, all original and the lady that owns it loves the car to death her hubby and I are going to install a V6 in it for her.    I have started a list of items that I know we are going to need. I told him to get everything on the list he could and the remaining items I'll pull from my personal stock of spare parts. I have already located the engine for him and he is going to pick it up tonight.


Ok car is an 87 4cyl Isuzu 5spd and we are installing an 86 2.8 onto the Isuzu then back into the 87 Coupe.

List of items needed

V6 clutch kit with Isuzu Throw out Bearing
V6 Fuel Pump

V6 throttle cable.
V6 exhaust complete with Y-Pipe
V6 Engine Harness,
V6 ECM
All V6 coolant Hoses
V6 Flywheel
V6 front Engine Mount
V6 Dog bone
Either cut her rear bumper skin, or find an 88 Formula rear skin.
V6 Gauge cluster
Optional V6 Aux cluster.

I can't think of anything else off the top of my head, anyone done recently and can add anything to the list?

My guess is 40hrs of total labour start to finish. Which in other terms, 2 guys should be able to pull it off in 2 long days or 3 short days, if nothing goes wrong.   If something does go wrong, probably add an extra day.

I think that is about it, anyone know anything that I am missing?

Nope new air box is needed.

Cruise is not needed.

Rad is different, however in our climate, its fine.

Yes both cradles for the 4 and the 6 are the same.

One thing I forgot was the throttle cable has to be changed. 

       Well Todays Pics

The Victim, err Project car

Kinda looks like it is smiling.

Ya its eager to go fast.  Even has tire sizes to match an 85GT (215/60/14's)

Thats the last you should see of this thing, well until its been removed at least.

I looked under and went oh, crap.

Then after a bit More removal this is what I found. 

This is the battery tray area.    

Strut Tower is just as bad.

At this point, I stopped work for the night and called Damien.  (spelling)   After talking to him, he says, as bad as it looks, he's worked with a ton worse.  Said nothing a welder and some metal and some time can't fix.  So he says go ahead with the project and he'll take care of the rust issues.  

     So the project is a full on go.   I'm going to start back at it, tomorrow.  Hopefully I can have the cradle on the ground by tomorrow afternoon.   

That pole structure you see over the car in the 3rd pic has now had the cover put on it so if it does rain, I will have a nice dry area to work.  I had thought about  moving the project into the garage where its dry heated and such, but I actually prefer to work outside on projects that are not "long term"   I have more room to move things around and such.

     My ultimate goal is to have this thing de-bugged and on the road for at the latest the club meeting next weekend.   I am sure Micheal will be happy going from a 4cyl to a warmed over V6 with a performance Cam installed.  Plus with the Isuzu installed should still get well above average gas mileage. 

         And, Uh Hum, you know who you are, you never got me back that spare flywheel I sent with you to get machined down.  Maybe someday I could get it back?

Capt Fiero wrote: ...an 87, in good condition, no rust, no wrecks, all original...

You need to invest in a new source for your info.

                          LOL, the No Rust was an assumption I made.  So no foul to the owner.  It looked clean until I tore the skin off of it. 

           Sorry guys no pics as I didn't stop till well after dark.  I am just calling it a night now.  However the cradle is now on the ground.  Still under the car as I lost my lights.  (power went out again tonight)   Power was off most of the day, then came back on around 2pm, then off again around 7pm, now says it won't be back on till 8am Friday.

        As for the throttle cable, I left that job to Damien, and he looked at the job and said, uhm, why do we need to change the entire cable when all it needs is a new end with correct stopper.  So he is going to just cut off the 4cyl end with 4cyl mount, then graft the V6 one on in its place.   

                    The reason for taking so long today was the damn Muther Frucking, Sen of er Batch front cradle bolts were seized in the metal inserts in the bushings,  the bolts would turn, however you could feel the metal sleeve spinning inside the rubber.  Took me several hours pounding, beating, prying, pulling and finally they came out.     Did I ever mention how much I hate rust.   However with any luck, I'll have the cradle out from under the car and start stripping out the good parts and getting it ready for the V6.   

       Its not too bad working outside, even with the wind today, it was pretty decent, just went it gets dark and the rain and cold start to soak in that you say, uhm, am I nuts.  LOL. 

                Well we are still without power, so I should get off here and save battery power for later.   I'll try to snap some pics in the morning and get them posted up.

LOL at this rate I might have to.  

IN the end I had the 2 G31's hooked in parallel then added a 3rd Optima style batter in parrell with the 2 G31s then had to putt a jumper box on the stack in parrell,  then at that point I finally had enough power that everything was staying just over 12v.  At 12v the inverter goes into freak out mode and shuts off so your car battery won't die.   I removed the interveter and booster box and got the stack charging on the same style smart charger as you have.   The pair of jumper boxes I have are also charging on there own right now. 

