Real tech discussion on design, fabrication, testing, development of custom or adapted parts for Pontiac Fieros. Not questions about the power a CAI will give.
crzyone wrote:This took me about 5 minutes :thumbleft:
TB doesn't need to come off to remove the intake. Since I removed the power steering bracket, the intake comes on and off as quickly as you can take out the bolts holding it down.
Here is the underside of the intake, not sure if its any different than the earlier intakes
The intake was bolted to the water manifold, right?
It's considerably different than the earlier intake.
Intake is only bolted to the heads, and fits into the TB sleve as you can see. Havn't taken a close look at the TB to see how the water passages are set up, I'll get back to you.
That's the FWD getrag arm, right? Its shorter than the Fiero Getrag arm. You dont need to get the "full" travel out of it. Your FIero Getrag slave is going to overextend it, though probably not enough to mash the PP fingers into the clutch hub.
I did the calculations with that arm as I am using it with my 3.4 TDC.. you need a bit less than half an inch of travel at the slave with to get the same amount of TOB travel as you would with the Fiero Getrag arm with the Fiero Getrag slave fully extended! As you know, you dont have to push the pedal down all the way to fully disengage the clutch most of the time, so in reality its something like .4" of travel necessary with that arm.
I looked into adapting the FWD Getrag slave but the hydraulic line is all different and there is no bleeder on it as in the FWD application it is the lowest point in the system with no humps on the way to the master (you just bleed through the master). I could not find any other large bore slaves, so I used the Fiero Getrag slave (15/16") travel. I had no problems with overextension, but I dont know how close it was..
To prevent overextension (if you can't find a better slave) you can put a mechanical stop bt that arm so it can't push the TOB far enough to either fall off the ledge on the input shaft or push the pressure plate fingers into the clutch disc. There just happens to be a bellhousing bolt in exactly the right location. Stick one with a stud in that place and it should stop the arm before overextension can occur. Probably not a good thing for your seals.. but at least you can change slaves and whatnot to adjust the travel without dropping the cradle.. no risk of destroying the pressure plate!
Just putting a stock stud in that location worked for me. You could always make a threaded adjustable stop (use an acorn nut?) that goes on the stud if you need to extend it.
FYI with the Getrag slave (15/16" bore) and Fiero master cylinder (11/16" bore) you will get just over .8 inches of travel at the most.
The only problem I had was some pressure plate bolts backed out even though they were torqued to spec (will use loctite next time). I doubt it had anything to do with overextension though.
Pedal effort was decent and it didn't disengage too quickly to prevent fine control.
AS far as I know Levi is using a regular fiero getrag not a FWD unit.
A stock getrag slave should haev no problems with overextension.
A little trick levi that I do is to use a isusu slave on the getrag with the stock getrag slave rod. Full disengagement at about .5 inches of movement and slipping at around .25
Basically I just barely touch the pedal and its disengaging. Makes for ultra fast shifts.
The stock getrag slave its like the pedal has to be halfway down just to get partial disengagement and all the way to the floor for it to be fully disengaged. This adds up to time when racing.
Trani is a fwd Getrag, need Rodney's fwd adapter kit.
I will try a stock fiero getrag slave and see what happens, sounds like the fwd arm is shorter which might mean faster disengagement, or less travel to disengage the clutch.
More progress today. I installed the suspension and installed my lowering springs at the same time. I think I have everything in its proper location, but until I get Rodney Dickman's trani mounts I don't know for sure.
I started working on my motor mounts today. I didn't weld and I left room to move incase I don't have it where it needs to be. You can get an idea how my mounts will look.
I will be making 2 rear mounts, this one is slightly closer to the trani then the engine center line. this is just for added strength so I might be able to get away with not having a dogbone. Thats all I got done today, really can't go much furthur without the trani brackets.
Tell you the truth, I have no frigin idea where it is. :scratch: Looked all over the garage for it but its not here. Its just as easy to make my own mounts, and it will be alittle more compact. I'm solid mounting everything so it really doesn't matter.
with your your new crossbeam, if you had the n star mounting bracket, you would have at least been able to use that, and then fab up a tiny mount or just bolt the bracket straight to the beam
Thats what we did with Jon's. We just bolted the bracket to the new crossbeam.
Oh yea, I dont' think it would be wise to have the forward mount down near the oil pan like that.
Since you said you dont' want to use a dogbone I would try and find a way to get the upper half of the motor bolted down at least somewhere. I dont' know maybe all lower mounts would be ok.
I will have 5 mounting points including the trani, I havn't totally ruled out a dogbone, but I imagine the dogbone will have to be solid mounted as well. Don't want any flex on the solid mounts.
Ordered my fwd conversion kit from Rodney today along with a rear trani bracket, poly mount and a slave holder. Came to $270us.. ouch. Plus the $260 I just spent for the shift cables, slave and shifter. I think I should have stayed with the 4 speed but oh well. Atleast FWD getrags are cheap and easy to find.
Found out that I do need a fiero slave arm so I will probibly have clearance issues like you did Will. The FWD arm is shorter than the fiero.
So, by the time I get all I need for the Getrag it will be $600 Canadian, alittle more than I expected to spend but so far thats the way it has gone with this swap. I guess one good thing is I didn't have to pay for a rebuilt getrag or I would have easily spent another $1000.
crzyone wrote:Ordered my fwd conversion kit from Rodney today along with a rear trani bracket, poly mount and a slave holder. Came to $270us.. ouch. Plus the $260 I just spent for the shift cables, slave and shifter. I think I should have stayed with the 4 speed but oh well. Atleast FWD getrags are cheap and easy to find.
Hope you're not planning on combining solid engine mounts with poly transmission mounts...
crzyone wrote:Ordered my fwd conversion kit from Rodney today along with a rear trani bracket, poly mount and a slave holder. Came to $270us.. ouch. Plus the $260 I just spent for the shift cables, slave and shifter. I think I should have stayed with the 4 speed but oh well. Atleast FWD getrags are cheap and easy to find.
Hope you're not planning on combining solid engine mounts with poly transmission mounts...
