Sometime back in about 2001, I was working as a waiter in a Waffle House in Birmingham, AL, and at the time was driving an gold '85 Fiero Coupe. One morning, in walks a guy and asks who's Fiero that is in the parking lot. I spoke up, told him it was mine, and he said "I've got one that's been sitting in my yard for several years, and if you want to come get it, you can have it. The landlord says it's got to go."
After a few trips out to see if the engine would even turn over, which it did, I rented a tow dolly and brought it home.
I never really jumped into working on it much, and then I joined the military, so the car continued to sit... in my parent's yard. While I was onboard the USS Carl Vinson on a 6 month cruise in the Persian Gulf, my parents wrote to tell me they would be moving soon, and wanted to know if they could junk the car. After having owned three of them at that time, I of course told them no, they absolutely could not junk it, and that I would do something with it one day. Needless to say, this was not the answer they wanted to hear, but they complied with my wishes, and moved it to a friend's field where it could do what it had done best - sit - with field mice companions. I finished my term in the military, and since I was based in Whidbey Island, WA, that's where I was dropped off afterwards. About 6 months ago, I finally moved back home to Birmingham, AL, and from that moment I started tracking down my friend with the field, and making arrangements to obtain my possession back. Finally, on November 1st, 2008, I got my beauty home, and thus begins this journal.
A few months ago, I got involved in reading forums (mostly Pennock's), blogs, and posts of people who had modified their Fieros, and decided I wanted to tackle a modification along with the 100% complete tear-down and restore of this '85SE 2m6. All of the modifications were pretty cool, but most of them involved pretty much the same theme: chop-tops and widebodies. My heart was set on something completely new; I felt this car, after having been neglected for so many years, deserved a completely new lease on life, so I started searching for concept Fieros. I was specifically looking for drawings of what other people thought a Fiero might look like today had it continued in production, and then I found it. I found a concept that made my heart stop:
I immediately noticed that the proportions were all wrong for the body to fit on an existing Fiero space frame, so I went to work editing and drawing until I came up with a concept I am 100% satisfied with:
Click the image above to see all the images I have drawn of it.
There will be more, but good editing takes time and patience!
It's aggressive, but exotic, musclebound, but still somewhat import-ish. I love it. As far as I can tell, the proprtions are exact to that of a stock Fiero with a 2.5-3" choptop.
While doing research and brainstorming on different parts and shapes, I just realized that a lot of my styling in my concept drawings is very close to the Lotus Elise also:
The Specs (hopefully)
I'll probably update this list as I change my mind on what I want :o)
3" Chopped Fiero chassis, using all glass (no lexan)
Widebody conversion
Track width extension
Removable Hardtop WITH sunroof retained (I love open tops, but I abhore canvas tops)
No mirrors, all cameras. (even though they are drawn in the concept, I don't plan on having them there)
Reverse Scissor (Lambo) doors
Flipper clamshell hood
20" rims in the rear, 18-19" up front
Getrag tranny
3.4L DOHC or 3.8L Series II SC or maybe a good old 350
- The track width extension should allow me to relocate where the top of the suspension mounts, thereby allowing me to delete the current tower mounts and give more engine bay room
- The 350 V8 would be a carbureted choice if I decide to employ a Fuel Vaporizer System.
Getting Started
Firstly, I am fully aware that this is going to take a LOOOOONG time to do, and I am prepared for that. Other than the chop, there aren't really any other major frame mods that need to be done, however there will be an insane amount of fiberglass work.
Here are some images of the car sitting in the field: We actually had to look for it, because the weeds were so high!
Home, and after a quick bath:
Not too bad, but I just know that there is some nastiness waiting for me under those semi-pretty panels...
The Teardown
From this point on, this will be an updated blog...
November 2nd, 2008:
I spent most of this weekend tearing out the interior and carting it to the road. The thick stench of DEAD fills my garage, and it was three dead mice in the interior... two tiny ones wedged around the ECM, and one fat one near the ALDL connector that apparently ate too much and got stuck...
