Thread: 454 fiero

Tweet

high this is my first post on here so i First thought I would introduce my self. Im percy, I just bought a pontiac fiero with a 454 mounted on a 71 eldorado tranny. the car has been done up really well the motor is a late 70's truck motor. It has been redone. has a .30 bore mild cam roller rocker kit. jackson peters drive gears hi flo oil pump. oval port heads an i belive it has a 750 holly 4 barrel carb. I dont know much about motors. but at first thought when I bought the car i thought that the motor would be scarry in the car. I thought that it would have tons of power an low end torque. but I would have to say i have been very disaponted in the motor. it is 100 % new an rebuilt. The owner said that it would need to be tuned said the valves an timming would have to be done.
Ok so I have got the timming so that there is no pingin or tinging sounds when I drive down the road with the car.It doesnt sound like there is any valve noise really coming from the heads. There is a stutter in the throttle when you step on it from a stop an try an get on it. it kinda gets doggy. it comes out of it but I can help but think that there should be alot more pull in the set up then what it has.

So my question is this. How would i adjust the carb on it is there a way to reduce the fuel going in to the motor. The car gets about 7 miles to the gallon. everyone says that it should be more like 12-15. So i think that the motor is getting to much fuel. If that was the case could that make the car run at a lot less or the motors over all potential. also could valves being off also create a lot of power loss. the motor should have I would think like 330 350 Hp an in the 400 range of torque which sould burn a tire at the very least. an I cant even burn a tire. If you have an ideas please help me out.

Fieroboy; I would call the guy you bought the car from and ask him if he has a build sheet on what motor exactly is in the car. Every little bit of info he has on it, Like what cam lift and all, is there a stall converter what size, stock or other wise.
what size carb intake manifold, what heads and so on. You have to know how much compression, there is a lot of stuff the guys need to know to help you out.
So try to find out then come back and ask for Pat Mccarthy or Techinspector
I'm sure they will help if they have the info on your car. Kurt

454 in a Feiro? I gotta see pics! LOL

Hey Percy, welcome. My goodness for being new to hot rods you sure bit off a chunk to start with. I would suggest you find a reputable mechanic in your area and have him help you get that thing in tune to start with. Then you can take it from there and learn about cars and have fun.

I had a Mustang in highschool that we rebuilt the 289 motor on. I had bought a stock 289 rebuild kit from TRW and rebuilt it in autoshop class. Car never sounded quite right and seemed to have power issues too. We took it apart and completely rebuilt it a second time. The shop teacher was stymied. One day in complete frustration I took it to a Ford specialist. Turns out they sent a 302 crank for a 289 set up. About a year later, I sold the engine and bought a used 289(money was very tight back then and I was in school away from home, riding a Honda 750! Never did get that engine to work right. Still not sure if there wasn't a problem with the heads! Get the parts list as suggested above, and better yet find out who built it. Taking it to a good chevy guy wouldn't hurt either. With a 454, you should be able to smoke the tires off of the fiero, just be careful, those cars were know to catch on fire in thier day, maybe that's why they called them fieros?

here are some pics . the wierd thing about the motor is that it seems like it runs pretty good. other then I know it should have more power. the other thing is that it does diesle a little when i turn it off after it has warmed up. Buy diesle i mean it runs for a couple of seconds after i turn it off. but here are some pics.

here are some pics. the car its self runs pretty good. it does diesle when i turn it off. an by diesle i mean it stays running for a few seconds

here are a few more pics. I have ownd a fiero for the last ten years an wanted one with a little more power. LOL im hoping this one is it. I dont know if it qualifiys as a rat rod or hot rod. but its def barely a fiero.

Wow He did do a good job getting that in there.
You get that thing running right and it should fly.
Kurt

Any pics with the rear lid closed? Looks like a nice job converting it!

This is the bugaboo with buying a finished or semi-finished car and the reason that I and others on this board build their stuff from scratch, so that we can engineer the whole mess properly, gaining max performance from the finished package.

You have no idea of the static compression ratio and how the cam relates to it, so you have no idea of how to alter components to gain the max from them. You have no idea of the squish and whether or not you will be able to operate on pump gas with optimal ignition timing. You have no idea if the torque converter is matched to the cam or if the motor has flat-tops with small chambers or domed pistons with big chambers or anything else about the motor.

Now, you have to understand that I'm the type of guy who would begin heart surgery with a hatchet, so I would tear the motor down and measure everything and find out what's what and how to proceed with making the whole mess viable. But that's just me. I wouldn't have bought it in the first place and I'm certainly not suggesting that you tear the motor down. I'm just saying that's what I would do if I had come into ownership of the car.

now that is unique.

Ok I have contacted the original owner an I am waiting for a engine build from him. so I was out tryin to lean the fuel in it. I had a budy of mine come out who knows alot about chevy engins an we couldnt get it to not run rich no matter what we did. it runs so rich that it burns your eyes after about 30 seconds of running in the garage. So he said the he would start with a carb rebuild kit since there is a massive dead spot in the throttle no matter how he had tried to adjust it we have the timing adjusted with a timming light. so I'll be rebuilding the carb this week. have to work a little on my other fiero an samurai too. If I dont get this sorted out before winter me an my buddy rocky are just gonna tear the whole motor down an find out what we have for sure an what we want to have. He also mentiond he knows someone with a blower that i might be able to convince to sell it to me for pretty cheap.

You said your car was dieseling... Does it run hot? Dieseling can be caused by hot spots in your cylinders.... carbon deposits, etc.. Get it timed and your carburetor adjusted and I think you will be surprised.

Holy crap, I've seen everything now! This is too cool; you've got to get it running right and post some burnout pics!