I hope it doesn’t think I’m spamming by trying to update this thread, but I’ve been working on this car for the last five years already, so there’s been a bunch of progress. Good amount of pictures. Here’s some background on the ‘radio’.
Well; it’s not a radio. It’s actually an empeg. It’s an MP3 player, and it doesn’t even have a built-in FM tuner. There’s a plug-in add-on module that used to be available, though. It’s a defunct product produced by a small UK firm in 1999-2000 for a high initial MSRP of around $1,300 for a single ~20GB[all of t3h geebeez] IBM hard drive. It’s a tiny, low-powered Linux computer with a single available IDE bus for storage [master and slave, of course] and a beautiful VFD display up front. Less than 2,000 were produced. I loved mine so much, I bought another. Then it died, so I swapped to the spare. I can’t resurrect the old one. Two of the parallel address busses are hosed from the StrongArm processor, so it couldn’t find the ethernet controller or hard drive. I just don’t think I’ll ever find a replacement chip. It’s strictly a parts machine, for sure. I was devastated. These aren’t easy to find or really all that cheap. I hunted another down in Germany, though. Hopefully be here soon.
The yellow Pelican case background is it’s home when it leaves the car. I wrapped paracord super tightly around the handle and lashed in a carabiner so that I can clip it to my backpack when I have to hike anywhere from my car. I use it daily in my Subaru and I very rarely leave it in the car. It slides in and out of a cage so that it can very easily be taken inside to be updated. I’ll get an orange Pelican for the new joint once I get it up to ‘hot spare’ spec.
For the mega-nerds; it’s so old that I have to run a patch kernel ~[2.2.9] to feature LBA48 support to address my twin 160GB drives. Yup. That’s 320GB of 2.5" 44-pin IDE storage in my dash. Mostly random VBR, 320CBR. I think it supports FLAC, too.
I mentioned in the first post the digital sound card. I hand-assembled that little board and spidered in the harness. It’s basically an i2s sound card that spits out a standard S/PDIF signal over digital coaxial. I borrowed the two rear RCA outputs from the car’s sled harness for digital audio purposes, so I don’t have to worry about any extra cables. I just have to run a little DAC at the amp to get the signal back to analog. Zero noise in the Subaru. I’m expecting the same of the Fiero.
Answer questions:
I didn’t use the 4.6L because it wasn’t reasonably available to me. I got this 4.0L somewhere around 7 years ago and I didn’t have much money at the time. I think I paid $300 for it? Similar Ns were $1,000+. Nothing against them whatsoever. The '96-'99 blocks are identical, save for bore size. Every single thing that I’ve made for this motor would bolt right up to the 4.6L N big brother. In fact, I’ll likely use one when I build up a stout shortblock and put steel inserts/studs in the block for the heads and mains. Anybody notice the turbo flange up in the first few posts there?
Engine does fit pretty well, but that’s no accident. Had to do come creative packaging and chassis clearancing, aka beating the piss out of some places with a BFH. Here are a few more packaging-type photos to give you an idea.
Coolant hoses mounted through oil intercooler to get to the rocker panels for tubes for front mounted radiator.
Strut tower clearance and valve cover -12AN black braided nylon breather lines. These go back to that rad-ass fire extinguisher. Yea, I made that into my catch can.
The closer valve cover fitting is kind of close to the brace [1/8"], but I’m still working on the PITA valve covers [magnesium] so I think I can try to move it up at least 1/4"-1/2". I’m sanding the pits and oxidation out and trying to make them somewhat presentable so I can paint them wrinkly red. Kinda Ferrari-y. Hope it’s not too douchey. Also gives you a better view of the clearance. It’s probably around 1/4"; but the [minimal] movement of the poly-mounted drivetrain is in a fore-aft direction, not lateral. Should be sufficient. Again; gussets.
Forgive me, I didn’t scrub the front crossmember before installing the tubular front suspension with coil-overs, but it’s got them. Along with front/rear Addco sway bars.
Rear sway bar:
That lame Eibach sticker is gone.
Answers a bunch for now, anyway.
