TSG's Unified Fleet Thread

[thesameguy]

Aspirational!

[thesameguy]

Had some daylight yesterday when I got home, so I got to work on the Fiero. It's not quite as easy as zipping a bunch of bolts out with an impact wrench, but not all that much worse.



1. Look at the size of that crazy-ass fuel rail!
2. That's a lot of vacuum hoses. The SPG took one look and said, "Damn, that's a lot of vacuum hoses."

Considering I have had the car for three years and never really paid attention to how it works suggests it does, but what a PITA. So much of that stuff is barely hanging on to life. Bit of a Pandora's box in there. Guess I will need to spend some time figuring out exactly what needs to be replaced.

On the upside, with the manifolds out doing the valve covers and reinstalling the exhaust manifolds is gonna be a lot easier.

I did go ahead and pull the middle manifold (the manifold you see above) out as well - but by then it was too dark for photos.... and my beer was getting warm.

Oh, and yeah, the Fiero has a 3-part manifold. I am not removing the lower part, because the pushrods pass through it so removing it means removing them, and I have zero interest in a valve job right now... even though I probably should. I saw what I came to see! Tonight I'll replace the valve cover gaskets and see what else I feel like doing.

[thesameguy]

Strongly considering ordering a five gallon bucket of oil from Amazon. $28/gallon for Royal Purple. I like the idea of making the UPS guy deliver that, and I like the idea of absolutely being able to use five gallons of oil.

[Yeti]

When I get home from work the first thing I'm doing is seeing what other oils Amazon has in 5-gallon buckets

[thesameguy]

After some looking it seems like Royal Purple is the best choice until you get into 55g drums. The RP is oddly less expensive than a lot of other inferior oils. I wish they still had good prices on Motul, but RP is a solid backup plan.

[Yeti]

I'm thinking of buying a cheapo 5 gal of that off-brand 5w30 they have.

I suspect my family's array of shitboxes won't be too bothered by it

[thesameguy]

They do seem to have an incredible array of no-name oils... Or, maybe they're just names I don't know!

"Milesyn" SB 5W30 API GF-5/SN Synthetic Blend Motor Oil 5 Gallon Pail at $45 seems like a solid bet for shitboxes! $9 a damn gallon of actual API-rated oil? I'd be tempted to buy it, send some out for analysis and see what it looks like... it may be absolutely decent oil.

Buttoned up the XR last night and all seems well... I am sure I will need to bleed the cooling system, but it doesn't leak. The heat shield around the starter is rattling like crazy due to breakage.. nothing you can hear from the cabin but it's audible with the hood up. I may take a look at redoing that using material left over from the Fiero.

Continued work on the Fiero - replaced the valve cover gaskets and did some cleanup, which included vacuuming out a substantial collection out of leaves. Weird. The paint is flaking badly off of pretty much everything, but whatever, at least it's pretty clean now:



Also, look at the size of the damned '80s valve train!



Ginormous!

Weather allowing - which it's unlikely to do - I will get the exhaust manifolds installed this evening, but then I'll need to put it on hold while I source replacements for a bunch of broken crap... some shattered electrical connectors, vacuum fittings, etc. Some stuff I know is NLA. So annoying.

FWIW, this technique is super helpful:

[Yeti]

Those valve covers are dope.

[thesameguy]

They had to make a Citation engine look exciting somehow...

[thesameguy]

Looks like the injectors on the Fiero are the correct '93-'95 Camaro injectors, which is only a bit of a surprise to me. I feel like the immediately previous owner (EDH guy) didn't really know what he was doing, and the shop he had working on his behalf was pretty apathetic. The guy that owned it before him (Daly City guy) put a lot of time and money into the car - like a lot - and so I never really know which guy's efforts I'm going to be dealing with. I'd assumed I was dealing with EDH guy's byproducts, but it seems not in this instance. The injectors are these:



although with a 17103007 part number... it's a direct interchange. They are a GM/Rochester part and I can't find a single Bosch interchange, and I'm not educated enough to know whether these are Multec injectors or not. The O-rings are in pretty darned good shape, but the spacers are not. The upside is that these are not stock Fiero injectors, they are 73mm overall (measured) and 178cc/min or 17#. Might explain the slightly poor fuel economy, might have nothing to do with it. But, good to know what they are.