Ottawa Fiero Club Forum

Where to start?

We purchased the parts car mentioned here (http://www.fierodrivers.com/forum/index.php?topic=1992.0).  That thread also explains why we're performing this upgrade in the first place, if you care to read far enough along.  ;)

First things first.  As we had no clue when the donor engine was last run, I decided to bench test it.  Naturally a bunch of components were... tired after sitting for a year or more.

• nearly-seized starter motor, with a cracked mounting ear;
• mouse-eaten spark plug wires (I'm serious!);
• disgusting cap/rotor, weak pick-up coil;
• gummed up TBI & fuel pressure regulator;
• rotten coupler between fuel pump & output line;
• muffler full of sound deadener.

...and it works!  It still needs small handful of little things looked after before installing it, but I was impressed once it fired up.  No unusual mechanical noises, and smooth as glass when running.

Note to prospective followers of my bench testing method--a $20 box fan from CTC does not move enough air over the radiator to keep the engine at a decent running temperature for more than about 15 minutes.   ;D

The real work started yesterday.  To complete the illusion, why not exchange that puny little washer bottle and the funny-looking jack for those from the '86 as well?

ok, I can't resist....
I see the 'box' with "LT" on it.........
Don
are you putting in a chev 'crate' (sorry  ;D) engine!?!?!??!?
wow; I'm impressed.

LOL
nice to make some progress while the weather holds.
good for you

Fitting the 86+ washer fluid bottle is as simple as grinding off the lower mounting stud which was supporting the 84/85 bottle.  Cover the bare metal with paint, seam sealer, etc. once you're satisfied with the stud-ectomy.  Make sure that it's flush with the wheel well, and burr free.  A few thousand kilometers later & a few rough edges could rub a hole through the "new" bottle.

Boo hiss.  :)  LT-5 is the fifth crate we have that's full of lighting & electrical components.  We may actually have exceeded the volume of Gary's parts collection at this point.   ::)


Here's the support for the 85+ spare tire jack, which is going to spend some time in the de-ruster before it gets attached to the car.

Wiper motors...

You probably don't have to do this if you're in the technological dark ages and don't have intermittent wipers to deal with, as all 84's had non-delay wiper motors on the "outside."  The 84's which had the delay wiper option have a timing module burried in the interior wiring harness; 85+ models with delay wipers used a different wiper motor with a timing module which was part of the motor.

The pic below shows the (84's) non-delay wiper motor above, and the (85+) delay wiper motor below.

Switching the wiper motors is as simple as removing the cowling, unbolting everything...

...and then putting it all back together with the new motor in place of the old.  Nothing to worry about with the wiring--the pigtails for the delay vs. non-delay wiper motors are identical.

Remove the interior.  All of it.  Unless of course you opt not to install the 3rd brake light, then you can leave the headliner board in place.  In any case you'll likely find that it's much easier to do what you need to do if you don't have to work around trim panels, carpet, etc...

In the interest of not upsetting the Ministry of Transportation, and not relying upon memory when it comes to renewing licence plate permits and declaring the correct mileage, we move the odometer from the 84 instrument cluster to the 86 instrument cluster.

Note that this is a very complicated procedure, and should not be attempted without an assistant.

Try to pretend that you're surprised when you find that one or more of the floor pan "drain plugs" have rotted away.   ::)  At least the damage was limited to the plug this time, instead of taking part of the floor with it.

Hole?  What hole?

Now the fun begins.  :)

I decided to tackle the small, "intermediate" portions of the interior wiring before doing the main harness.  First to go was the wiring for the 84-85 door ajar switches, and the courtsey light pin switches.

The 84-85 cars have pin switches above the striker bolt which operate the "ajar" light.

86+ have the ajar switch inside the door, attached to the latch.  The black two-wire connector shown on the left connects to a corresponding pigtail which comes in from the switch inside the door.

I'll take apart the doors to install & connect the ajar switches later.

If the victim car has different accessories than the donor car, be prepared to spend some time unwrapping 20-year-old electrical tape so that you can separate circuits which were run in the same loom.

