Ok.....so....I bought my first fiero about 10 years ago. Just like everyone else here, I heard everyone tell me what an idiot I was for buying a piece of junk. Shortly after buying the fiero I found out about v8 kits.......

I think it was about 4 years back I took the fiero over a set of train tracks and launched it (not intentionally) dukes of hazard style. Upon landing it pretty much seperated all the tranny mounts. At this point in time I decided to buy the v8 kit, tear down the fiero and make it a project. However, a slight case of mortgages, lack of overtime, and my love for music stopped me financially.

To make a long story short here I am building the thing. I've got the money, a little more know-how a not a whole lot of spare time (go figure).

I finished building the 350 last week and ran it up on the weekend. I have the luxury of working in a shop where we build industrial 5.7L. So I got to mount it in a frame and run it up, check for leaks, etc. I got lots of extra goodies in it. Have no idea how many HP it's good for. It's got AFR 210cc aluminum race ready heads, roller valve train, gear drive timing set, edelbrock rpm air gap intake and an edelbrock 650 cfm carb. I have no idea what I'm doing with the exhaust yet but I've seen some pretty good ideas here on the forum.

I've purchased a brake package, rear suspension and sway bar from WCF.
I've purchased the front suspension from RCC.
I purchased a 5spd Getrag from a wrecker last week and put in an order for all the tranny goodies from Rodney Dickman yesterday.
I just received the rims and tires last friday. They are Arelli Assasyn 17" x 7.5 wrapped with 245 45 zr rated dunlop tires.

Oh yeah almost forgot to mention.......The original fiero I owned (1984 4 cyl 4spd) is still apart. The donor car is a 1987 4cyl 5spd. The interior has been butchered, but that will come later.

Now if I can only figure out how to post pictures on this danged thing

I haven't taken pictures of the completed engine, but I"m sure I'll have those posted tomorrow.

[This message has been edited by Soelasca (edited 02-19-2005).]

hmmm pictures didn't seem to work...

Well, all the pictures are posted on my website if you want to see them.

http://www.soelas.ca

Man I understand that life getting in the way thing. My 88 4.9 is finaly geting finished after a 4 year stint on the back burner for the same reasons that you mentioned. Good luck on your project and don't let any problems drag ya down. Joe

So far the only problems have been research, research and more research.
Did I mention research?

Even with all the reading and talking I've done. I still have had MAJOR problems with the supplier of engine parts. They supplied me a flat cam when I asked for a roller. Then supplied me a retrofit roller cam when I just wanted a standard. Then they wanted to charge me a restocking fee for THEIR screw ups. They supplied me chrome bolts for my vavle covers that were too short. Oh yeah...when I went to put the roller rockers on the heads they supplied me.....you guessed it! Wrong size! It's been 6 weeks now and the clutch they said they were supplying me has yet to arrive.

If anyone wants to buy a retrofit performance cam, dogbone rollers, pushrods and 3/8" roller rockers for a 350. Let me know. I've got some for sale

However I DID find a good source for parts AND knowledge when it comes to performance engines. Prostock performance in Edmonton.

Other than that I have no complaints....uhh..yet I'm still waiting on delivery on all the suspension and braking parts. However, they are NOT overdue. I just placed an order with Rodney Dickman as well (Very knowledgable guy). More pictures should be posted on my website tomorrow.

[This message has been edited by Soelasca (edited 11-20-2004).]

Hey, you're one step up on my build, you're motor is actually together, hehe.

------------------

My Web page | The Turbo Super Duty Build.

Thats going to be a very nice sleeper, if your exhaust isn't too loud

Are you part of the Edmonton group? If not, you should join, very nice looking engine by the way. Any guesses how much hp it'll have? Do you know Troy from Red Deer? He has a 383 stroker, 406, and 350 tpi powered fieros.

------------------

Buy a fiero, become a mechanic

I may have talked with troy once on the phone a few years ago. I did talk to someone from Red Deer or Calgary running a 350 with a 4t60e. I am sort of part of the Edmonton group. Showed up to a meeting once and I am on the mailing list. I just don't have the time really. Also, I live in Bonnyville now, so it's a little tough to get out and about. Not to mention I don't have a drivable fiero out of the 3 I own. LOL.

However, I WOULD like to touch base with troy if he's got some v8 fieros. If you could pm me with some contact information for him that would be great.

