The Mule rides again (sort of) - pics.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I am Jack's underutilized sense of accomplishment.







Edit: Got it.

[Shaun41178(2)]

I can only see one pic

The last one

[The Dark Side of Will]

Figured it out.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Also fixed the cooling system bleed fitting.
This fitting is directly responsible for the episode that led to the original Northstar cracking a liner and necessitating my ten year build.
It was originally connected to the pressurized overflow tank via the throttle body coolant line. Since neither of those components are present in the Fiero, I just capped it off and used it to help bleed the system. The problem is that durable caps are not made anywhere. The caps would fail and cause the engine to lose coolant. Now I have a purpose-built bleed fitting which will not do that. Using a lower pressure cap on the rear fill than the radiator fill, I have never had a problem with keeping the engine cool. However, it may take a heat cycle or two to correctly purge the system.









Edit: Looks like I need to do something about the heater inlet cap as well... I've been thinking for a while that using the stock Northstar heater pipes that wrap around the block along with the '85/'86 V6 heater return that connect to the rear of the waterpump would allow the Fiero and Northstar systems to connect very easily as well as clean up the engine bay... now I just need to *find* those components.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Awesome! Aftermarket MR shocks live on!

http://www.magneshocks.com/

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Getting welded.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Fuel for the Northstar weight fire:

[Shaun41178(2)]

pallets weigh 62 lbs? I didn't think they were that heavy

[The Dark Side of Will]

Palets that are appropriate for shipping an engine cross-country can be pretty heavy.

[The Dark Side of Will]

The pipe stayed pretty straight in that the ends still lined up, BUT for some reason it warped in such a way that the V-band flanges were way off... of course those had already been welded.

Lesson Learned: Weld the V-band flanges *LAST*

So the V-band flanges had to be cut off and repositioned. I'd had the welder hold off on welding the leg from the X to the upper catalyst. The "downpipe" from the upper catalyst out to the right side exhaust cutout is within about 1/16" of the cradle. I was thinking of reworking the leg of the X-pipe to move that catalyst to the left about an inch, but decided to just trim 1/4" off both sides of both inlet and outlet connections, resulting in 1/2" movement. So the final leg and the post-cat pipe are getting welded this week.

Because I hadn't had the time to install my new CAD program and model the custom mufflers I want to have built, I'll just run straight tailpipes until I do get those mufflers built. At least it'll have an X and dual cats to quiet it down, compared to straight duals before.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Fired it up for the first time in months today.

I replaced the ignition module in the coil pack with a NOS Delco unit I bought on ebay. There was no heat sink compound between the module and the baseplate... Not sure why. I used electrically conductive heat sink compound from Galco on it when I reassembled. The torque spec for the 4mm bolts that secure the coils and module to the base plate is 30 inlbs.

Since it had sat for months, I poured a cap full of ATF into each cylinder. That sat for a couple of hours as I got everything back together. I left the coil pack power connector unplugged and cranked it until the starter was hot several times and did not build any oil pressure. I plugged the coil pack power in, fired the engine and had oil pressure within 1 second. Weird.

I left the cats off so that it could burn off the ATF and blow out any junk that had accumulated in the ports, manifolds and pipes. It was loud, but didn't quite sound the same... I guess I'll see what the X-pipe does when I actually drive it.

It still had the ignition drops. The next thing I'll hit up will be the crank sensors.

The clutch hyds need to be either bled or replaced... I guess I'll bleed them tomorrow and then determine if they need to be replaced. The master cylinder is a fairly new steel unit.

Friday afternoon the welder finished up the V-band flanges and making welding the tabe to the X-pipe which will pick up a tab on the manifold end-cap to help support the X-pipe. There will be one on the other run also, but I need to figure out exactly what it will look like. Now that I have the tab and the V-band to locate the X-pipe relative to the rear manifold, I can remove both in order to do more work on them. This is relatively easy. Removing the front manifold is a giant pain in the ass. The extremely tight packaging of *EVERYTHING* around the front manifold is one of the reasons I kept the stock manifold and didn't try to fab one for the front... just yet.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Clutch hyds came right back after flushing, even though I didn't *see* any air bubbles come out. Oh well, that's a Fiero for you...

