Anyone know what the size and pitch of the cold start block off valve bolt is off the top of your head.  We are in the final stages of putting Tim's Fiero back together and still need to get that bolt.  We have done a vacuum line delete on the car, CSV delete on the car, EGR delete and just about anything else we can delete.  Like the rear breather pipe is a K&N Filter as well.  

        We have redone his valve lash as well, hopefully that will get ride of the tick he was having, and flushed about a gallon of diesel through the engine while it was apart to remove any crude that was left over from some work done to the engine.

However we are stopping for the night, if no one knows the exact bolt off the top of their head, I am just going to take a spare fuel rail into Lordco and ask them to find me a bolt that will thread into it.  All I can remember is that it was a drain pan bolt from a Honda.

The fuel rail threaded on the inside, however there is an adapter that is threaded into the rail for the cold start valve tube that is threaded on the outside.  If you remove that adapter, it becomes just a normal bolt hole that you can stuff a bolt into.  I never thought about leaving the adapter in place and filling it with gasket stuff and putting the cap back on.  That might be an easier idea.  However it would make it much larger and not as clean, it would be easier to do that running to the parts store to find the right bolt.  I'll talk to Tim in the morning and see which way he wants to go.

P.S. when we drained the crank case, there was 2 gallons of antifreeze, 2 gallons of diesel and 1.5 gallons of engine oil.  So yes almost 6 gallons of stuff.  It was kinda neat seeing the antifreeze come out clean and pure as the first layer then a thicker layer of oil then a thinner layer of oil and diesel mix pouring out.  With little metal chunks popping out every now and then.  I think I might strain the entire mess and see just what I end up with for junk that came out of the engine. 

With the valve train now tight and all the misc vacuum leaks fixed I am hoping this engine runs way better than before.  I doubt with those loose rockers he was getting anywhere near full lift on the valves.  Don't get wrong the car was quick before for an automatic, now it should be a bit more snappy throughout the rpm range. Next up is an adjustable Fuel Pressure regulator and fuel pressure gauge for him to play with.  Then an Air Fuel meter.

Capt Fiero wrote: P.S. when we drained the crank case, there was 2 gallons of antifreeze, 2 gallons of diesel and 1.5 gallons of engine oil.  So yes almost 6 gallons of stuff.  It was kinda neat seeing the antifreeze come out clean and pure as the first layer then a thicker layer of oil then a thinner layer of oil and diesel mix pouring out.  With little metal chunks popping out every now and then.  I think I might strain the entire mess and see just what I end up with for junk that came out of the engine.

Did I miss something? What the heck happened to Tim's engine that would've led to this mess?

His thermostat housing cap was leaking, and even with a new cap it was leaking, so he found a new complete housing.  What was suppose to be a 20min job started off bad a stud snapped off in the aluminum intake, then the 2nd stud snapped off.  I called a friend and he came over with assorted taps and easy out, and went to work on it, in the end he was able to extract the broken studs and leave enough threads for us to put the new housing on.  Next day we get it all together and start pouring coolant in, glug glug it goes in.  Now I know that we should have only lost maybe 1 cup of coolant at most doing the job.  But well maybe he was low to begin with, so we put in a full gallon, then a 2nd full gallon and I can hear water running into the engine.  I pull the dipstick and my heart sank.  When the holes were being drilled and tapped, the person drilling drilled straight through the intake, straight through the oil baffle, into the head and glanced a water jacked in the head.  This resulted in all the water in the cooling system pouring straight over the lifter valley and the cams. the Worst part about it, was the metal filings from the drill are now all over the cam, the lifters, and sprinkled all through the top end of the engine.  We spent 2 days with the top end torn down, cleaning and pouring diesel down there, then using brake clean to blast out the bit, then several magnets to grab as many metal bits, and going over it with a shop vac dozens of times.  Today we start on the re-assembly, setting the valves and putting in all new gaskets.  The hole in the head, was repaired with J B Weld then smoothed over with a razor blade to make sure it was solid and perfect for the gasket to match it.  I do have pics of the damage and can post however just been to busy and kinda reluctant to post as the job was a mistake and I don't want the person that made the mistake to feel any worse about it than he already does.  Crap happens and he was Trying to help us, and going out of his way to give me a hand.

I did have to tear one of my spare good motors apart to steal its intake manifold for Tims car and found out that my spare motor has the Multec injectors in it.  Which are worth more than I was trying to sell the motor for.  P.S. Tims motor has the Multecs as well, so that is a major kudo to him.  (Multec injectors don't have a needle pintle to clog and don't need routine cleaning, they get installed and never have problems.   They are just a new style more robust injector.  However in the aftermarket they are worth 10x what normal Fiero injectors are worth.   

Well its bed time for me.

Good Night All

Oh lordy lord, what an unfortunate experience.

I certainly hope everything works out okay in the end.

The engine is running better than ever.  Sorry for not updating this thread, in a timely manor just been so busy being Mr. Mom.