November 5th, 2008:
Tonight I finished getting all the interior completely removed, except for the dash, and put out at the road. There are some nice rusted-through holes in the floor pans under the seats, and as I pulled the carpet out, a tiny field mouse darted out, jumped on my foot, then scurried away... How many of these are in here? Jeez... I grabbed the shop vac and sucked up all the debris, breaking up loose rust flakes as I went along. More later...
November 6th, 2008:
Today I concentrated on removing body panels. I had already removed the hood and decklid in the past, so I started on the front fenders, rear quarter panels, and the rocker panels, vacuumming up rust flakes and debris as I went.
November 10th, 2008:
Whew, this weekend was an absolute bear. I removed the roof panel, the rear clip, and the windshield. The toughest being the windshield, by far. I ended up having some fun and taking a sledge hammer to finish smashing it, leaving jagged glass all around the edge. Believe it or not, this actually made removal a lot easier, since I don't have a windshield removal tool. The Butyl is very tacky, so it makes for a nice pulling strip once you get it going (with thick gloves on, of course). Pulling the strip of jagged glass and butyl in one hand, and making careful slices with a sharp knife in the other, and it was finally out. Again, broke out the vacuum and cleaned up my shattered glass and other debris.
November 12th, 2008:
Tonight I wasn't really feeling up to working on the car, but I know if I drop it for too long, the project fades, and then just becomes a stumbling block in the way, which would be right back at square 1 for this car... So all I did tonight was remove the front fascia, and man, there is definitely some of that nastiness here! I also removed the radiator for gathering data for my radiator-less design concept that I'm hoping to incorporate into this car.
November 13th, 2008:
This evening didn't produce drastic results, but I did get some things removed from the front of the car. I removed the A/C canister, washer fluid tank, coolant overflow tank, spare tire mounts, and the blower motor. Found yet another mouse nest in the blower motor housing, and it was a little humorous because I found the skeleton of a mouse inside the blower fins, kind of like a hamster in his wheel... Anyway, got the spare tire bucket loose, but it looks like I'm going to need to remove the power brake booster before I can slide it out. I also found out that this is actually an '86! For some reason, I just thought it was an '85 and went with it, but I was wrong. It's ok though, I was wrong once in the 3rd grade too... :o)
This weekend was very productive. I was able to finish removing every body panel on the car, which included the rear fascia, passenger quarter panel, passenger rocker panel, and the doors. I also removed the dash and heater core, and unclipped a lot of the wiring harness from it's snaps. I was able to remove the brake master cylinder, and then get the plastic spare tire bucket out of the front. I removed the weatherstripping from both doors, and all the small trim pieces that were left. I also removed the metal supports that were underneath the rocker panels, and I pulled out the fuel door cable. As you can see in the 5th image, the rust monster got a good bite out of the passenger upper frame rail.
I don't like the size of the brake booster up front, so I'm going to do some research and see if I can find one that takes up less space, since I'm attempting to create trunk space up front. I took a lot of pictures this weekend, but I haven't got them moved to the server yet. I'll post them as soon as I can. Ok, finally got the pics uploaded to the server:
November 19th, 2008:
I haven't done much with the car in the past few days, for a couple of different reasons. The main reason is because I'm kind of at a stopping point since I don't have a hoist or engine stand, or any material to make some cradle dolleys, and money's pretty tight right now. The second reason goes right along with money being tight... I'm in search of a new job, and that takes up a lot of time to schedule interviews, etc. There are still a few more items I can pull off the car with what I have, and then it'll be time to pull the car out, clean up the garage, and put it back.
I've had a few ideas lately concerning weight reduction, so I'll go ahead and jot those down now.
Since the floor pans are rusted through, and are going to get replaced anyway, I'll probably leave & reinforce the support rails that the seats mount to, and then replace the pan with aluminum sheet.
The doors are pretty heavy too, but I think that by doing some steel subtractions and aluminum additions, I can drop at a least a few pounds from them and still meet safety standards.