I have no idea what the HP on my engine is going to be. I would take a guess at about 350. It sounded pretty mean when I had it on the stand and has some pretty awesome throttle response with the roller valve train. I'll only know once I get it together.

Troy owns TRT or TR Transmissions
Check out this link its one of our red deer runs, you can see Troy's 383 and 406.
https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Archives/Archive-000002/HTML/20041015-1-041581.html

Not sure what his phone number is but if you call 411 and ask for his business number.

I don't go to many meetings either, hard when you live 2 hours away and work shift. I do try and make time for the spring Red Deer run though.

Well, if the car is up and running by the time they do their Cold Lake run next year I'm sure I'll join up with them somewhere.
I doubt if I'll have time for the Red Deer run.

Thx for the info about Troy. I'll try to get a hold of him this week.

Looks GREAT!

I wish that I was THAT far along on mine...

Too much work, not enough wrench time.

John

Those tires look WICKED!

Yes the Rims are made by Arelli. The Arelli Assasyns . My girlfriend actually picked them out from the Fountaintire.com website. The only downside to them is that the center caps are plastic. I wish they were metal.

Hopefully the suspension and brake parts will be here this week and I can put the front end back together. I'd like to turn the car around in the garage and start working on dropping the engine cradle.

Well, got the engine painted tonight....

Here it is just before the paint

Here it is after the paint.

Well, I'm at home with a totally wacked out back. (painful, yes even to sit here and type ).

My girlfriend brought me home this!......

I got my product from Rodney today. Well, everything except one of the cables which I knew was on backorder.

Now I got something to read ! SO the bearings will be delivered to the tranny shop on Monday. Hopefully the transmission should be done and ready to go in a couple of weeks.

So I received my first shipment from WCF today. (pictures will follow I promise).
I was a little confused, as I didn't recall ordering front springs since I decided to go with RCC front coilovers and control arms.
So after talking to Anthony and reading over their website again I realized that the front springs come with the performance package. :S My bad.

The one thing that was missed in the whole process was the struts. I wanted the Koni racing struts, but there was a small mishap in the communication and they did not get ordered, payed for, and respectfully delivered. So now, after some discussion with Anthony, I've decided the best path is to go with the KYB struts in the rear.

Hopefully tomorrow the clutch and pressure plate will arrive.

P.S. I thought we signed NAFTA like 20 years ago???? What's up with paying all these duties?? Damn governments!! :P

Yeah, duty is a killer. If I understand it right, when the part wasn't manufactured in North America, then duty is owed. If the parts are over $20, then you owe GST (and maybe PST, depending where the parts cross the border regardless of the PST laws in your province). If you ship via UPS, you get hosed on the "brokerage fee" they charge you for fronting the money to pay the GST while they deliver it across the border and then to your house. $5 GST could land you a $20 brokerage fee. Nice, huh? I think the higher-end UPS services avoid this brokerage fee, but I've been hosed by UPS too many times to ever use them again. Fedex isn't bad for brokerage, postal (US Postal and Canada Post) is even better - they usually charge a $5 handling fee which is pretty much the same as the brokerage fee.

Keep up the good work! That is gonna be one awesome ride!!

Yeah, they charged me GST on everything, and then roughly 50% of that was brokerage fee.

So anyways..... I started pulling the rest of the front end apart tonight. I decided to pull the steering crossmember (or whatever it's called) right out so I could sandblast it and paint it. Removed the sway bar so I could install the new WCF sway bar, but broke all four mounting bolts. Guess I'm gonna have to drill and tap those holes again.
I started to remove the rack and pinion, but got sidetracked with a minor domestic dispute. It's bad enough having to deal with inlaws, but dealing with the girlfriend's x-husbands inlaws???? Anyways, tomorrow I'll be back at it again. I should have the front end completely ripped apart by then.

[This message has been edited by Soelasca (edited 11-20-2004).]

quote Originally posted by Soelasca: ... dealing with the girlfriend's x-husbands inlaws????

Oh, man.. Sounds wild.

quote Anyways, tomorrow I'll be back at it again. I should have the front end completely ripped apart by then.

Take lots of pics and keep up the good work. Any custom bodywork or interior work in the plans?

Very nice ride you are putting together should be fun when it is finished and you look back at all those hours spent building it .