John I am really going to need to get that patch cable from you soon.  Looks like I am going to need this setup sooner than later.  Also might need to grab your 18" wall drill bit.  

Ok but back to cars.   Man its going to be a difference for her, one engine that has almost no power, to a V6 that is semi built.  I think she is going to have lots of fun.

      Oh P.S. John, this might be a good duke for you to start your gen system on.     I am not going to want a 4cyl engine hanging around our place for long.

 I may have some bits that can help. ( like a v6 cradle, flywheel, and good rubber mounts.)

I will call you.

       Well before I forget, its not a 2.8 with a cam, its a 3.1 or 3.2 with a cam, turns out Clynt used a later stroker engine.  So this should have lots of snap compared to the old Duke that was in it.

Alright on with the pics.  The reason for no update, is that as soon as we gathered the parts we have been non stop until we were ready to pass out.  Last night it wasn't till almost 11pm that we stopped working.

Thanks to Parts Blair gave us, parts I had in the locker and parts, Damien bought from Clynt at a very steal of a deal price.  Then a trip to Lordco, we are pretty much set.

So get ready for lots of pics, there is 35 of them.

The first drop pics.

Rust Repair, and trust me it gets better further on.

The "Empty Engine" pic that every build must have.

The Sad old Duke

The Isuzu

Hmm Army Green?   Na Special Primer.  Notice the Patchwork.  Looking Good.

The Man at Work, Welding and Painting, Welding and Painting. WOW he never quits.

The 3.2 V6 getting ready to go in.

Some more of the sad old duke engine.

New Clutch installed.  Sure looks heavy duty for an OEM replacement.

Hmm, can you spot the thing you shouldn't see.

Hmm, nope this end is fine.

How bout there, Hmm, whoops that is suppose to be up inside.

Well a few good taps, and a small prayer.   We pushed it back up inside the trans and put a few drops of lock tight on the outside of the bushing, hopefully it stays put.

Remember that nasty battery tray.  Well we did not replace it, Damien managed to make it look like new.

  Only drawback to all this work with the portable sand blaster, my driveway is now orange, I think someone will be doing some muddy sweeping.

And the final shots of tonight, before I climbed into the house to pass out.

Yes Dr, I made Mr. Dawg a grocery list of part number to get from Lordco.  I am not sure what you are seeing, but the throwout bearing is not even installed in any of those pics.  I've gone around this block a few times using V8 clutches on an Isuzu Trans.  I even gave him the BC Bearing number in case he needed it.

The swap is going along really well so far.

Sorry guys no pics today.

However here is the run down.

Damien changed out the fuel pump from a 4cy. pump to a V6.   I pulled the old exhaust manifolds off and installed a set from Damien.  No busted bolts YAAA

Tim and I got the engine bolted to the cradle a few of the mounts were a bugger but eh such is life.

While wiring I came to the conclusion that it was going to be a nightmare.  The harness Clynt had was for any auto.  I really did not want to deal with looking up specs, finding what wires to go where so I changed a spare harness we got from Blair.  I did have to do a fair bit of soldering through, the g round wires for the head were all cut.  The oil pressure sender wiring had to be moved.  The coil wires had been cut off so I had to rob them from Clynt's old harness.

              Then reinstalled the harness and plugged everything in.  OH Deamies modified the filler neck to delete the TB coolant pipes.

We managed to locate a proper V6 5spd ECM for him too.

There are tons of little things to be done, but we are getting really close.

Capt Fiero wrote: We managed to locate a proper V6 5spd for him too.

Dave, could you elaborate on that a bit?

Patrick wrote: Capt Fiero wrote: We managed to locate a proper V6 5spd for him too. Dave, could you elaborate on that a bit?

Sorry left out the word ECM.

  Ok so it was late last night, that on some last min soldering near the front of the cradle, I came across the fact that both front cradle bolts had been cut off rather than removed.  This fused the busted bits into the rubber bushings.   There was no way to get those busted bits out.  I just happen to have a set of poly cradle mounts here that I had been saving for a long time.  I told him well, we are kinda screwed, so we agreed I would give him mine and he would grab me a set later to replace them.   We went ahead and did the entire cradle in poly rather than just the 2 front mounts.  Damien took care of the burning and drilling and they came out fairly easy with lots of burning from my propane torch.  

Well lets get onto the pics.

Nice open hole.  He even put some primer on as the paint got uhm, kinda burnt.

Nice new bushing installed.  Yes its black poly, not all poly is red.

Well seeing as his car was a 4, the exhaust was pretty useless so we grabbed one of my spare sets from storage and he did some quick welding, all of a sudden, we had a complete V6 exhaust, its not a stock exhaust, however should sound really mean behind the 3.1 V6

Hmm,  that looks odd, its not on the ground.