The passenger upper frame rail is in bad shape, and I'm sure the inside of the driver's side is headed there as well, so I'll most likely be replacing those with some new tubing. It would really be great to be able to build a tube chassis back half with an aluminum trunk; I think I could save quite a few pounds in doing so, and it would be in the rear, which is where I'm most interested in saving weight.
I plan on changing the under-dash geometry and minimizing the air flow system so I can glass a box underneath the new dash with at least one 12" subwoofer. The heater core in these cars is tiny, so it can be relocated to just about anywhere. I'm also planning on doing away with the single blower motor, and having individual fans in each of the vents. This design will cut down a lot of bulk under the dash. Below you'll see some different models of the type of fan I'm planning to use.
This is the CoolerMaster Aero fan, which is an 80x80x70mm fan, and has a fairly high output of 20 CFM (wide open, without the potentiometer) with an SPL (noise rating) of 27.5dB, which is excellent considering it's low power rating of .7A @ 12v:
In the computer world, this Delta Blower fan is a beast of cooling. It measures 97x94x33mm, and is rated 2.7A @ 12v, with an SPL (noise rating) of 58dB. It's a 1U server case fan capable of moving 35.73 CFM.
I have both of these fans at home, and the black one will flat out move some air. If I decide to go with the Delta, I'll most likely just use 2 or 3 of them, and set them up similarly to the large factory blower, pushing air to all the vents. I'm unable to find any comparison data on the stock blower motor, but I think there's a sticker on it with it's ratings, so I'll check that tonight.
November 23rd, 2008:
Well, I worked really hard this weekend, but didn't seem to get much done... I was attempting to remove the rear glass without breaking it, and without the proper window removal tool (since I don't have the funds ATM to get it), and it just wasn't cooperating at ALL... I did get about half of the butyl removed from around the edges, but that took ALL DAY LONG. I'm kind of mad at myself for wasting that much time on it, but hey, at least I was doing something! I spent Sunday breaking out the shop vac and getting things cleaned up in the garage. I work on it in a fairly small one-car garage, so keeping the parts out of the way is essential, and it was high time I got it cleaned up! I also vaccuumed out most of the shattered glass from taking out the windshield; I think I heard the car thanking me! :o) Anyway, here are a few images of what I did this weekend:
November 24th, 2008:
I finally was able to remove the air box from under the dash. There was a bolt I missed that was preventing me from getting it completely free. Once I removed that bolt and disconnected the harness, some tugging and a few well-placed kicks from the inside gave me the opening I was looking for...
November 25th, 2008:
Today I had a pretty intense migraine for most of the day, so I didn't make it into work. It finally subsided to 'tolerable' at around 5pm, so I decided to do a little more work on the car. For some time now, I've envisioned just how nice and how large a front trunk in the Fiero could be, and well, tonight I have proof that it can be pret-ty large. In the images below you'll notice there is no brake or clutch master cylinder. As for the brake, I plan to relocate it to just under where my trunk floor would be, like left of the steering linkage maybe, some pedal linkage trickery, and I'm still undecided on the clutch. I'm toying with the idea of replacing the entire hydraulic system with a hefty clutch cable, but I'm not 100% sure on it yet; more R&D needed. However, if I keep it as is, then I'll do the same relocation trickery with the clutch as well. Anyway, on to the images:
November 26th, 2008:
Well, I had an inspiration today involving more cargo usage in the front of the Fiero... I had several design ideas, which I'll outline in a moment, but the purpose of this adventure was to gather information for other Fiero owners that are considering expanding their usable cargo space up front. With the direction I'm heading, I most likely will be able to delete all of the components up front, but I did come up with a few simple ideas which are relatively mild mods that an 'average joe' Fiero owner could do.
The entire scope of the process is outlined in this thread.
November 27th
Wow, I was so busy working on the car over the holiday weekend that I failed to update my blog!! I'm actually updating this on December 1st, but to maintain formatting, I'll continue as if it's current.