For example, our victim has power windows & mirrors, the donor had power nothing.  The lines for the RH power window were taped up in the same loom as the ajar switch/courtsey light switch lines...  old electrical tape is very sticky, trust me.  Rather than follow in GM's footsteps, I used zip ties to reconstruct the looms.

Below is a progress shot: the three white & one black/orange wires on the left are the original ajar/courtsey switch wires, the taped up loom on the right is the "new" ajar/courtsey switch harness, and the pink/blue wires running left-to-right above are the lines for the RH power window.

Near the top left, you'll see a white box with a boatload of wires going in to it.  Unless you have hands the size of a 10-year-old, or a handy 10-year-old slave, you'll love to hate this thing.  It's basically a junction box which connects a number of the accessories to the main wiring harness, conveniently placed in a nice, easy-to-reach location.  Not.   ::) :)

When dealing with this junction box, I strongly recommend only unplugging the circuit(s) you're working with at the time.  Given its location & visibility, you don't want to lose track of which connector goes where!  While the connectors do appear to be keyed, I'm not brave enough to unplug all of them at once and determine whether or not each keying is unique.

Next victim is the harness which runs along the driver's side floor.

In the 84-85 cars, this covers the rear window defrost, door ajar switch, seat belt in-use switch, and e-brake warning switch.

For the 86+ cars it's virtually identical, except that the door ajar switch is replaced by a 3rd brake light.   ;)

The original routing for this harness places it along the door sill for a bit, then it goes for a big wide loop under the driver's seat before returning to the firewall/door area and heading up to the window.  Why?  Beats me.   ???

There's plenty of room under the e-brake handle to run some wires without danger of pinching, so I cut about 8 inches out of the harness before installing it, and re-routed the sucker.  Much tidyier now.  :)

As you can see, the 84's weren't set up with the mounting holes for the 3rd brake light fixture.   :)

Though I can't prove it (the donor car is long gone), I swear that the angle between the rear glass and the roof is greater in the 84 than it was in the 86.   ???  No matter, I can deal with that.

First, trim away a bit of an outcropping in the center of the fixture.

Carefully center the fixture, mark, and drill some holes.  I used a pair of self-tapping bolts, and some washers to shim the fixture so that when secured in place, the lens is flush against the rear window.  The shims still need some tweaking, but you get the idea.

I have a total of about 8 hours in to this so far.

wow
you work fast, especially the part about keeping your hands clean for the pix!  How do you do it?
And another stunning observation on my part:
you didn't have any turkey sunday, did you?  Decided to spare a gobbler?  Or simply waiting for the proper day?
Great writeup Don; you might inspire someone to tackle a job that they otherwise might not; and the white car looks to be in superb shape!  Is it freshly painted (more or less?)
good thread; esp. the 'incidentals' as you get to them.
gp

Nice work!

Well they weren't all that clean; washout from the camera flash gives the photos a bit of an illusion that way.  ;)   I did wash my hands before taking a number of the photos though.  After unwrapping much of the original electrical tape on some of the looms, I had fingers of a stickiness which only a kleptomaniac could appreciate.   ;D


But of course!  Turkey, a couple of friends (though we didn't eat them), a bottle of wine, and a nice tawny port.  I finished playing in the garage just in time to enjoy all of them.


Thanks for the feedback!  (and from you too Aaron)

I got the bug to document the progress when mr.tourismo (http://www.fierodrivers.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=200) mentioned that he was considering a similar project (http://www.fierodrivers.com/forum/index.php?topic=2029.0), plus from time-to-time I see people asking about it on PFF.  So what the heck...  I'm having fun doing the work, pulling out the camera forces me to take a break once in a while, and if the info may help someone else down the line.  Not to mention that it'll be a handy reference source if I ever have a "why did I do that" moment.   ;D

The paint on Sacha's car pre-dates Chris's ownership I believe, and is not the original.  It also looks like a Maaco job when you get up close.  The nice thing about white, is that it's good at hiding flaws.   ::)

On with the show!

Given that the shifter has to be changed anyway, I decided to remove it before diving in to the wonder of the main wiring harness.  The fewer things to get in the way, the better.