Ok we got the top end done, we went to Lordco to get the bolt the counter guy was an A%%hole.  I showed him what I needed and he blatantly said Nope we don't carry parts like that.  He was kind enough to let me see there normal bolt area, I kinda new that I would not find it there, but I wanted to look anyway.  While at Lordco buying some of there new SUPER CHEAP 10w30 Semi synthetic at 12.52 a gallon, I called up Alder Auto parts,  The guy at Alder instantly knew what I needed and said come on down.   Within 5 Min's of getting there, he walked me straight into the back, found what I needed and even found me the special rubber lined steel core washer that is suppose to go on there.  Total cost was 4 bucks and change.

Here are some pics to explain, I will post some pics of the engine work in a bit.  Like in 5 Min's a bit, so a rather short time if you know what I mean.  They are coming to take me away he ha, to the funny farm where the men in the nice white coats.

Ok the drain plug.

The Receipt with all the info on size, type and part number as well as where to get it at all the different alder auto parts locations.

Ok next post will be pics of the job we did.  They are not great pics, but they show lots of different angles.

Alright here we go, there is about 30 pics to go through.  Many of them are of the same thing just from a different angle or quality of shot.

Fist off the "over drill" of the intake, there are 2 holes that went through, however only one did damage to the head.

You will see the 2 holes, just look for the blue gasket goo

Alright here goes.

Underside of Fiero V6 intake, you can see where the bolt holes punched through.  There is nearly Zero distance between the bottom of the intake and the head, which made it really difficult to realize that the drill had went into it in the first place.

The real damage "The Head" At the upper right corner of the water jacked you can see where the bit drilled in and destroyed the gasket sealing area.

The 2nd problem is that a combination of both water, steel dust and chips, and Aluminum bits are now coating the enter lifter valley as well as metal chunks in the water jacket.  The steel bits for the most part we were able to remove with a magnet, however the aluminum we could not really get out, and obviously the oil mixed with the water was a bit of an issue as now all the bearings would be sitting in a pool of water in the crank case.

This is the lifter valley and push rod area, you can see all the mixed metal, water and other junk, pretty messy job.

We chose to wash it all down with about 2 gallons of diesel to clean most of it and rinse it down to the crank case so it could be safely drained out the bottom.

The Repair, after talking to a few people, they all said for this issue, JB Weld would be the trick, hard as steal and easy to apply.  Can handle the temps we needed and should never need attention ever. So I mixed up a batch of JB and started applying it like putty, I went back every 30mins and re shaped it, then after 8hrs of setting up, I took a razor blade and skimmed over the top of it. Giving it a razor smooth finish to the head.  Then we waited another 8hrs for it to totally harden up.  I still felt there was a tiny bit of a sinked grade, so I used some black RTV as a finishing compound.  It worked perfect, the end result, if you moved your hand across the patch it was dead smooth you could not tell where it went from metal to patch and back to metal surface again.  I was happy.  

Since we had to remove all the push rods I had Tim clean then all up on the wire wheel as well as all the bolts.  We then got to work setting the valve train up.  I used my personal choice of 1 full turn on used valve train. I got 1.5 turns on new valve train.

Just a quick snaps of Dawg's premium distributor, coupled with Tims MSD Wires, MSD Cap and Rotor and MSD Coil. 

We drained out 14 liters of mixed water, oil and diesel out of the car, and put in 4 liters of cheap Lordco branded oil. 

Well we got it all together and got it running, it ran amazing well after we sorted out a minor wiring glitch thanks to Dr.Fiero for some over the phone wiring tech support.  We ran the engine for about 20 mins to circulate the new oil and allow as much of the crap could not get out, to get sucked into the oil filter, then we drained out the cheap oil (which came out black as black can be)  We installed a new Delco filter and filled it up with 5 liters of Penzoil 10w30.

End result.  The car runs amazing, better than ever before.  We are betting that intake had not been off since the engine was built 25 years ago.  Which means the valves had not been adjusted in that long.  With everything clean and valves adjusted back to perfect the car is running amazing, better than ever.  Runs smoother, more pep and I am guessing it will even give him a few extra mpg as well as MPH on the highway if he boots on it.

actually i believe that motor was freshened up when the good doc installed it and that was about 7-8 years ago...  other than the usual ignition module problems that motor never gave us any problems...

glad to see that it is back togeather and tim is enjoying it again 

I have been talking to the Doc  nearly everyday during this project, and did do stuff like the gaskets on the pan, timing cover,water pump and upper intake, but did does not remember ever pulling the lower intake down far enough to do the valve lash.  The gaskets that were on there defiantly looked OEM or at least very old.  I have told a few people the funny story on how many people have owned that engine over the years. 

It started with one of Larry W's friends, then Larry owned it in his Black 86GT, which was sold to John Boss who Owned it, then the engine was pulled out of Johns car and sold to you, for Crystals car, which was then sold to Tim. So that motor has been in 2 different Fiero's over 5 different owners and is still going strong.  I guess GM was having a really good day when they built that motor.  Gawd only knows how many KM's are on it.  300,000 maybe?

A quick favor, could someone that gets email replies to this thread, please forward me a copy of the email it sent you for the post I made with all the pics in it.  I just want to see if the pics show up in my email client or not.

Send them to mailto:capt@captfiero.com - capt@captfiero.com