We went to my parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner, and I didn't get much done, except messing around some more with the full front trunk idea. I ended up moving & remounting the radiator, condenser, and fan about 17 different times :o).
November 28th
I decided to give the rear window another go, and I FINALLY got it out!!! It took most of the day, but it felt great to get it out.
November 29th
I spent most of the day creating a tutorial on door disassembly. Needless to say, I got both of my doors completely disassembled, and got some more parts photographed and laid out to put in my for sale thread.
I also removed ALL of the wiring harnesses from the car, the ECM, the shifter, shifter cables, gas pedal cable, and just about everything else inside the car except the vacuum hose that powers the brake booster.
November 30th
Today, I got a new toy!!! :o) See if you can spot it in the images below... :o)
I also scored a sweeet pallet at one of the local stores here, so I ran to Home Depot and bought some 2.5" casters and some lag bolts. A little pre drilling, bolting up, and now I have me an awesome new cradle dolly!
While I was at Home Depot, I went ahead and grabbed some new shop light fixtures. I only had one, and only one bulb in it was working, so the back end of the car was very hard to work on without a flashlight. I mounted two 4 foot fixtures over the front of the car, and two more over the rear. Now my shop is so much easier to work in! I mounted the rear set so that when the garage door is up, they shine through the windows in the door, and it works great.
December 1st, 2008:
Ok, this was the real test... I did a little piddling around with my new saw first to be sure I still had the hang of using a recip saw by cutting out part of the driver's floor pan. Then, I kinda taped off where I thought the roof should be with the chop, and everything looked pretty good. After that, it was time to get busy... I cut the roof off, at the bottom of the B pillars and at the top edge of where the windshield frame is. Tomorrow I plan on raking the windshield back to give the car a 2" chop top.
December 2nd, 2008:
Today I was feeling extremely sick, so I took a sick day from work. I didn't even get out of bed until about 3pm. At around 7pm, I decided to go down to the shop and assess what needed to be done tomorrow. Somehow, I ended up with my saw in my hand, and the roof raked, with a 2" chop... Funny how these things just happen! :o)
I'm sorry, I don't have any pics of the actual cutting, because my hunny was upstairs tending to the kids, and it was one of those grab-it-and-do-it moments... Well, you get the idea!
December 3rd, 2008:
I started off this evening as soon as I got home from work by grabbing my recip saw and going to work on the metal roof section that bolts to the fiberglass sunroof section. It's difficult to be accurate with a recip saw, but I was pretty pleased with the results nonetheless.
My best friend (Matt), co-worker (Marcellus), and their girlfriends came over to visit a while lastnight, so I figured that was pretty much it for working on the car... Man, I was WRONG!! Out of nowhere, Matt says "Hey, let's go to Wal-Mart..."
WOOHOO!!!! He was so impressed with the progress I've made on the car, he decided he wanted to go ahead and buy me a christmas present early... I say "so impressed" because I have been known to start projects and never finish them... But this one is very different... I am soooo excited, I don't even really want to go to work today! (but I got to... :o)
The present was a small, 120v (regular wall socket) 70 amp AC arc welder from Wal-Mart, Cambell-Hausfeld brand. It's a very neat and well-packaged starter kit. It comes with thick leather welding gloves, welding helmet, stiff wire brush (with slag removal hammer head), and about 30 rods. It costs $87.77 at Wally-World before taxes, and to be honest, I'm quite impressed with it, for being the size & price that it is. I got frustrated when I first plugged it in lastnight (at about 12:30am...), because I couldn't for the life of me get it to strike an arc.
