The Banshee(Turbo Fiero build)

ejs262 said:

Here's a shot of the crack, hopefully this doesn't become a reoccurring thing.

I think that crack is the result of a weld made without purging the backside.  I know that people get away with welding stainless steel tubing without purging, but this break is the risk taken when doing so.  If you purge when you weld it back together, you will prevent the formation of chromium carbide and high temperature oxides that make the weld brittle.  

I haven't decided whether I'll purge it or not, it really will depend on how much argon I have in the tanks. Funny you pulled up that specific picture, it's what I spent all day working on...

I used the floor jack to hold the muffler about where I wanted it. I used a replacement Evo hanger, and a universal hanger to fabricate something to hold it up, and then replicated this on the other side. 

with both mufflers hanging, I started work on the down pipe. 

after several hours of fighting it, I have this monstrosity tacked together. I still need to do the final welds, I'll work on them when I get off work tomorrow morning.

I don't how much experience you have with welding stainless steel, so forgive me if it sounds like I'm talking over you.  

It takes only a few CF of argon to purge that exhaust--enough to fill the volume then a constant little puff to ensure that flow is always outward and not inward, so I dearly hope that you have enough to do the job.  If you don't, it's worth going for a bottle because if you don't have enough, you've got so little in the bottle that what remains is only a few dollars worth of gas.  

And if you've not welded stainless with and without a purge to compare, the difference in the way it welds is like night and day.  Without the purge, the stainless acts squirrely and unpredictable, always seeming too cold then suddenly too hot with nothing in between.  With an argon purge, it is much smoother and linear in the way it melts and flows.  It still doesn't flow great because it is still stainless, but it is markedly better than without a purge.  

I like this project a lot.  I had never paid any attention to the GM 60 degree V6 engines, always preferring the 4.3 and 3800.  So it is nice to see that they can really perform.  They're pretty inexpensive as well.  I wonder about manual transmission availability at this point and how good the transmissions are when you start putting power to them.  

GasTungstenArc said:

I don't how much experience you have with welding stainless steel, so forgive me if it sounds like I'm talking over you.  

It takes only a few CF of argon to purge that exhaust--enough to fill the volume then a constant little puff to ensure that flow is always outward and not inward, so I dearly hope that you have enough to do the job.  If you don't, it's worth going for a bottle because if you don't have enough, you've got so little in the bottle that what remains is only a few dollars worth of gas.  

And if you've not welded stainless with and without a purge to compare, the difference in the way it welds is like night and day.  Without the purge, the stainless acts squirrely and unpredictable, always seeming too cold then suddenly too hot with nothing in between.  With an argon purge, it is much smoother and linear in the way it melts and flows.  It still doesn't flow great because it is still stainless, but it is markedly better than without a purge.  

I like this project a lot.  I had never paid any attention to the GM 60 degree V6 engines, always preferring the 4.3 and 3800.  So it is nice to see that they can really perform.  They're pretty inexpensive as well.  I wonder about manual transmission availability at this point and how good the transmissions are when you start putting power to them.  

I have some experience, but only at the hobbiest level, I'll figure out a way to setup a back purge on it. and see what I can make happen. 

Glad you're enjoying the project, as far as manual transmission options, they're about the same for the 60 degree V6's as they are for the 3800, they both have the same bellhousing, unless you have an old 3.8.  the 4.3's have the blessing of a SBC bellhousing, which has a ton of transmission options out there. 

got off work at 7 am yesterday and finished up a bunch of little things, tried starting the car and it would pop, but not quite run. got the laptop and added a bunch of fuel, but by that point the battery was almost dead, and I was pretty tired after coming off a 12 hour night shift. I decided it would be best to let the battery charge and come back later.

I got up for work at about 4, went back out to the car, turned it over and:

The tune is significantly off from what I had with the old cam, but I think the bigger factor at idle might be the aluminum flywheel. unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to really mess with it before I had to leave for work. 

I turned off all idle and cold start modifiers, (I thought I had yesterday but apparently not...) to minimize the things changing while I was dialing things in. this meant I had to babysit to get it up to temp, but that's fine. 