The speaker seats have a sub-harness of their own, which runs the length of the center console.  In the second photo below, it can be seen running along under the brake booster vacuum line.

If you have an aftermarket stereo wich connectors which have been spliced in to the car's wiring, you may find it easiest to cut the connections for the front speakers, leaving the rear (seat) speaker connections intact.  Then simply reconnect the wiring for the front speakers after you have installed the 86 harness.

If you have an aftermarket stero which uses adapter plugs to connecto to the car's wiring, or the factory stereo, it may be easiest to release the terminals for the rear speakers from the connector's shell, then switch them with those for the sail panel speakers after you have installed the 86 harness.  Most terminals can be freed from their shells with careful use of a jewler's screwdriver or other small pointed tool.

If you want/need to make any changes to the main wiring harness, now is the time to do it.  It's much easier on your flexible (and inflexible) body parts to attack the harness with a soldering iron while it's spread out on a work bench than it is when it's in the car, trust me.

I took the time to

• set up any other needed connections for the aftermarket stereo;
• bundle up the now unneeded wiring for the 86 sail panel speakers, rather than to un-tape the harness and extract them;
• move the connectors for the lighter socket from the 84 harness to the 86 (previous owner had cut them off for some reason);
• clip the wire which activates the blue dingy thingy's parking brake alarm.

Now...  from here on in, at least with respect to exchanging the main wiring harnesses, it's pretty much a "plug and play" operation which becomes self-evident when you start working at it.  Rather than post a complete play-by-play, I'm simply going to point out any "gotchas" that I ran in to, or things which I feel may not be obvious to everyone.  This is by no means a bible!

The basic idea is to disconnect everything up behind the steering column & instrument panel, disconnect the end of the harness in the engine compartment (C500), and untangle the whole mess from the chassis.  Easy, right?   ;)  Work at it slowly, don't force anything.  It's all possible.  If it looks like it isn't and it's frustrating the heck out of you, take a break.  Unless the interior of your car is in unusually poor condition, you shouldn't ever need to go get a bigger hammer.

To make things easier, remove the lower air deflector from the heater box.  It's held in by one 7mm bolt from the driver's side, and will come free if you pull it sharply toward the steering column.

There are three harness grounds which are connected to the chassis by 7mm self-tapping bolts.

One below and to the left of the ECM if you sit facing it, one on the driver's side of the upright which acts as a "leg" for the steering column/instrument panel support, and one up and to the right of the steering column (shown below).

This particular ground is not part of the main wiring harness; rather it is for the optional rear window defroster harness.  But... many times it gets pinched and/or cut when people raise/lower the steering column.  By disconnecting it now it becomes somewhat easier to move the defrost harness around, not to mention that if the ground has been cut, it's a good time to repair it.

If anyone has ever wondered what the under-dash wiper delay module for the 84's looks like, and where it's located, this is it.  Apparently there's another harness ground in there which I forgot to mention in my previous post.   :-[

The "convenience center" will fit through the space between the steering column support and the front bulkhead if you unplug all of its components.  It also has sufficiently long wire to make a nice rat's nest around the brake pedal.

Lower the steering column, so that you can both disconnect the harness from the ignition switch, and work the harness around it after everything has been disconnected.

If you have a rear window defroster, you should find a pink and a brown wire plugged in to the back of the fuse panel as shown here.  Try to remember where they go, but don't get upset if you forget--both connectors are keyed.

Removing the air deflector from the back of the driver's side vent will give you a bit more room to work with.

Remember that fun little junction box (a.k.a. C200)?  Time to play with it again.   ::)

You'll find two 10-gauge wires from the main harness connected to it.  One is pink and is in the top-most position near the rear of the block, the other is orange/black, and is in the top-most position at the far front of the block.  You may need a small screwdriver or similar tool to press the clip which releases the connectors, and a drink or two.

C100 (the pass-through for the front-end wiring) is the same style of beast as C500.

Undo the 1/4" bolt that you can see from the front compartment, and the two halves of the connector will separate.  Now remove the two 7mm bolts from the passenger compartment side, and it's free!