Just finished pulling out the front end cross member. It was fairly easy. The hardest part was getting the stupid knuckle off of the pinion.

Note to all people tearing out the front suspension crossmember: Take the screws fastening the coolant tubes to the crossmember out BEFORE loosening everything else. I took out all the bolts and the Crossmember was just hangin' there. and I was like........wha? Then I saw the screws.... :P

I'm off to take the K member and the crossmember to the sandblasters. I'll take pictures before AND after and post them this afternoon.

OK here's some pictures of the K-member removed and the front crossmember removed. They're currently at the sandblasters. Perhaps they'll be done today, or sometime this week for sure. Anybody have any suggestions as to what type of paint I should use on these pieces?

Here's a picture of the steering rack. I'm not quite sure what I have to look for to make sure it's in good condition. Any pointers would be nice. I do have a set of new outer tie rod ends from Rodney. Hopefully that's all it needs.

A little elbow grease and this wheel well should look close to new again.

There's the driver side caliper on the bench. To be replaced with the calipers supplied from WCF.

This jack was purchased yesterday. After unpackaging it I can't fathom the thought of putting it on the floor until the floor has been swept washed and degreased.

Just a little hint for you guys. This tool sitting on my stool works WONDERS for pulling out the body clips in the wheel wells. It took me all of about 15 seconds to pull all of them out on one side.

I was gonna pull out the master cylinder tonight, but I think I'm gonna have to wait until I'm done the front end, since I have to turn the car around in the garage first.

click.. you are now on my favs, keep us posted.

Since you have to drill and tap the sway bar mounting bolt holes, you might as well upsize them. The stock sway bar bolts are pretty wimpy. I upsized mine to 3/8" when the stock bolts broke.

For the cradle and crossmember, I would suggest either powdercoating or POR-15. Both are very durable, and will prevent rust.

[This message has been edited by Blacktree (edited 11-20-2004).]

Blacktree,

If you could give me some info on powdercoating or POR-15, that would be great. Is it expensive? Is it something I can do myself in my garage? I live in a rural town in Canada, so some things may be limited or not even worth the time or effort.

Any information would be great.

Oh yeah...... I just read through the instructions I received from RCC. Hehe..... turns out the bumpsteer kit I bought from them happens to be a custom designed rear inner tie rod and a rear outer tie rod. I know what you're thinkin'. "Big deal" right?
Well, I already ordered inner and outer rear tie rods from Rodney Dickman, so now I have an extra set. I think there might be a second project car after this one lol. So far out of all this, I've got an extra cam, set of lifters, pushrods, rockers (all roller setup). A set of rebuilt vortec heads (long story). Front set of performance springs from WCF and now inner and outer rear tie rods.

[This message has been edited by Soelasca (edited 11-20-2004).]

Drove to Edmonton today to pick up the transmission. I guess I shoulda called ahead. Turns out the tranny shop got the wrong bearing kit, so they had to reorder it. It should be ready this weekend. While I was in town though I bought some POR-15. I plan on using this to paint the engine cradle and front crossmember.

I haven't checked mail at the Post office, but hopefully the RCC product will be in tomorrow.

Well, I picked up the engine cradle and crossmember today. Hopefully this weekend I'll get time to apply the POR-15.

Ok, so here's a few pictures of what I did tonight.... which isn't much.

The collection of boxes

The WCF product except the struts and the rear transmission mount. (They sent me two front mounts by accident)
I left some of the product in packages just reduce exposure to the atmosphere.

great work man.... keep it up...

your on my favorites now

Keep us up to date, I've got you bookmarked now.

I really want to see the RCC kit installed.

The bump steer kit, I don't understand why they didn't attach the bracket to the tube control arm instead of keeping attached to the cradle. That would eliminate the bumpsteer completely if I'm thinking correctly at Midnight here.

Great project going, keep up the good work.

------------------
Earl Rice
87 T-Top GT
5 Spd
11.25" Brakes
3400 Gen III Turbo in progress

[This message has been edited by FieroGT87 (edited 11-30-2004).]

Hi:

It is all looking great so far. This is very similar to what I want to do with my 87 GT. Thanks for taking the time to document your build, a + for you.

How is the overall quality of the RCC products? I'm considering both the RCC and Held suspension.

Sour

Fierogt87.