This is where I started, keep in mind, the throttle was commanded to about 8.4% open to maintain this. 

this is where I left it, throttle commanded about 6.6%, and much more stable idle. I'm pretty happy considering I got here in less than one hour. 

Having the DBW throttle makes this process much smoother and easier, as I can keep the engine idled up to maintain it running while I make VE adjustments, without any changes in position or my foot getting tired...

Haters will say it's photoshopped... I drove it to work yesterday, probably should have done alot more tuning first, but it made the trip ok, and I datalogged the whole thing so I could make changes before going home. 

Tuning changes made while I was at work made a massive difference, but some of that may be placebo, I capped the throttle at 30% but when I did that, I put it in the 100% accelerator position row, meaning I would have to mat the gas, to get to 30%, while I was at work, I realized this was a terrible idea, because every time I raised the cap, I would have to relearn the throttle, so now, the table looks like this:

I also started looking at acceleration enrichment a little bit closer, previously, AE was based on throttle position only, with the option for MAP based AE. I decided to enable the MAP based AE, I think it is probably a good idea for a five speed car, as the clutch can be manipulated independent of throttle, and cause the engine to require more fuel enrichment. right now, I have the AE split 50/50 TP/MAP, I'll do some playing around with it and see what happens. 

I did not drive it to work today, weather forecast calls for rain, my wipers work, but my headlights are terrible at best, I ordered a set of relays from Ballenger Motorsports, and am going to add them into the headlight circuit to get them a more direct path back to the alternator.  I have a spare headlight harness that I will rework so I can still drive the car when the weather permits. Honestly, I don't really want to drive it in the rain even with working headlights if I can avoid it. The gear on the driver's side motor is also stripped, so I ordered a pair of Rodney Dickman's headlight gears to replace them, I'll rework both motors when I replace the harness. 

I'm having issues with noise on the VSS still:

it's become annoying enough for me to begin looking at modifying a hall effect type sensor to replace the VR sensor on existing currently. I'll get dimensions of the existing sensor, and then see if I can either make an adapter for another sensor, or adapt a generic threaded sensor like this:

https://www.diyautotune.com/product/crankshaft-position-sensor-hall-effect-threaded-body/

I really don't like that one, because there's no connector, and it requires a pull up resistor, it's also not an off the shelf part that I can get anywhere, which could make future replacement difficult, it also has a threaded body, which will have to be sealed somehow. 

I think a better option may be to adapt a camshaft position sensor for a LX9, I'm fairly certain it's a smaller diameter than the existing VSS, meaning I should be able to make a bushing for it to fit the F23 five speed, then it just needs to be tabbed for the hold down(s). 

I recently discovered that Wilwood manufactures a drum in hat parking brake designed to fit under several of their hats. I've been considering developing a new set of knuckles for the car to accommodate a better(lighter) brake package, so I may shoot them an email and see if they have any  useful drawings they I can use for my development. I suspect they will decline, but who knows. 

https://www.wilwood.com/Hardware/BracketProd?itemno=249-12660/61

Ah, the time-honored practice of limping a project car to work, tuning it at work, then driving it home. Congrats on reaching this point!

Sure, that hall effect sensor is off the shelf, it's just off a different shelf: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/zf-electronics/GS100502/361998. Seems to be out of stock everywhere right now, though.

Cool find on the Wilwood parts. Drum-in-hat parking brakes are definitely better, but they make rear calipers with an integrated parking brake feature too. Looks like those plates are designed to fit a 12-bolt Chevy rear end, but if you're designing your own spindles, sky's the limit.

obsolete said:

Ah, the time-honored practice of limping a project car to work, tuning it at work, then driving it home. Congrats on reaching this point!

Sure, that hall effect sensor is off the shelf, it's just off a different shelf: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/zf-electronics/GS100502/361998. Seems to be out of stock everywhere right now, though.

Cool find on the Wilwood parts. Drum-in-hat parking brakes are definitely better, but they make rear calipers with an integrated parking brake feature too. Looks like those plates are designed to fit a 12-bolt Chevy rear end, but if you're designing your own spindles, sky's the limit.

