Real Fiero Tech

:salute:
sayonara

:salute:
sayonara

The problem isn't the quality... it's the design of the parts themselves. 99% of the little places that come up with Fiero V8 kits are just copying the original Gary Zumalt design, whcih sucked. The adapter plate is too thin and the flywheel is counterbored for socket flat head bolts. Once tightened, they cone lock and after a few thousand miles, you need to weld a socket to the bolt head to be able to get them out, because the allen socket just rounds out.

Rchee did a thread on the design shortcomings of the Zumalt style parts a couple of years ago.

:salute:
sayonara

Tha Driver wrote: Dont sweat the petty things; don't pet the sweaty things.

What happens if they start sweating while you're petting them?

I wish there was some middle ground, because short of forking over ASSLOADS for Rchie's kit there aren't a lot of options.

Can you get by with the $950 manual economy kit? Just mount everything up to the cradle/engine bay/getrag5-speed, sort out the little issues and just boogie? No frills? No "unforseen" shortcomings on the kits end?

Tha Driver wrote:

The Dark Side of Will wrote:The problem isn't the quality... it's the design of the parts themselves. 99% of the little places that come up with Fiero V8 kits are just copying the original Gary Zumalt design, whcih sucked. The adapter plate is too thin and the flywheel is counterbored for socket flat head bolts. Once tightened, they cone lock and after a few thousand miles, you need to weld a socket to the bolt head to be able to get them out, because the allen socket just rounds out.

Rchee did a thread on the design shortcomings of the Zumalt style parts a couple of years ago.

Do the adaptor plates break because they're too thin?
If I have to weld on the bolts to get them out I'll live with that, for a savings of several hundred $$$$.
~ Paul
aka "Tha Driver"

Dont sweat the petty things; don't pet the sweaty things.

The adapter plates don't break, but the fact that they're too thin forces the flywheel to be too thin.
Basically, the Chevy crank flange sticks out from the bellhousing flange by 11/16". This should be the minimum thickness for an adapter plate. Rchee's are 3/4" or so I've been told. The Zumalt style plates are significantly thinner and don't leave room in the bellhousing for a proper flywheel.
The Zumalt kit was originally developed for automatic transmissions and thus was OK with a thin flexplate. It was hacked over to a manual transmission when it should have been redesigned with a thicker adapter plate.

The adapter in archee's manual kit is 1 inch thick. The flywheel is actually bulked up a bit to take up the space added by the adapter and move the clutch disk onto the input shaft.

All you really need are those two things. I think he'll sell you the adapters separately too.

IIRC, the zumalt kit required cutting the frame on one side and custom axles--archee's needs neither. No frame cutting on mine and I'm using stock axles.

Thanks... I forgot about the axles...

As I said, the kit was originally designed for an automatic transmission. This trans could be moved over with custom axles WITHOUT cutting the frame.

When tried on a manual transmission car, it was found that the frame had to be cut because the stick transmission is longer than the automatic.

Besides... Cal Kid has a Zumalt style install and you don't want to be like HIM, do you?

The Dark Side of Will wrote: Besides... Cal Kid has a Zumalt style install and you don't want to be like HIM, do you?

I've considered repainting my car for that very reason. Seriously. Flat black.

There's even room in archee's kit to move this thing toward the driver's side quite a bit if you have axles made. There's somewhere less than an inch clearance on the drivers side, but a little 'clearancing' ( you know--hammer) there's more there.

Now that I think about it--the engine/trans could go about an inch lower and buy ALOT of room on the passenger side. Right now the oil pan sits about even with the cradle plane, but I don't think an inch more is going to be a big deal.



EDIT: Wait--I'm about as low as you can go without cutting the cradle. I forgot the starter is nearly bottomed out against the cradle. I had to grind down part of the starter face to get it out when I had to fix an oil leak up in the oil filter adapter.

MNFatz wrote:Now that I think about it--the engine/trans could go about an inch lower and buy ALOT of room on the passenger side. Right now the oil pan sits about even with the cradle plane, but I don't think an inch more is going to be a big deal.

Considering that a bolt-on dry sump kit for a Chevy costs, like, $83.55, you could dry sump it and slam that bitch all the way down.

:salute:
sayonara

The Dark Side of Will wrote: Considering that a bolt-on dry sump kit for a Chevy costs, like, $83.55, you could dry sump it and slam that bitch all the way down.

As long as the heads dont slam into anything when you tilt the motor forward 15 degrees so your CV joints don't pop from the angle they'd be at otherwise..

Series8217 wrote:

The Dark Side of Will wrote: Considering that a bolt-on dry sump kit for a Chevy costs, like, $83.55, you could dry sump it and slam that bitch all the way down.

As long as the heads dont slam into anything when you tilt the motor forward 15 degrees so your CV joints don't pop from the angle they'd be at otherwise..

Custom make the adapter plate and chop the corner off the block to rotate the trans relative to the engine and lower the engine without lowering the axles.

Tha Driver wrote:OK now I'm totaly confised. One person says the adaptor plate is thinner than A rchies; another says you have to cut the frame for clearence. But you don't have to with A rchie's thicker plate? :scratch:
Personally I don't care what needs to be cut or how much. Especially on the VW. I can cut/fabricate anything on either car - after all, I'm putting Fiero running gear & a V8 in what amounts to a Rabbit convertable so I think I can handle a few clearencing problems.
So: is there a problem with the thinner flywheel other than the bolts sticking? Has someone here had one split or warp or something?
I like the fact that you can use Nissan starters, & a common clutch with the Street Dreams kit.
BTW A rchie gets $450 just for the adaptor. Hell I could have one custom made for that.
N.e.e.d m.o.r.e i.n.p.u.t...
Thanks everyone,
~ Paul
aka "Tha Driver"

Some people are like a Slinky, not good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.