Remove all of the interior pieces which you so carefully and thoughtlessly placed on the decklid the day before, and open it.  Just like C100, undo the 1/4" bolt to separate the two halves of C500.

On the engine compartment side of the main harness pass-through, you'll find a plastic clip which helps to keep it in place.  You may not be able to see it, but it's there, and looks just like the one on the inside of the car for the ECM harness.  Slide it toward the driver's side to remove.  Now grasp the pass-through with thumb & forefinger, and give it a pinch while pushing it through in to the passenger compartment.

C500 is held in place by a plastic carrier which is fastened to the firewall with a single bolt below it.  If you don't remove the carrier, it won't fit through the hole in the firewall!  Pinch the two ears that you see at the non-wire end while sliding the back & the front away from each other.

By now you should have most of the main harness on the floor near the pedals, and the rest of it on the passenger side floor.

While it may not look like it, you do not have to disassemble the remainder of the HVAC ducting in order to remove the harness!

Pull as much of the harness as you can through to the driver's side, coming to an abrupt stop when the firewall pass-through gets stuck between the heater box and the dash support.  Now slide the harness toward the front of the car...  there is a larger space next to the front bulkhead which is difficult to see, but with some patience both the pass-through and C500 can be slid through it.

Now go have a beer 'cause you're half-way there.   8)

Installing the 86 harness is the reverse of removing the 84 harness.  That's it, that's all.  I'm not going to say anything more about it unless someone asks a question, 'cause there really isn't anything more to it.   :P

The jack support bracket, re-finished & installed.  Some strange part of me wants to clean-up & paint the rest of the front compartment now.   ::)

...and now a washer fluid resevoir which would make Tim-the-Toolman proud.  Silly thing will take close to 4L of windshield juice when empty.

That's all for now.  Elapsed time to date is just under 16 hrs.

If you look up under heater box on driver's side you will find a small portion can be removed by unscrewing one 7 mm screw. Remove this small piece and you have easier access to the area to remove wiring. This is also useful to remove when ever changing throttle cables. Dan

Do you mean this one (http://www.fierodrivers.com/forum/index.php?topic=2036.msg10380#msg10380), or is there another which I didn't notice?

Now is the time BTW, to test what you can before re-installing the interior and making everything harder to get at.  Interior and front-end accessories are easy... install the appropriate fuses, connect a battery to the spade terminal of C500 which normally receives battery power, any necessary switches, and go nuts.

Testing of any of the rear accessories may be partially done by probing the terminals of C500 with a voltmeter, test lamp, etc.

Naturally I have a few bugs to kill before going much further.  The first of which, were always-on courtsey lights.  Simple enough--the driver's door wasn't pressing the switch plunger far enough to break contact when the door was closed.

If you're using OEM pin switches but the rubber "accordion" has long since vanished, you may need to place a 1-1.5mm washer behind the switch before screwing it in place.  This should push the switch's plunger out far enough to make contact with the door, but not so far that anything is mashed unnecessarily when the door is closed.

If the donor car didn't have a remote decklid release, but you want one on the victim car, you have to find the pigtail for the decklid release relay.  It's probably taped up to the part of the harness which connects to the ignition switch.  If you can't find it "at a glance," lower the column again and take a look.

The wiring diagrams I have show that for manual cars (which the donor was in this case) you're looking for a pigtail with grey/black, black/white, and tan/white wires; automagics have a yellow wire in place of the tan/white apparently.

Then you get to the harness I have, which has a yellow/black wire instead of the yellow or grey/black.   ::)

The remainder is easy...  find a spare horn relay that you have kicking about, plug it in to the socket, and mount the thing somewhere handy.  I chose to drill a couple of holes in one of the instrument pod supports & zip-tie it.

Part of the wiper motor upgrade which I forgot to mention, is that you have to replace the wiper switch which hides inside the column.  While the plug from the 84 wiper switch will fit the socket in the 86 harness, they are not electrically compatible!

There's a good reference for a steering column teardown here (http://home.t-online.de/home/O_Scholz/steering.html).  Note that while the article describes working on a column which has been removed from the car, you don't have to do this if all you're interested in is changing the wiper switch.