Now, I'm no professional welder by any means, mind you, but I am just above novice in the arc welding category, so I kinda knew what I was doing and what was supposed to happen.... and it wasn't. Well, after piddling with it for at least 30 minutes, cleaning/sanding/wire brushing the grounding clamp, doing the same with the electrode holder, and making sure my welding surface was squeaky clean, I still had no arc. I finally was able to figure out that the ground wire that's crimped to the grounding clamp had broken inside it's jacket, right at the clip. So it still appeared to be crimped and making connection, but it wasn't (could have been a customer return)... A little cutting, stripping, and crimping, and I was ready to go... I've never arc welded sheet metal before, so I was practicing (that should be read: "I was burning holes in it"), and with some 6013 rods and a little more practice, it should be no trouble. I ended up going to bed at about 2:30am... :o) Ok, enough talk, here are the pics:
December 4th, 2008
Well, tonight was a little disheartening. I started to drop the rear cradle, and the closer I got to getting it out, the more I realized that the rust was a lot worse than I thought. The rear cradle bolts just spun in place, and there was no way for me to cut them out, or cut them off. I attempted to cut completely through the rubber bushing, and the bolt that was in the middle, but the sawzall was just melting the rubber and marring it up, and I didn't have any other type of saw that would have cut through it. So, I swallowed the lump of disappointment and cut the rear clip completely off the car.
Although disheartening, this actually opens the door for a weight saving idea I had in the beginning, which was to build a tubular rear clip instead of all the steel that's back there. Well, It's going to take a lot of time, but I never said it was going to be easy! After I came upstairs for a bit and uploaded some pictures from the rear clip cutout, I decided I wanted to go practice a little with my new welder. :o).
Also included in the pictures below is some really rusty engine coolant that spilled out, and the passenger brake rotor after towing it a while with the parking brake on. On a Fiero (especially one that's been sitting), sometimes it's difficult to tell if the parking brake is on or off. Well, this parking brake cable was completely frozen, and I had to cut it just to get the brake to release. Enjoy the pictures!
December 7th, 2008
Ok, well, I had a bunch more stuff below here, but I messed up and wrote over it on an update, so I'll try to re-create it again...
Today was really cool.
First, I got up at 7 and went to meet with the guy that has the '88 Formula I mentioned earlier. Looks like I'm probably going to be able to get it just by trading some programming & web development services for the guy. After talking a while with him, I found out that all he does is buy low dollar cars, and he either strips, parts-out, & scraps them, or fixes them up a little & sells them. He makes enough from this to not need an 8-5 job, but the kicker is, he's splitting his profits 50/50 with a guy just to list his parts on eBay, because he's not very good with computers.... Yeah, so I opened the door to him for possibility, because he said he comes across Fieros all the time, and this was the third one he's had this month... Told him I'd be happy to hook him up on a barter basis, since I have my own server & such. Anyway, he left me a msg while I was in Huntsville, so I gotta call him tomorrow and nail down the specifics.
When I got back my fiance & I took a trip up to Huntsville and saw The Fiero Factory. I met with the owner, and we hung out a while. It was very exciting and very depressing at the same time to see 300+ Fieros sitting there, just waiting... for nothing in particular... I saw at least 4 Indy replicas, which was cool, because until then I had only seen one in passing on the interstate.
Shelves were just packed FULL of pulled parts, 4.9s everywhere, swaps in progress, 2.8s everywhere, wrecked Caddys outside, waiting to have their engines pulled.
I guess I should have expected the "junkyard aura", but it kinda hit me weird. I wanted to save them all, or at least get to work saving as many as I could from parts of others. Just wanted to keep them from wasting away. It was pure excitement and pure depression at the same time... weird. Anyway, here are some pics from the visit:
December 9th, 2008
Tonight I was able to get the rear clip separated from the cradle. The forward mounts on the cradle were fine, but the rear ones were literally mush in every sense of the word. I started by cutting out a section of the trunk so I could easily get at the inner walls of the lower frame rails, then I just cut around the area where the mounts were. Surprisingly enough, the inside walls of the lower frame rails were ALL that was holding the rear end of the cradle in... I really can't believe it made a 1hr tow on a tow dolly without incident.
December 12th, 2008
"Dear Diary"... Heh...