Thanks! it was a wild ride, pretty sketchy at times, but I made it. I'm making big improvements with the tune almost daily, I'm so happy I don't have to deal with snow frequently where I'm at, this wouldn't be happening at the rate it is if I was. 

as far as the sensor goes, while I don't disagree with the above statement about parts shelves, the M12 threaded sensor has a couple other pitfalls compared to using the LX9 cam sensor. the LX9 sensor doesn't require a pullup, the LX9 sensor has a integrated connector that I can quickly and easily disconnect the sensor from the harness, and auto parts stores are open more, and easier to find than industrial parts houses for things like this. 

I'm going to keep the wilwood parts in mind, I have other options I am investigating as well. Will on the Fiero Forums developed a drum in hat setup for his Northstar swapped '87 GT that is quite compact, I like it, but I haven't looked into whether a similar setup would fit withing the spaces I would need it to work. 

I have a 3500 lx9 in my racecar and a 3900 rx8 project.

How many horsepuppies do you think you are gonna put down with that turbolator?

Great build, love it. 

I forced myself to daily drive mine too in order to get the tune right.  Literally my first hours of using megasquirt and tuner studio were at lunch at work or in a parking lot on the way home.  After about 200 mi i had it to the point where it was enjoyable to drive vs stressful.

For your noisy VSS VR sensor have you tried adding a resistor inline?  I fought a noisy crank trigger VR sensor initially and around 5k of resistance cleaned it right up.

wvumtnbkr said:

I have a 3500 lx9 in my racecar and a 3900 rx8 project.

 

How many horsepuppies do you think you are gonna put down with that turbolator?

originally, when I started this a decade ago, I wanted to make all the horsepuppies and drive it daily, now I acknowledge that I was a little overly optimistic, and I just want to drive it semi regularly with a reasonable amount of power, I figure 350 WHP would be an absolute riot, and the MS3 has electronic boost control, so I should still be able to turn the wick up on track days and be a real idiot. 

mjlogan said:

Great build, love it. 

I forced myself to daily drive mine too in order to get the tune right.  Literally my first hours of using megasquirt and tuner studio were at lunch at work or in a parking lot on the way home.  After about 200 mi i had it to the point where it was enjoyable to drive vs stressful.

For your noisy VSS VR sensor have you tried adding a resistor inline?  I fought a noisy crank trigger VR sensor initially and around 5k of resistance cleaned it right up.

I did a little play around with resistors a little bit, they helped some, but not enough to completely stop it, or at least before I decided to make a hall effect fit it. 

I made a sensor mount to install the LX9 cam sensor in the place of the VSS.  it's bigger than it needs to be, and has way more available adjustment than needed. I didn't have a good way to measure the angle that the mount would need to be to bolt to the trans, so a slot provided enough adjustment, unfortunately, I made the slot a bit too long, and it hits a boss on one of my other F23's I have, maybe the same boss doesn't exist on the trans in my car? worst case, I take a grinder to it in that area and have an open ended slot. 

I wired up a connector with some Tefzel sheilded wire for the signal wire, I plan on installing it later this week, maybe tomorrow? 

I also got in new gears for the headlights, 

swapped the headlight gears in, and the passenger's side worked, btu very quickly got gummy feeling, and not confidence inspiring, the driver's side wouldn't move at all... erg. I pulled the motors apart, and found the brushes on the driver's side to be mis-aligned, and not making good contact, and a O-ring in the passenger's side that decided it no longer wanted to be solid... unfortinately, while taking the motors off the gearboxes, I broke the bolts... I started putting feelers out there, and googled "1987 Fiero Headlight motor", and realized I could buy them new... DOH! I bought a new set, and got them installed, the passenger's side worked!, the driver's side now would only go down, and not up... I swapped the control module that controls the up/down motion of the light, and now both go up and down as prescribed!

some pictures:

 

the passenger gear didn't have plastic pins, it had 3 large ball bearings....