If you're not a fan of the 85+ wiring which connects the temperature gauge to the bulb test circuit instead of the idiot light, why not modify it now before everything gets in the way?

Paul McKibben's Fiero Sails site has (among other things) an excellent play-by-play to correct this (http://www.fierosails.com/tempgage.html).  Two simple changes are involved, one of which is the swapping of two wires from one connector on the back of the instrument pod to the other.

In retrospect I should have done the work on the interior side either before I re-installed the dash, or even earlier when I had the wiring harness on the bench.  It would have been tidier had I been able to bundle up the moved wires with the harness proper.   :-\

Since it can't be re-installed until after the 86 shifter & cables go in, and given the number of cracks & stripped threads, I'm going to give the console skeleton a little TLC while it's out of the car.

I'm using a product called Plastex (http://plastex.net/) to repair many of the cracks & breaks, and plain ol' polyester body filler where threads have been stripped.  I've tried fiberglass resin in the past, and find that it's ultimately too brittle for this particular application.

Plastex takes a bit to get the hang of, and I'm not going to go in to it.  Suffice it to say that I've used it for a few other applications, and it out-performs most solvent-type plastic cements IMO.  It can be purchased locally through this link (http://shop.ott-motorcycles.ca/) if you want to play with it.

To repair stripped threads, I simply seal over the back of a hole & fill it with body filler.  Once the filler sets, drill through it with a bit which is a hair smaller than the screw diameter, and the screw will tap its own threads when you fasten it in.

The area of the skeleton where the radio bolts up needed extra attention--most of the "pods" that screws were set in to had long ago broken away.  I made a form of sorts, filled the void, and will set the screws in it as described above.

The first photo below is the empty form, the second is the form partially filled with Plastex.  Plastex will run/creep a bit before it sets, which makes it easier to fill in some of the teeny tiny gaps.  Once the small gaps were filled, I filled the remainder of the form with body filler.

Once I finish messing with this thing and am ready to re-install it, I'll post a photo showing the completed work.

Yup, it's time for it to go.

There's little to it.  Drain the juices, disconnect everything which connects the drivetrain to the body, lift the body off the motor and roll it (the cradle) out of the way.

The male side of C500 is actually two pieces: one for the body (tail lights & whatnot), one for the engine.  The two pieces snap together with a couple of clips...  undo them.

Rather than trying to disconnect each & every electrical connection to the motor, just unplug the ECM harness at the ECM, and push the whole mess through the firewall.

Push the shifter cables through the firewall.  Disconnect the throttle cable at the throttle body.  Disconnect the dogbone, vacuum lines, coolant lines, fuel lines, slave cylinder, etc.  If it's a link between the engine & the body, remove it.   :P

Raise the car, and support the rear of the cradle with jackstands while you undo the rear cradle bolts.  Raise a toast to the former owner who applied gobs of anti-seize when they last had the cradle out.    8)

Remove the nuts from the front cradle mounts, but do not remove the bolts.

Attach an engine hoist to the engine, and lift.  Set a dolly under the cradle, and lower.  Attach the engine hoist to the dogbone mount or another suitable hard point, and lift just enough to unload the front cradle bolts so that you can slip them out.

Raise body, disconnect a few things that you forgot, raise body some more, roll out engine, put body back down on stands.  Done.   ;D

31 hours and counting.

Now on to preparing the engine compartment for the 86 wiring & hose routing differences.  Not to mention some obligatory clean-up of the battery tray.  Believe it or not, there's a solid battery tray under all that surface rust.   :o

Save yourself some future frustration when removing the trunk light by tieing a cord to the pigtail before pulling it out.

Remove the tail light lenses, rear side marker lights, licence plate lights, and the rear fascia.  Undo all of the clips which secure the rear wiring harness to the rear clip & whanot, and drop it on the floor in a big tangled mess near the LR wheel well.

Use something other than brute force when dealing with the clips which attach the wires for each tail light socket to the rear clip (shown below), as the grab-and-yank method has about a 50/50 chance of either tearing the clip out, or cracking the rear clip.

