first test drive....3500 fiero

[merlot566jka]

whoa! this fucker is fast. (with the biggest redneck accent)

its not charging, 5v radioshack regualtor went buh bye. too much current? its rated at 5v 1amp OUTPUT, 35v in. but nothing on input amperage. to make matters worse, the positive from batt lead to starter is loose...i got stuck at a gas station!

it sputtered bad when i went wot at about 3400 rpm, exhaust still has a really bad leak. layed down some nice rubber on the road

iac was wired wrong, been that way for the past 4 engines, no idea why they ran ok. thats fixed now and it idles at like 850, nice and lumpy

its idling rich, running rich, its just plain rich (which is why im poor)

clutch doesnt feel like its grabbing hard like it used to....gonna look into that in a bit.

and i have no brakes!! speed bleeder BROKE OFF in the caliper. wtf am i gonna do now? all pads are making contact cept for the lr, where the bleeder is snapped off. im going to gravity bleed it thru the bango bolt and use a curved piece of wire to try and persuade the bubles out of the caliper. these calipers are over $100 and this one is just fine, except for the broken bleeder.

over all, i like it. just gotta work out the kinks. this thing is awesome....
big thanks to john, forcedfirebird who overall told me theres no point in going back with the iron heads. and to joseph upson, lotsa help from ya, thanks dood. and of course everyone else here who helped me!!

[ForcedFirebird]

Right on!

You can't exract the bleeder valve?

Guess that $150 engine was worth it eh?

[merlot566jka]

hell ya it was worth it. but in total i probably spent over $800 for the whole gig. lotsa stuff i didnt even use and i need to take back to the parts stores. but ya $150 for the engine....never woulda guessed

cant extract it, the speed bleeder has a ball in it used for the check valve, thats right where it snapped. ill fiddle with it in a min...im letting things cool down and waiting on my brother to get me a 5v regulator

[merlot566jka]

7730 ecm pin BA5, 5v reference for tps *not needed for fiero*, can i use that to turn on the alt?

[nfswift]

How fast do you figure it could be? Compared to your Vette? I really wanna get mine done now... it's gonna be a lot more pricey then yours though.

[IsaacHayes]

You're not running a TPS??? With that code you're running you will need to....

Glad you're impressed. You'll get even more power once you get it dialed in.

[merlot566jka]

compared to my vette, this is a bastard child. it may be faster, but it doesnt have 300ftlbs of torque! it is faster than my vette was, but you cannot compare the two. its got the power to move a lighter car faster, but its not the same at all. think go cart with a motorcycle engine, fast but not a race car

lol, im running a tps, the 5v reference for the tps isnt needed, the tps doesnt even use it...yet all gm cars have the 5v reference there.... its not even wired up right now. dunno why its there.

[IsaacHayes]

Uh, it has to have 5v going into it somewhere... Cause at 4.99v is WOT... So does it have 2 5v refs going? (confused)

[Joseph Upson]

Yeah, the TPS tells the computer you are accelerating moderately or aggressively for one purpose to decide if a pump shot is necessary and if it's not connected properly that engine can't possibly be performing up to potential. Everyone I've had a problem with made the car run like crap.

[Superdave]

yah, the TPS has 3 pins.. +5V, Gnd and Signal (IIRC) w/o the 5V it has no idea of how far the throttle is open, it's just guessing based on the MAP value.

[merlot566jka]

huh, odd. ill double check this, its running great with out....

k double checked, the fiero has a splice from the map 5v ref to the tps 5v reference. so the pin on the ecm isnt needed. i wonder if this could cause problems between map at tps when both are at 5v? thats why i thought it didnt need it, but duh, of course it does. im a tool

got the brakes done, theres a bleeder repair kit in the help section! whew, thought i was gonna be down waiting for a caliper!

got a new 5v regulator in, wired to a SWITCHED 12v signal, and bolted to the trunk firewall. i guess if it were to run all the time, it may die.