I can tell you absolutely, emphatically without any shade of a doubt that putting a zz4 in an 85GT with an 88 cradle with a muncie 4 speed does NOT require any frame cutting OR custom axles. That's what I have in mine. Here's a shot of the passenger side looking straight down. This shows the clearance between the pulley and the frame rail--the toughest part of the swap to get right:



To be perfectly fair about it, I did enlarge the opening in the sheetmetal where the batter used to be by about 2 inches on the back edge. The only reason was the way I mounted a remote water pump. This wasn't even necessary, but I liked the way a 180 degree fitting worked there. You could use a 90 and cut nothing.


I'm 99.999% certain that the auto kit is the same way. The only reason I'm leaving off the .001% is because I haven't actually done the swap with my own hands.

Tha Driver wrote:OK now I'm totaly confised. One person says the adaptor plate is thinner than A rchies; another says you have to cut the frame for clearence. But you don't have to with A rchie's thicker plate? :scratch:
Personally I don't care what needs to be cut or how much. Especially on the VW. I can cut/fabricate anything on either car - after all, I'm putting Fiero running gear & a V8 in what amounts to a Rabbit convertable so I think I can handle a few clearencing problems.
So: is there a problem with the thinner flywheel other than the bolts sticking? Has someone here had one split or warp or something?
I like the fact that you can use Nissan starters, & a common clutch with the Street Dreams kit.
BTW A rchie gets $450 just for the adaptor. Hell I could have one custom made for that.
N.e.e.d m.o.r.e i.n.p.u.t...
Thanks everyone,
~ Paul
aka "Tha Driver"

Some people are like a Slinky, not good for anything, but they bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.

Rchee's kit was set up to keep the powertrain in the stock left/right location and use stock axles. This necessitates some buggery of the sheet metal in the right wheel house to clear the waterpump (even with the "short" Corvette pump), and Rchee sells an accessory drive to push the W/P belt out into the breeze next to the wheel.

The Zumalt kit was originally designed to not cut any chassis metal by moving the whole powertrain to the left two inches, using custom axles and a very thin adapter plate. This ONLY works with AUTOMATIC transmissions because when you try this with a manual, you have to cut the left frame rail for clearance.

Lots of people (like MNFatz) use Rchee hardware with electric or remote waterpumps and don't have to do any work to the right side sheet metal.

You COULD set up a Zumalt style kit like an Rchee kit and have a little bit more clearance on the right side of the engine... However, if it were mine, I'd use an Rchee kit, extra money or not. I believe that the Rchee design has superiour maintainability.

Would I design it the way Rchee did? Maybe, maybe not. The thickness of the adapter plate depends to a certain extent on what can be gotten away with in the flywheel department, and I haven't looked seriously at that.

I can say that I would NOT have designed it the way the Zumalt style kit is designed.

MNFatz wrote:I'm it for SBC around here at the moment.

Now there are 2.

nfswift wrote:I wish there was some middle ground, because short of forking over ASSLOADS for Rchie's kit there aren't a lot of options.

Can you get by with the $950 manual economy kit? Just mount everything up to the cradle/engine bay/getrag5-speed, sort out the little issues and just boogie? No frills? No "unforseen" shortcomings on the kits end?

You will ultimately spend at least as much as the deluxe kit (and probably more) if you buy the economy kit. You still need all the parts in the deluxe kit, it's just a question of where you want to buy them. The parts in the economy kit are just the custom pieces he makes. The other parts are things you can get elsewhere. If you think the deluxe kit is expensive you have no idea how much it actually costs to do a complete V8 swap. Better start digging for coins in the sofa right now.

crazyd wrote:

nfswift wrote:I wish there was some middle ground, because short of forking over ASSLOADS for Rchie's kit there aren't a lot of options.

Can you get by with the $950 manual economy kit? Just mount everything up to the cradle/engine bay/getrag5-speed, sort out the little issues and just boogie? No frills? No "unforseen" shortcomings on the kits end?

You will ultimately spend at least as much as the deluxe kit (and probably more) if you buy the economy kit. You still need all the parts in the deluxe kit, it's just a question of where you want to buy them. The parts in the economy kit are just the custom pieces he makes. The other parts are things you can get elsewhere. If you think the deluxe kit is expensive you have no idea how much it actually costs to do a complete V8 swap. Better start digging for coins in the sofa right now.

It's a slippery slope. That's for sure.

I came in WAY under the deluxe price thanks to ebay, but then it also took about a year to find everything I needed.

I'm getting ready to pull the motor now because I don't trust the transmission. I have a feeling it's getting ready to pop and I want to save the 3.32 gearset.

Besides alot of noise in the passenger compartment I really haven't had any other problems, but then I've only put on 1200 or so miles.

The motor is going to be fuel injected before it goes back in. At least dual TBI, probably Holley stealth ram.

Dont listen to all the pussies bashing the SBC. I have an LT1 with a 4 speed auto. Its in the shop(will it ever come out?)but when it was running it was a sick ride. Revved till a little over 6 grand, with the go pills it was hairy!! When it finally gets out itll be making mid 300's on the motor and ill add probly a 125 shot just because I can!! Drive one, even a mild one is fun......and with 335 lb/ft I couldnt roast the tyres. No need for slicks....DR's at most.