Project TURF: The 2010 GRM Challenge car

rockthemullet

rockthemullet

Forum Member
Picked up a nonrunning 1988 Pontiac Fiero from Columbus, OH on Sunday. I couldn't have done it without my bud who hauled the trailer so THANK YOU SIR.

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1988, 4cyl, auto
113k miles
Previous TN car, pretty good condition for being 22 years old, lol

Plans:
3800 v6 swap and Holset turbo (~450whp)

This will be a pretty active project log, the competition is at the end of September, lol.

~Eric
 
A good friend of mine has done the swap a few times. I'll be pulling the rear cradle this week and getting it up to him for mockup. We have a line on a motor/trans and we already have the turbo, a/w intercooler, and bov. We'll still need to snag a BUNCH of parts but the project should move quickly.

For those of you that don't know, the Grassroots Motorsports (GRM) Challenge is a three segment competition where each team has to build a car to compete in drag racing, autocross, and car show with a final budget of the year of the challenge (so $2010 this year). Last year, the all around winner was a civic that ran mid 11s in the 1/4 so working with this kind of budget can be done but it'll be tricky. For bragging rights, we'd like to build the car for less than $1500 just to say we could but we'll see how that turns out. The competition is scheduled for Sept.30 - Oct.2 in Florida so that's our deadline.

~Eric
 
Thanks guys. I haven't had much time so far, only pulled the headliner to get recovered (completely shot). I'll take pics before it goes back in. I plan on getting under it today and getting dirty. Should be a fun process.

~Eric
 
Alright, so one week after I've taken possession of this car, here's our progress.

I pulled the headliner. The fabric had been stapled to the backing in a few spots but that didn't help much and a lot of the foam backing was deteriorating and falling into the cabin.

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I grabbed some spray adhesive from Meijer and some fabric laying around from a different project. Total cost: $16.

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Friday night and Saturday morning, I pulled the entire rear cradle and separated the engine/trans from the subframe and suspension.

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These are some before pictures of the empty engine bay. I've already started cleaning this up but I won't post pics until I'm happy with the outcome.

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This morning, my buddy who helped me haul the car back to my garage also helped me take the subframe and suspension up to Scott for the engine transplant. He had a spare engine and transmission laying around so we're using them for mockup.

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We'll be running a four mount system. The stock engine uses three but we want to keep the stress down per mount for reliability. We got about 80% on the first mount today and brainstormed on the rest.

By the end of next weekend:

Cradle Side
- Pick up an engine/transmission (probably Tuesday)
- Finish all four mounts
- Decide alternator position and make mount
- Start the turbo kit (would be awesome if we could get to the point where we're waiting on parts)

Chassis Side
- Drop fuel tank in preparation for an E85 compatible fuel pump (dun dun dun)
- Finish cleaning the engine bay and make necessary modifications to the unibody for the drivetrain swap
- MAYBE por-15 the engine bay. I'd like to (mainly for concourse purposes), but we'll see how everything pans out

~Eric
 
Oh, and here's a sneak peak my buddy Scott took...

Our turbo on the right, stock DSM turbo on the left, turbo sunbird turbo in the middle.

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~Eric
 
Someone on another forum suggested I keep a running tally of expenses so everyone can see where our money is going.

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I forgot the damn POR15 but I'll catch it on the next one, it was ~$45 for a quart. Keep in mind, some of this was already bought and laying around so its not like we've shelled out $1k in the last week, lol. That, and done means bought already (i.e. we haven't bought the front bushings yet)

~Eric
 
rockthemullet said:
Someone on another forum suggested I keep a running tally of expenses so everyone can see where our money is going.

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I forgot the damn POR15 but I'll catch it on the next one, it was ~$45 for a quart. Keep in mind, some of this was already bought and laying around so its not like we've shelled out $1k in the last week, lol. That, and done means bought already (i.e. we haven't bought the front bushings yet)

~Eric
Click to expand...

Man if I did that.... People would be calling me every name under the sun...s
 
Got a lot done this weekend. Unfortunately, I left the camera at home so I'll have to upload pics tonight.

The POR15 chore is 99% complete. I missed an area and I ran out of gloves. I'll tend to that this week no problem. The fuel tank still need to be dropped as well, lol.

After a long discussion, we decided to abandon the '88 cradle that we had started on and went to a hard mounted '86 cradle with 3800 mounting provisions already placed. This cut a lot of our time for the project, the '88 just needs to get the same treatment later on if another car is built.

The engine/trans were mocked up in the cradle and the engine mounts and alternator mount were finalized (we're both pretty happy with the setup). One of the stock manifolds was modified for the beginning stages of building the hotside for the turbo kit. The old lateral link and trailing arm bushings were burned out and the new prothane poly bushings were pressed in as well.

After all of this, we decided to make the combo more presentable for the car show portion so the engine was taken down to long block status (pulled front cover, blower, lower intake manifold, exhaust manifolds, transmission), degreased, and painted. The transmission and cradle will get the same treatment next weekend. I took a TON of parts with me to clean up and either paint or powdercoat, depending on time.

To do list for this week:
- Drop fuel tank and install new fuel pump (waiting on order)
- Finish POR15
- Make swap harness from stock 3800 and stock Fiero harnesses
- Clean and make presentable all engine parts
- Finish manifold and crossover pipe for turbo hotside (crossing fingers)

To do list for this weekend:
- Clean and paint transmission
- Reassemble engine/trans
- Clean and POR15 the cradle
- Mount engine/trans in the cradle
- Install exhaust manifolds, crossover tube, and TURBO
- Reassemble suspension and axles onto the cradle
- Install wiring harness
- Load the whole assembly for its voyage back to the chassis
- CLEAN!

The weekend section sounds like a lot but some of those tasks will take very little time. I think Scott plans on going to No ET at Milan on Saturday night and I'll either be there or Back to the Bricks Cruise, so we have to make sure we get a lot accomplished on Saturday.

I'll get pictures up when I can.

~Eric
 
5.0stalker said:
thats gunna be a bad little unit . what are you gunna do with the transmission will it hold to the power
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Stock 3800 transmissions have gone 10s so we're hopeful this will work itself out. There are a few cheap tricks that might get used if the car is still around for next year's challenge.

~Eric
 
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