I've been trying to drive the car somewhat regularly, made several trips, mostly to work. The valvetrain is pretty noisy, and based on the length of the installed pushrods, and the fact that I added shims under the rocker pedestals, I'm fairly certain I need longer pushrods, I ordered  a new set, that are a bit longer, hopefully  that quiets the valvetrain down a bit. getting the front bank pushrods installed will be a bit of a bear though. 

I've been working on the tune too, getting a nice, stable idle has been a chore, I'm getting closer, but still has a ways to go. I changed the breakpoints in the RPM, and made timing adjustments to more rows than I was originally, my hope is that it will help prevent some of the surging/rolling I'm getting. I've had the max throttle opening set to about 30%, earlier this week. At 30% throttle, granny shifting it, I'm able to match the stock 0-60(about 9 seconds, not great, but hey, it's 30%) time, I'm curious what it will do when I up that to 100%, and have a decent tune. 

I've been having a ton of idle control/stability issues for a while, someone on another forum mentioned that they could see the VSS was showing some fluctuations when idle was rough, and none when it was smooth. I installed the modified cam position sensor for the VSS, unfortunately, it didn't work, but idle was smooth. I let the car warm up, the cooling fan cycle on and off a few times. then drove it around for a while, parked it, let the cooling fan cycle a couple more times, and idle was smooth the entire time. this leads me to belive that the VSS was the cause of the idle issues. over the weekend, I hope to get a new set of slightly longer pushrods installed, and try and get the VSS working. 

here's the cam position sensor adapter

I had to trim it down a bit, but now it works like a champ, it's way better than it was, no more fluctuations while stopped. 

I was having issues with sync loss around 4000-5000 RPM, I pulled the crankchaft position sensor and there was some stuff on the end of it, it appeared to be metallic/ferrous, for now, I'm going to tell myself it was wear products from the original cam, lifters, rockers, and timing set. hopefully I'm not wrong. whatever it is/was, it looks like it had been there for a while, now the engine runs to 6600+ RPM on a free rev with no sync loss. I installed a magnet on the filter, next oil change I'll pull it and see if I find anything that makes me uncomfortable...

I switched the car to batch fire, and it seems to be running much better, after doing that, I reverted the VE and SA tables to single tables and turned table switching back off, it makes tuning a little faster and easier. 

I've been attacking details, and it seems to be helping the process move along, I updated a bunch of details that I should have been more careful with when I originally started this. one of the biggest changes that happened was updating stoich to reflect e10 fuel that's everywhere down here. I plan to pick up an ethanol test kit to get an accurate idea of how much ethanol is in the fuel, and begin using the flexfuel sensor to adjust AFR and timing, at a minimum, I want to start logging ethanol % so I have the data, even if I'm not using the data yet. I also got my fuel pressure sensor up and running. 

My valvetrain quieted down alot with the new pushrods I installed a month or so ago, but it's still super noisy. Today I was thinking about it and I decided I'm going to try removing the shims I installed under the rocker pedestals, I think I may have messed up installing them in the first place. the cam adds lift, and with no other changes, the rocker's fulcrum will end up HIGHER at 50% lift, and not lower, but somehow I convinced myself shims were the answer, in reality, shifting the fulcrum higher with shims only make the problem worse...  %) this also means I'll probably need more new pushrods...  :crazy: 

I've played with a few of the idle control schemes in the MS3, so far, all of them have made the car idle worse... lol! I'm going to try and play with them some more as time goes on, buy honestly, the car idles pretty good now hot idle maintains about 800-900 RPM, the biggest issue I have right now is transient load due to things like headlights and fans, but it manages right now. 

I also updated the performance and economy data, the average of my last log suggested almost 35 MPG, I don't believe that though, I'm off and on the throttle too much for it to be that good while tuning the car.  

I really want to enable the boost controller and start turning the wick up, but I know I shouldn't, I'll definitely regret that later.

I enabled the idle RPM timing correction curve, it seemed to help catch falling engine speed a little bit, but I think I may need to make it ramp slightly more aggressively to make the most of it.  