[The Dark Side of Will]

Pics:

Coil pack build:


Manifold end cap and support tabs, EGR fitting:


Partial under-car shot


Partial under-car shot


Clearance to oil pan


Clearance to oil pan


Clearance to transmission mount bracket


Clearance to stock exhaust pass-under in the rear cradle crossmember


Under the pan:


Under the CV joint


Above the axle


Below the axle


Around the rear V-band clamp

[Series8217]

Looks great!

[The Dark Side of Will]

Thanks!

I need to put the rear fascia back on and install an electronic flasher to correctly flash the LED marker lights in order to have the car inspected.

Once the car passes inspection:

-Convert to intermediate shaft axle to get the right CV joint out for the middle of a bunch of exhaust components.
-Build wiring harness adapter to convert to Shelby computer
-Revisit mounting tab design for the muffler mock-ups.

-And get the Air Conditioning operational!

[The Dark Side of Will]

Got the riv-nuts planted in the fascia support and the fascia installed... need to snag some fender washers to finish the job, but it's good enough for inspection now. My dad should be getting it inspected tomorrow so it's good through August of next year.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Shipped Alan Johnson a bunch of rebuildable Northstar cores in order to get them out of my way. He sent me a full set of 288 cams with redrilled intake sprockets and a Shelby flywheel/clutch.

[The Dark Side of Will]

1. Installed O2 sensor bung in the rear manifold
2. Does it look like this part has seen just a weeee bit of heat? The log is made of 409 SS, which turns colors much more quickly than the 304 SS which the runners and cat housings are made of. I'm thinking of having the manifold ceramic coated.
3. The upper cat (above) appears to get a bit warmer than the lower cat. The manufacturer's label is still legible on the lower one, but turned to charcoal on the upper. I'm assuming that's because there's less cooling air around the upper cat than the ther is around the lower one, which is immediately adjacent to the undercar airflow.
4. It's tough to see in the photo, but the runners have a significant gold color and the upper cat is just starting to get a bit of gold coloration.

Also had A/C hoses rebuilt. I will install the VOV and charge the system with R134 tomorrow.

Replaced the crank sensors with $30 NOS units from ebay. Of the two I removed, one had a *VERY* weak magnet, while the other had the same magnetic strength as the new sensors. I haven't started it yet, but we'll see if that fixes the ignition drops problem.

Should be pulling the suspension apart to start developing the IMS axle installation tomorrow as well.

[The Dark Side of Will]

New crank sensors got rid of the ignition drops.
Replacing them was a *VERY* fussy operation accomplished manipulating the crank sensors using screw drivers as chopsticks... They're located inside the engine mount bracket and front exhaust manifold... I can barely put my fingertips on them, much less directly manipulate *ANYTHING* where they are. For the '05+ 58X engines, GM moved the crank sensor to the valley... about time they figured that out.

A/C works. The VOV helps a lot for low speed/low RPM operation. At <$20, it should be part of any R134 conversion. The manual specifies 2.5# of R12. I've read numbers from 75-90% for an R12->R134 conversion. I went with 90% and dropped 36 oz of R134 in.

I have designed the bracket to brace the end of the IMS housing. I may be able to get that produced this week and installed next weekend. My initial guess at how the design would work wasn't viable... there just isn't enough room between the axle and the side of the block for what I wanted to do.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I drove it to Baltimore for the Evanescence concert last night. Stuck in traffic on 495 wasn't fun as the idle tuning is off. The temp crept up two tick marks from where it normally sits, but it didn't overheat.
The A/C was good enough.
There's a hole in the firewall where the shift cables and throttle cable pass through. When I was first doing the swap, but dad thought it would be a good idea to cut out that area and bring the wiring through there so he didn't have to lengthen half the wires in the harness. I've since done that work and currently route the harness through the stock firewall pass-through fitting. However, the hole in the firewall lets hot engine compartment air into the passenger compartment and makes the A/C's job harder. I'll be fixing that hole darn soon.

I got back to my place from Baltimore this morning and prepped to go to work. I started it up again and the accessory belt shredded. At least it waited until I got back to the house do that. I was able to get to Advance and back on just the battery. They had two belts in stock, so I snagged both.

I've replaced the heater cap, the rear coolant fill purge cap and the accessory belt at this point. What other rubber is on the car that will fail shortly?
The Mule is reminding me that it is in fact a car that hasn't been driven significantly for ten years and that these first two weeks will definitely be a shakedown.