spent an hour shimming the starter after tightening the pos lead, i realized the whole starter was loose. i hate shimming the starter!! i cant get the 1/8inch spacer in there between the shaft and flywheel, no room to manuver. so its trial and error.

when i had the car jacked up, i guess all the air moved into the engine from the radiator and pipes. when i starte the car again the temo shot up really really fast. i checked all the hoses, none were leaking and they were all cold. i thought 'fuck, how am i going ot get to this water pump!!' luckily the engine was jsut full of air. i added a hose to the burp fitting metal thing. i put it on the heater core 'in' side of the 3500. that tube was capped off as it isnt needed in the fiero. so now i have a way to fill the engine easier than before.

my throttle cable jumps off the linkage and makes for fun starts at the rev limiter. ive got to re-align it. i rebuilt the 4.3 tb linkage and reversed it so it pulls from the back, but its still at a funky angle.

should be ready for test drive number two in the morn (test drive to the exhaust shop to get the y pipe fixed). woohoo, i like it when shit works right.

[Joseph Upson]

It may not make a difference in the long run but just to be on the safe side I would connect the MAP and TPS sensor according to the 730 ecm diagram. I recall that the TPS and MAP ran off the same 5 volt reference in the Fiero harness when I wired in the 730 ecm however, I wired the sensors to their individual 5 volt reference with the 730 ecm.

When you think about it, the Fiero ecm was on the cutting edge of multiport fuel injection years ago which if I recall correctly hit the market in 1984 in the Z28 as crossfire injection which really wasn't port injection at all because I beleive it had two injectors at the throttlebody more liking to a relocated TBI approach. It had problems and the following year 1985 Multiport fuel injection hit the market in the 2.8L V6 and 5.0L V8. Changes may have taken place as a result of later equipment performance test results.

My concern would be for the potential resolution interference in an ecm with a separate 5 volt ref for its sensors being subjected to a double load on what is supposed to be an individual load circuit. You can take an ecm for peak hold injectors and run saturated 12ohm injectors but not the other way around or it will burn out the injector drivers on the ecm for saturated injectors.

When I tried to connect my Zeitronix WBO2 datalogger to the MAP sensor on the 3900 the engine responded negatively while idling and now that I recall that incident, I may have damaged the sensor or the circuit in the ECM at that time because as those following my 3900 thread know, I discovered I had no variable MAP signal as the cause of my inability to get the car to run right during my last visit home.

The incident with connecting the datalogger to the MAP sensor occured during the visit prior to that. So now I either have a bad sensor or a damaged computer from that incident. I know now that the datalogger requires an individual sensor.

I would undo that tandem circuit no matter how trouble free others have run their engines with it on the simple premise that I would want as little interference with what is already a small amount of voltage as possible.

[merlot566jka]

and to add to that (thats exactly what i was thinking btw) i also tried to splice 5v off the map to pwer my alt on signal...it idled shitty and died. so ill run a sepereate wire to that pin in the ecm to the tps and then ill run the new 5v regulator ive got and hope location was its failure point.

i think crossfire made it in the last c3 or the first c4. at either rate, it was a nice try for efi, but man that shit sucked. ever try to find a problem with one?? theres basicly 2 4 bangers running on the same crank....blah, and there slow. what gives? i guess we had to start somewhere.....

[IsaacHayes]

Yes put the 5V regulator on switched output. Otherwise it can drain the battery too.. Not sure how much current is needed to run the alt, so heatsinking it might be a good idea, and putting a diode to protect it from reverse voltage spikes. Perhaps a small cap across the input as well.

[Joseph Upson]

Yes put the 5V regulator on switched output. Otherwise it can drain the battery too.. Not sure how much current is needed to run the alt, so heatsinking it might be a good idea, and putting a diode to protect it from reverse voltage spikes. Perhaps a small cap across the input as well.

What are you guys talking about? I have a 2007 Chevy uplander alternator that came with my 3900 wired just like the Fiero stock alternator, 3 wires, one for power to the vehicle, one for powering on the alternator and the other for the voltmeter. My voltemeter and datalogs show the alternator is working fine.