I'm going to enable open loop idle control and give it a go, if I'm correct in my understanding of program, then the settings in the screenshot should result in 10% throttle cold, and then tapering from 10% to 6% from 65F to 165F. I think this will help my cold starts and warmup tuning quite a bit. eventually, I'll probably go cull closed loop idle, but the simplicity of open loop idle should be faster to tune and get me moving along with other parts of the tune like WUE and ASE.

the car drives ok, I've been putting miles on it almost every day, according to the datalogs, assuming they're accurate, I'm averaging about 30 MPG(7.8 L/100KM), which is getting more important every day... hopefully that only get's better, considering I'm consistently making changes, and on/off the throttle, and trying to cover as much of the maps as possible, for the data logs, I suspect it very well could under more normal driving conditions. 

I ordered new lifters for the engine, I'm hoping they're the source of my valvetrain noise, if they aren't, then it probably isn't valvetrain noise...

In the past week or two, I've been working primarily on tuning, I made the jump to closed loop idle control pretty quickly, it has changed the driving experience quite a bit, I've also worked out a ton of little kinks, including finding a fairly significant boost leak, apparently the clamp on my compressor discharge expired, it was sitting on top of the intercooler. I feel like it must have broken when I installed it, the change from just that clamp was fairly dramatic, almost a full second off 0-60.

the new lifters still aren't here,  they should be here tomorrow, I hope. I'll pull it apart and replace them, and hopefuly my valvetrain noise will be gone after that. 

here's a short video of me catching up to traffic in the car, this was before I replaced the clamp on the compressor discharge. 

https://youtu.be/60SUceya6Y4

new lifters showed up, I got them replaced, and the outbound lifters had more wear on them than I expected to see. The valley was also kinda dirty, while cleaning it out, I found that there was some metal particulate in the valley. this made me a little uneasy, especially when I put a magnetized screwdriver in it:

I cleaned everything up as best as I could, and unfortunately, I had already dumped the oil and filter, so I was unable to perform an immediate inspection of the oil. 

at this point, I continued with the lifter installation, and started installing rockers and pushrods. I measured the preload with the lifters I had been running, and found the preload to be excessive, with the shims I removed installed, the preload would have been closer to where it needed to be. I had two other sets of pushrods, one stock, one longer, obviously the longer would be no good, I threw some stockers in, and the intakes had slightly more than ideal, and the exhaust slightly less, but both close enough for me to be ok with them. 

I started the car, and took it for a spin. heat cycled it a few times, and noticed the engine was still kinda noisy, quieter, but still noisy. I did another oil change, and found this:

this was pretty unsettling. I started calling around to find a set of bearings, ended up driving 2 hours away to get a set, and the next morning dropped the pan.

and started pulling rod bearings:

honestly, none of them looked great, but they didn't look awful either, so where did the babbit come from? the mains? well, I'm in this deep, so I went and looked at some of the other engines I had in the garage, one of them had a good set of main bearings still, so I rolled the mains out and replaced them too. 

From left to right, 4-3-2-1

number 3 and 2 bolt looked kinda meh, but again, I've seen way worse come out of a perfectly fine engine. the middle rod bearings were also the worst of the bunch. 

at this point I'm looking at what's going/gone wrong, compared to a stock LX9, there's only 2 changes that affect oil flow/control

the oil feed to the turbo

and the oil drain from the turbo. 

I started asking around, some of you may have seen me ask in Patrick's thread about his turbo oil supply, I also asked several people in PM's, how are you supplying oil to your turbo?, I also called precision and asked them what they recommended. so far, all of the answers have aligned with what I have. the only thing that could be different is the size of the fittings adapting lines. I've frequently found that AN fittings can have a huge amount of difference in internal diameter, even though they should be made to a standard specification. possibly I have fittings with a larger ID? when I made the line, I used Eaton-Aeroquip fittings, which are typically high quality.

My turbo's oil drain discharges almost vertically into the pan, it's not impossible that the aerated oil from the drain is making it's way to the pump pickup. my drain has a 45 degree turn off the turbo, slopes gently to the bellhousing, and then makes a 90 down into the pan, and is 5/8", about 6x the cross sectional area of the feed, therefore the oil should have about 1/6 the velocity in the drain. I'm having trouble making that theory work in my head. 