Man, tonight was really stressful. I wanted to go work on the car, but the phone would NOT stop ringing, and guess who every call was for? Yep, me. I needed to drop the fuel tank out of the car, but that's not really something I wanted to tackle while gabbing on a phone I have to hold up to my ear... :o). As soon as I finally got a chance to work on it with no phone ringing, company starts coming over. Great. Well, i told my friends they'd have to wait, because I was determined to get that tank dropped tonight.
And I did... The two stands you see the rear of the car sitting on used to be a dip bar my father made. He's a tree trunk of a man, so to be sure he had one that would hold his weight, he built his own. Did I mention he used to be a welder for Chicago Bridge? Anyway, that thing was stout, so I cut out the middle pieces, and the handles happened to fit perfectly inside the steel where the upper frame rails used to be.
Thankfully, everything went off without a hitch, and I had the tank dropped in about 20 minutes, including the heavily rusted nuts holding the tank straps on:
December 15th, 2008
I spent most of today cleaning up the shop. I took the front wheels off the car, flipped it up on it's side, and moved it against the far wall in my garage. I don't have any pics of that right now, because I was in the zone, but I'll get some up later. After that, I decided it was time to separate the engine from the tranny... except I need an engine hoist. I'm broke, but I happen to have a welder and some steel... So I got to work hacking up the dip bar that was holding up my car in the previous images, and then I started mapping it out and cutting my pieces.
With my tiny Wal-Mart welder (which I'm very grateful for), I kept overheating it and sending into protect (cooldown) mode trying to penetrate this 1/8" box steel. So, I took an hour or so and installed a fan in it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I voided my warranty, but I was surprised... it didn't go into protection even once after that!
And as you can see in the images after installing the fan, I smoked up the garage pretty good.
My plan is to have the floor jack for normal usage, and then place it in the engine hoist when I want to use the hoist. It's difficult to see in the pics, especially since I'm not done yet, but the jack will have it's own track and notch to sit in so it doesn't go anywhere. Yeah, I suck at thick vertical welds, but I'm working on it. There will be a bar that will fit snugly in the hole of the jack that normally holds the cup, so there's no slippage there either. That bar will bolt in at the top, and stay on the lifting arm. Also, when I get closer to completion with it, I'm going to weld some nice hefty casters on the bottom of it.
December 16th, 2008
Well, I didn't do a single thing on the project tonight, because I was too busy becoming an UNCLE!!! YAY! :o)
Here's my goofy mug and the precious little one; his name is Samuel.
Ok, just kidding, after going to see my sister in the hospital, I came home and did some more work on the hoist.
It doesn't look like much in the images, but I took the handles, cut them, and then lapped the ends so that there's not jsut a straight weld that can break under all that stress, and created the top support for the hinge of the hoist.
First image is of the car flipped up against the wall, as promised. :o)
December 24th, 2008
Today I was able to get the steel I needed to complete the top portion of the hoist. What I got was the tongue & tilt assembly from an old tilt boat trailer. I'll be using the tongue piece as the boom for the hoist, and the tilting hinge as my hinge. Tonight I was able to get all of those pieces separated from each other, and got the hinge piece welded to the top support. I also took a little time to strengthen some of the other welds that I hadn't quite finished. The last two images are the tongue piece that's going to be the boom, or lifting arm of the hoist.
December 28th, 2008
Tonight I started working on the boom. At one end of it was a large "T" where it attached to the trailer at the tilt pivot. I cut off that tee, shortened it, and welded it back on the boom, on a 90 degree angle that I cut in the boom. This way it comes out being more like a cap on the end of the boom, rather than just supporting one side, and it also gives me a full range of motion, since the hingepin will go through the center of the end of the boom. Once that was all welded together, I started fill-welding the gaps so that I have a smooth & solid piece at the end.
January 13th, 2009
Well, Happy New Year! Man, holiday season just makes not want to get back started on anything. I did a little bit on the hoist tonight... It's not even really enough to make an update on, but anyway, I welded the remaining gap that was on the other side of the boom where I added the hinge spacer. For some reason, I just didn't feel like donig much at all, so that's all I have for now.