Now it's time for a magic trick.  Free the wiring harness from the car, without removing the rear clip.   ;)

Remove the trim strip & the inner sail panel shown in the first photo below.  Underneath the strip you'll find that the wiring harness is stuck down with 20 years of dirt & foam tape where it passes through to the wheel well.

Your first instinct may be to try to pull what little harness is left in the engine compartment through the gap between the frame rail & the clip.  Your instincts are wrong.   :P  The sockets for the tail light relays & the male side of C500 won't make it through there.

Instead, remove all of the light bulbs from the tail light sockets, and bring the whole thing up through the gap.  Everything fits through that space without doing anything destructive, regardless of how it may look initially.

Installing the 86 rear harness is reasonably straight-forward.  By removing the trim piece & inner sail panel from the passenger side, you gain just enough room to push the C500 connector up from below.  I had to deform (or if you prefer, squish) the connector's shroud a bit, so I wouldn't advise doing this when it's cold & plastic is brittle.

Don't forget to create a ground point for the harness inside the RR wheel well.  A few minutes with a drill, wire brush, and a self-tapping screw is all it needs.

Route the harness across the rear of the car, through the LR wheel well, back up through the clip/frame gap, and finally back through to the trunk.

If you're uncertain of the condition of the harness for any reason, it couldn't hurt to power everything up at this point.  I was lucky, and all i had to do was clean up a bunch of corrosion on the side marker & licence plate light sockets.

BTW to test the back-up lights without a transmission, install a jumper between the two pins of the "unused" connector at the main wiring harness where it passes near where the shifter mounts.  All 85+ harnesses are set up for either a reverse light switch at the shifter, or at the transmission.

Re-install the rear fascia, tail light lenses, inner sail panels, etc. at your leisure.

Finish cleaning up the battery tray area, and install the C500 support bracket that you remembered to save from the donor car.  If you're welding-impaired like me, a rivet gun or self-tapping bolts work nicely.

No cruise control to worry about here, so the bracket for the 84's cruise servo goes on vacation and the brackets which hold the relocated fuel vapour cannister & a few other things move in to the neighbourhood.

There are a variety of ways to ensure that you position the brackets correctly.  Careful notes & measurements made before removing the donor pieces, paper templates, you name it.

Note that this step is not required, as the location for the 84 fuel vapour cannister does not interfere with installing yet another Duke in the engine bay.  But what the heck... I'm moving everything else, so why not move this too?   ;D


That's all for this update...  40 hours in to it at this point.

On to preparing the firewall...

As with relocating the charcoal canister, much of this depends upon just how detailed you want to get in the conversion.  Assuming that you want to mimic the bracketry & loom routing of the 86, read on.  Otherwise skip to the next post below.  :)

The three brackets highlighted in the first photo below can be removed.  After that, it's a repeat of the process used to relocate the charcoal canister.  Using templates, measurements, or "eyeballing it", fasten the mounting brackets you saved from the donor car's firewall to the 84.  As most of them are used to retain wiring looms it isn't necessary to get them precisely positioned--there is sufficient slack in the harness for things to be off a bit here & there.  The second photo shows the brackets riveted in place.  Some of them needed a bit of clean-up, hence the grey primer in some places.

The 86 4cyl fuel lines are slightly different from the 84.  The line for the charcoal canister ends in a different location, and the return line from the throttle body has a slight difference as well.

If you're not going to the trouble of relocating the charcoal canister you can probably get away without changing the fuel lines, but don't quote me on that.  I didn't check to see if the fittings or positioning of the 84 lines will work with the 86 motor.   :-\

Securing the 86 fuel lines will require a small amount of creativity, as the locating holes for the mounting brackets which are normally on the LH frame rail aren't present in the 84.

Time to finish off the firewall.

There are a variety of sound/heat barriers out there if you look hard enough, or go without if you don't mind the noise and a potentially warmer passenger compartment.   ;D

We chose to cover the firewall with Dynamat (http://www.dynamat.com).  While it tries to sell itself as primarily a sound barrier, it also possesses reasonable heat resistance.  It's also easy to find at Future Shop.  ;)

Dynamat's packaging appears to have changed since I purchased the material, but with careful work you should be able to cover the firewall using two 11½" x 32" sheets with little waste.