Hmm is that a V6 coolant pipe fighting with an old 4cyl pipe.  (note the 4cyl drivers pipe is way too long,

and will have to be cut down.

Yaa, lookie here.   Its installed.  Still got to put the struts, CV shafts, brakes, and work out the details on the coolant hoses, but the V6 is completely installed.  Man that motor looks good in there. 

Well the thanks are appricated, this job was supposed be only a week at most and I think we are working on week 2.  However are not taking any short cuts, so its taking a bit longer than expected.

          You are going to LOVE this combination.  The Isuzu 5 and a V6 are a match made in heaven.  We are also beefing up a few things to make it hangle the bigger engine. (even beefier than 1/2 the club members V6's)  You should be really happy with it.  If the growl becomes too much for you, Damien can install a bottle muffer where the straight pipe use to be.

 LOL, If you want to get technical, the car got her late on the 3rd(the date the tags expired) , I started working on it on the next day the 4th, so Yesterday would have made 7 days.  With an honest average work from me of about 5hrs per day. Some closer to 3hrs, some closer to 8hrs. 

  We have roughly 3 working days, about 15hrs-18 working hours to get it done and on the ground. Assuming we end Friday night and they toss a permit on it Saturday morning and race to Aircare.

   I borrowed an adapter from FieroZen (Nigel) that has a coil clip on one end and an alligator clip on the other, used to verify the coil is getting power during cranking and even if necessary to power the coil from an external power source.

   Reason being as the good Dr. and I had a chat on the phone he said he has seen instances when the coil showed power fine, however as soon as you went to crank mode, the power dropped off.  That should no be the problem but grasping at straws is about where I am at.  I too went over the wiring schematics last night.   We'll go ahead and try the dist swap using all the parts from my 88GT and see where we go from there.    If the car still does not start using the dist from my 88 we will start checking for broken wires.

 Ok pics of the day,   Thanks to John Carlo for snapping a few extras.

    Fuel Lines Hooked Up,

Main Power Hooked Up.

ECM installed

Distributor swapped

Tweaking a Few Things.

Then LIFE   http://captfiero.com/damienmichealengineswap/friday/5.avi - http://captfiero.com/damienmichealengineswap/friday/5.avi   

Damn it felt good to hear it come alive, after all the nightmares and fighting.

Capt Fiero wrote: Damn it felt good to hear it come alive, after all the nightmares and fighting.

Don't leave us hanging! What was the problem with the ignition?

Oh well, at least it's a cheap fix (once the problem has been found!).

By the way, I like Damien's cap. I wouldn't mind getting one of those to wear while I'm working on my cars.

      What did it fail on, how bad, post up a scan of it, I am sure a lot of people would like to see.

LOL, currently he is running around with the prom from Clytns Auto car on an Isuzu 5spd.  So uhm ya, I mentioned that to him.  I am sure he will be in touch with you soon.

      Notes on the engine.

3.1 V6,

using I believe stock 15lb Fiero Injectors, if they are the larger 17lb injectors from the 3.1 then the Fiero fuel map should be fine.  If not, probably increase the high rpm range fuel curve 20%.  However leave the low side below 3000rpm stock.  If they are the larger injectors, I would say, reduce the low rpm fuel curve and leave the high rpm alone.

Timing.  Advance the low rpm under 3000 timing curve and leave the high end stock.  This is to compensate for the bleed off in the cam. (trust me on this, it took almost 14 degrees to get it to idle smooth, which I know must be hurting top end when compression catches up with cam)

Aftermarket Cam, info covered in Timing stuff.

EGR Delete

5spd Isuzu

I would leave fuel enrichment OFF

Again if you can find the last version of my 2.9 chip, which is the same one Brian is running in his 3.2 and loves it, then just tweak the fuel curve as Brian and I both had 19# injectors.  Then Burn that setup it should be perfect.   Hell just take that program reduce the entire fuel map 20% and it just might be perfect like that.

Here's the http://www.aircare.ca/inspinfo-get-results.php - Aircare test results  for my '86 GT. The last readings were with the EGR deleted, custom PROM, and no cat. The previous readings (where I failed the test) were when my cat was plugged!

I've added the maximum "Allowable" amounts for reference purposes.

Capt Fiero wrote: Well seeing as it started as a duke, I think the proper question would be to ask, is it faster than a Duke...

Come on Dave, the original engine is irrelevant.

Anyone who watched Cruising With John Carlo would know that John asked the perfect question.  And the engine is a 3.1 after all.

          Ya I do have a side line busniess and bills to pay, but I still enjoy helping Fiero people out, espeically when I know it is for a good reason.      So congrats on getting all the bugs worked out.  I am sure the wife is going to love it more and move as you drive it.