The next step I was planning to take, was to install a GEN IV oil pump, they look significantly larger, being gear type pump, bigger=more volume/flow right? well, that's not necessarily the case... 

popping the cover off the pump, and an old pump I had in the garage, we see that the gen IV pump has 2 more teeth per gear, I measured tip to tip of tooth, and OD to root of both gears, and calculated the area of those dimensions as a triangle.

Then I measured the height of the gears, and found the gen IV pump has a much shorter gear diameter. 

using the area calculated above, and the measured height of the gears, and the number of teeth, I found that the larger pump only has about 5% more flow than the smaller pump... granted, these calculations are obviously extremely rough, I wasn't interested in exact in making them. 

since I had it, running it seemed like a better idea than not. First SNAFU. the dowel pins are pressed into the cap for the old pump, and into the pump on the gen IV, vicegrips and 3 minutes later, and they're no longer an issue, second SNAFU, the pump hits the windage tray... I beat the tray on an old engine with a hammer, and it fit. I didn't want to beat the windage tray installed on the car, and I wanted a gen IV engine for mockup purposes, so I grabbed one from a junkyard's core pile, and pulled the tray out of it. FYI, the windage tray, on a gen IV 60v6 has captive nuts on it, if you loosen each nut all the way, they'll pop off the tray, if you loosen each one a little bit at a time, they'll stay on the tray no problem. I pulled it off, and test fit it on the spare engine, it fit no problem! I bolted the pump to the engine without forgetting the driveshaft, put the tray on, and went to install the freshly cleaned and RTV'd oil pan and BAM. I had already measured the clearance from the bottom of the pickup, to the bottom of the pan, it had plenty of room. WTF... I pushed and pulled and poked and prodded, nothing would let it fit... I went back to the parts engine and looked at the pan... 

gen III pan on bottom, gen IV on top, notice anything in particular?

the gen IV oil pan has a massive hump in the back for the pump to clear... GDMF. 

I cleaned up a stock pump and put it in, without test fitting it, it looks like the gen IV pan would fit on the gen III engine, but I would have to install a turbo oil drain in it, so I didn't explore that plan. 

I bolted everything back together, and the engine is still a little noisy, I heat cycled it, dumped the oil and filter, and there's still metal in there, I'm not sure if it's residual, or if it's new, there's really not an easy way to tell. I'm going to install a restrictor in the oil feed for the turbo and see if that helps some, other than that, the only other place bearing material can come from is the cam bearings, I didn't see anything to suggest that the cam bearings are failing, but there's not much you can see from the valley or crankshaft other than the bearing floating around on the lobes.

I'm hoping the metal in the second filter was residual, and that I'm hoping that installing the restrictor cleans everything up and I have no further issues, if installing the restrictor doesn't do anything, I'll pull the pan again and install a higher volume pump, and a baffle at the drain to direct oil from the turbo away from the pickup, had I not ran into the issues with the bigger gen IV pump, the baffle would already be in place. 

as it sits right now, the car is back together, in the driveway, running and driving, but I'm not going to drive it again until I have the restrictor installed in the feed. 

** pertinent information from another thread/forum. 

[QUOTE][B]Originally posted by pmbrunelle:[/B]
Since you have a "dummy distributor" rather than a real distributor, you might be able to modify the dummy distributor to get oil from it. The dummy distributor does intersect an oil gallery on the LX9, right? The dummy distributor is also close to your turbo.
[/QUOTE]

I took apart a spare dummy distributor, I don't think that would be a good way to get an oil supply for a turbo.

here are all the parts laid out, left to right, we have the drive shaft, the main body, a wear plate, a thrust washer, and finally, the gear. not pictures is the roll pin that holds the gear, and the plug that seals the top of the unit.

the body is not quite as simple as just being a big hunk of aluminum, there's a support bushing inside to maintain alignment, which is supported by 5 radial supports, there's not really a way to make a passage for oil to flow up to the top where a fitting could be attached. 

additionally, the oil gallery is only sealed on one side, I assume this is to provide oiling for the drive gear. this is the main reason why I don't want to use it for an oil feed, I would prefer to provide a more positive source of oil to the turbo. 