I invested in Paul McKibben's firewall heat shield template (http://www.fierosails.com/heatshield.html), which made life quite a bit easier.  Rather than trying to apply the Dynamat in the biggest pieces possible, I sectioned it off in to easier sizes to work with.  I wasn't really interested in trying to persuade a 12x36" sheet of self-adhesive material to stick itself where I wanted it to instead of where it it felt like going.

Seams between the individual pieces of Dynamat can be sealed with aluminum "muffler repair" tape.  You know the stuff...  it's sold in the "muffler repair" sections of most automotive stores, and is rarely an effective repair for an exhaust system.  It does however work well for other applications.   ;D

The pic below is the completed work.  What you can't see is that the original clips which secured the main wiring harness to the firewall have been replaced with stainless worm gear-style hose clamps.  You may or may not have to find an alternative method of securing the wiring loom, depending upon the condition of the retaining clips from the donor car.

Also not shown below, is the modification required to connect the 84's fuel pump & sending unit harness to the 86 main harness.  The 86 main harness uses a single, 3-wire weather pak connector, whereas the 84 fuel tank uses one 1-wire, and one 2-wire weather pak connector.  The wire colors are identical; all that's needed is to cut off the 84 connectors, and splice in the connector from the 86 fuel tank.  Self-sealing heat shrinkable tubing and a soldering iron are your long term friends.  Twisted wires and electrical tape are not!

Now on to the engine prep.  This will vary greatly with the condition of the donor engine, so I'm not going to go in to much detail.

At the moment this is the bottleneck of the project, thanks to a fair collection of rust-welded & broken bolts in a variety of locations.  Hey at least installing the polyurethane cradle mounts went smoothly.   ;)

Note that the crusty-looking struts shown below are not being used.  I simply haven't removed them from the knuckles yet.

nice docs, Don
keep it up!
Question: how DENSE is that heat shield stuff?  Did you have a chance to compare it to anything else (or have you used other stuff in the past?)  I am of the belief that it is simple density that is going to make anything (like that) effective at least for stopping noise; on the other hand, anything DENSE (opposite of air/styrofoam, etc) is going to transfer (and hold!) heat.  Hence, my question.
Any thoughts on it?
Do they make any special claims?  I think it is a bit pricey, too, isn't it?
gp

and oh, yeah: anyone who is thinking about doing any poly bushings swapping; (noting your new bushings, Don; not trying to hijack your thread..... ;D )

THERE IS A VERY EASY WAY TO GET OLD BUSHINGS OUT OF CONTROL ARMS OR CRADLES.  IT DOES REQUIRE A BIT OF INTELLIGENCE AND CARE.  Guess how I found THAT one out!?!??!?   ::)

I think I put up a description on the process sometime ago but would be happy to go over it again if I can't find it here.
gp

Most of your questions about Dynamat's properties are answered here (http://www.dynamat.com/spec_dynamat_xtreme.htm).   :)

As I said with some poor wording above, it markets itself as an acoustic barrier and is resistant to heat.  Whether or not it acts well as a thermal barrier is yet to be seen, and unfortunately we'll only be able to provide subjective answers.  :-\

As for price, Future Shop wanted $100 for a "door kit" which is comprised of four 11½" x 32" pieces, of which I used two.

Standard auto supply shops in the area didn't have anything available, and I wanted to stay away from materials which were flammable, easily torn, or could absorb/hold moisture.

I think that answers most of your questions?   ???

Fuel vapour cannister mounted & connected.  It doesn't hurt to replace the filter in the bottom of the can while you're doing this.  CTC's "Help" section has a big fluffy yellow breather filter which fits right in with a small amount of squishing.

If you're using the transmission from the donor car, don't forget to check the VSS driven gear & change it if necessary.

In this case the donor car's transmission had the red (29 tooth) gear, and we needed to take the blue (30 tooth) gear from the original transmission to keep the speedo reasonably accurate.

If you were able to remove the engine a while ago, I doubt that you need any instructions for installing the new one.  ;D

But here are a few things that would be easier to deal with before you install it.  For one thing, the 86 Duke's under car coolant tubes & engine-to-tube hoses are different.  You either need to switch the under car tubes to the 86 version, or use the 84 hoses on the 86 engine.  The photos below illustrate the differences between the hoses.

The first is the left-hand side hose which connects to the thermostat housing.  The second is the right-hand side hose which connects to the water pump.

Square peg, round hole.  Literally.  ::)

Options are to upgrade to the 86 throttle cable, switch the trottle cable mounting bracket between the donor & the original engine, or trim the round bracket until the 84's cable can be snapped in to place.

If you choose the latter option, be very carefull in your trimmings.  You want to remove enough metal so that the cable will fit, but not so much that it is loose and can pop out unexpectedly.

The holes in the 84 firewall which the shifter cables pass through are equal sizes, approximately 38mm in diameter.  The gromets for the Isuzu shifter cables are not.  :)

The shift cable has a 38mm gromet, but the select cable's gromet is closer to 54mm.  As with the throttle cable, hog out the hole until what you want fits where you want.  ;D


A tip when installing the gear shift assembly & connecting the cables...  Assuming that nothing was out of adjustment on the donor car, getting everything properly lined up in the victim is easy.

• Install the gear shift assembly, but don't tighten the mounting nuts.
• Using the shifter linkage, place the transmission in 3rd gear by first finding neutral, then rotating the shift arm down & toward the trunk.
• Connect the cables to the gear shift assembly.
• Now wiggle the thing about until you can place a 5/32 drill bit or same diameter pin in each alignment hole, then tighten the nuts.  Done!

You may still have to adjust the cable positions at the shifter linkage, but it's hard to tell if this is necessary without driving.  Whether you wish to be proactive & do it now, or only do it if necessary, is entirely up to you.  :P

1.  Smart people will photograph or document which of the three HVAC cables goes where on the control head upon disassembly.

2.  I am not a smart person.

Fortunately for un-smart people, there is this thread (http://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/054322.html) on PFF which tells you which cable goes where.

...and we're finished.  As of yesterday afternoon, Kitten is no longer a member of the Motionless Fiero Club!  ;D

Start-to-finish for the project was about 92 hours.

YAY!!!!!  It's alive!!!!! :D

Sounded like a real "Labour of Love" project.

CONGRATS !!

Sweet!

And nice write up!

It's a good thing we like to give away free information here.  Lots of happy selfless people here in Canada!

Aaron

.

Been there done that wasn't it lots of fun. Would definitely agree though on how nice a job you did both in the work and in the documenting of it all. Now I would say you are ready to do your own 3800SC swap, so when do you begin one on your car. Dan

wow, nice job...  i changed my mine about doing it too, i didnt feel like getting kicked outof my house ::) ....   howmuch time do u think u have left until it's done ??

Having the space available definitely is a requirement.  You could make it a driveway/backyard job in warmer weather if taking over a shared garage is out of the question.



None...  she's finished, and currently on the road.   ;D

Just when you thought you'd never see this thread at the top of the list again...  ;)


Some finishing touches are still in order.  First, the ajar switches for the doors.

The 84-85 models use pin switches on the b-pillar, which provide a ground when the door is open.  The 86+ models use a specialized rocker switch which is inside the door & mounted to the latch.

Simple matter of ripping the door apart, and installing the 86+ switch & harness, right?  Nope.

The 86+ doors also have a dimple in the side impact beam, to allow the switch to fit in there.  Naturally 84-85 models have no such dimple.

There are a few ways to do it...  the 84's side impact beam could be modified to allow the switch to fit, the doors could be switched to those from the donor car, or one could simply do without the ajar light.

Another way is to merge the 86 interior harness with the 84-85 door ajar harness.  For reference, each door ajar harness is shown below.  The filename of the photo identifies which year it is from.  Note that in the case of the 86 harness, the ajar wiring will be taped to power locks and/or power window harness (if equipped).


All that's required is to connect the single black/orange wire from the 84 harness to the black/orange wire on the 86 harness.  The black wire on the 86 harness is not needed.

Cut each harness to the appropriate length, solder, insulate, and hide under the door sill trim.  Done.   O0