there may be a way to build something to work better, but I think running a line from the oil filter is the safer/easier way. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

today I made a new oil feed fitting with an .080 restriction in it, when I get home I'll put in on and give it a try and see if it seems to help with anything, 

to make it, I chucked a piece of round stock in the lathe, turned it down and ran an 1/8" NPT die over the end, then I drilled that .080". then I flipped it in the lathe, and turned down a shoulder on the other end.  after that, I threw a -4 flare union in the lathe, and cut one side off, and drilled it slightly bigger than the shoulder, pushed the pieces together, and welded them solid. not my prettiest work, but it should suffice, we'll see how it works tomorrow. 

I added a bunch of JIC fittings to my '61 Apache by Silicon-Bronze TIG welding.  Keeps the temp down, and flows nice which should ensure zero leaks.  Kinda therapeutic, too.

Loving your progress!

And lathes are awesome.

In reply to SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) :

I wish the progress had less pictures of oil filter dissection, and more pictures of timeslips and burnouts... lol! I don't personally own a lathe at the moment, but I have some access to one at work.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

got home, installed the new fitting, and went for a drive, I went around the neighborhood, to the parts store, and a stop for fuel, then dropped the filter. 

there's still some metal on the magnet, but far less than the last filter, which had comparable drive time. I'm thinking the first filter was mostly residual material.

I put a piece of paper in the oil catch pan, with the hopes that it would increase the contrast and make particles more visible, it helped for carbon deposits that were caught in the filter, but not for bearing material. you can see the glint of some bearing material in the second picture. 

I didn't take any pictures of the filter media, but it didn't have any large pieces of bearing material in it like the last filter had. Tomorrow, I'm going to drive it to work, about 30 miles round trip, when I get home, I'll cut the filter and throw another on, depending on how that looks, I'll make a judgement as to whether trend it daily, or go 2-3 days, I'll evaluate periodicity with each filter replacement. I've also decided to catalog the filters so that I can compart the media from 2 days ago to the filter I cut tomorrow or next week ect. 

I still wouldn't call the engine quiet, but it's kinda hard to tell if I'm only hearing the noises because I'm closer to the running engine, and there's less sound deadening than would typically be found between the driver and the engine, keep in mind, in a fiero, my head is probably less than a foot from the front cylinder head while driving the car, whereas in a camaro, mustank, or any other front engined car, you're probably 4+feet from the engine at any given point

it probably also doesn't help that I'm a little jumpy about engine noises after the last engine ate a rod bearing hard, and this engine has had metal in the oil...

the filter today had noticeably darker oil in it than yesterday, which I expected to find. 

this filter had more miles on it than the last one, so I also expected to find more material in it, the amount on the magnet attached to the filter was only a little more than the last filter. 

the filter, and the oil trapped behind the media, had a significant amount of carbon deposits in it, and some bearing material. based on what I can see, without taking any quantitative measurements, there appears to be less pieces of large-ish bearing material present, however, there is still material there. on the other hand, there was a significant amount of carburized oil trapped in the filter media.  

if you look closely, you can see some glittery bits in the oil among the carburized oil.

in the filter, there was more carburized oil and a few large-ish pieces of bearing material:

I have a few days off later this week, depending on how the filter I installed yesterday morning looks, I may put a quart of ATF in the oil to help pull some of the carbon out of the engine. I'm also considering dropping the pan again and installing a high volume oil pump in it, and possibly shimming the bypass for slightly higher pressure. I know I can get the pump swapped in about 2 hours if I get my tools staged beforehand. 

my overall thoughts, I have a few options, The car runs now as is, so I'm going to continue monitoring oil filters and oil, hopefully in the next few days things will stabilize out and I'll have no further issues, I won't know for sure until I've cut a few more filters though. 

in order of current preference

option 1, install HV oil pump, run it to failure, get another LX9, or piecemeal the two in the garage back together so when it makes inside parts, outside parts, I can rapidly swap in the other. 
option 2, pull the engine now, tear it down and do a proper rebuild
option 3, put in a VVT 60V6, Northstar, LS4 or other engine.