Yes the RCC bumpsteer kit does not eliminate it completely, but in theory it does help. As much as I initially wanted to go with HMS product I decided against it.

It's a little bit more expensive than what I bought from RCC and WCF and from what I read here on the forum and elsewhere HMS has had some quality control issues in the past. Whether or not they've overcome that now I didn't think it was worth the risk to chance it.

so where is this project now? Looks great and you have put a lot into it; time, thought and money.
Will be VERY interested in hearing your impressions. Did you get any wider control arms or just stock replacement? What was the rationale behind your selection/decision? Goal for the car, etc? Street only; a bit of track/solo/autocross etc or what?

keep it up!!
-gp

quote Originally posted by RCR: From what I understand, Held has been under new management for a while now. I've never heard anything bad and the kit car guys seem to use them a lot.

Let me clarify, so I don't come off as bashing HMS . I can't really say anything good OR bad about them or their product since I never bought or used any of it. However, when I was researching product for my project there were quite a few posts here and on some kit car sites (that could've been BEFORE the new management took over) that had VERY negative things to say about HMS.

I looked for some posts that may say something positive about HMS and even made a few posts, much like this one here asking if anyone had any experiences. I didn't come up with much. A few weeks back there was someone who made a brief positive post about their HMS product, but that was long after I had made my purchases with WCF and RCC.

With the WCF and RCC product, there were a few positive posts about their products and I didn't really find any negative posts about any of their product.

(Yes, there ARE other suppliers out there of fiero upgrade parts, some I found out about AFTER I made my decisions, others didn't seem to have a complete line of what I wanted).

By email, I requested quotes from all 3 suppliers. HMS seemed to be the most expensive, so I ruled them out based on the posts I read AND being the most expensive.

After I ruled out HMS. I made phone calls to both WCF and RCC and questioned them about their product. Chris and Anthony and WCF were straight forward and professional, leaving no doubt in my mind they know what they are doing. Darrel at RCC knows his stuff too ( and MAN can he talk your ear off ).

Perhaps I would've bought HMS product if I wasn't so paranoid. I wish there was just a way of getting more feedback promptly to the community from people who have bought various product from suppliers.

If you follow my build thread I guarantee that I'll post all the negatives AND positives of my experiences. As a matter of fact I think my little rant here I'm gonna copy into my build thread

quote Originally posted by Soelasca: Oh yeah...... I just read through the instructions I received from RCC. Hehe..... turns out the bumpsteer kit I bought from them happens to be a custom designed rear inner tie rod and a rear outer tie rod. I know what you're thinkin'. "Big deal" right? Well, I already ordered inner and outer rear tie rods from Rodney Dickman, so now I have an extra set. I think there might be a second project car after this one lol.

How much for the second set

Fiero308

The next step in my project is fitting the front suspension back into the car. The mounting plates for the RCC front coilovers have to be custom ground to fit into the spring perchs. Darrel at RCC explained to me that the plates are made a little oversized to allow for a tight fit. If you ever look at your front spring perches, you'll see they aren't perfectly round. So I have to grind the plates then mount the coilovers into the perchs.

After that I have to mount the control arms. I've yet to purchase new bolts for this. Also, I have to weld two washers onto the mounting ears of the passenger front lower control arm mount. I've mentioned before that the donor car's suspension was BADLY neglected. So bad that it egged the mounting holes. Thus, the need for this repair.

Once the control arms are in I have to mount the spindles. Again, the front suspension was in BAD shape. The tapers for the ball joints in the spindles were grossly hammered and misshapen. I have an 84 fiero which is in pieces and I've yet to go out and rob the spindles off of it. To tell you the truth, I'm half expecting those spindles to be as bad as these ones .

I don't plan on mounting the brakes on the front quite yet. I just want the suspension on so the car is moveable again. I'm sure the grinding and mounting of the cross member will probably happen this weekend.

The idea on this project started with just wanting a v8. It then blossomed into a v8 with upgraded suspension to corner better. Then it proliferated into the corvette braking package and a rebuilt getrag (instead of the Isuzu that's currently in it) with all the goodies from Rodney Dickman.

I'm not sure if I'll take it to the track or not. I probably will just to see how it will perform, but it will mostly be a spirited driving car.

Since I live in "Hicktown" Alberta Canada there are quite a few eyebrows raised at what I'm doing and a few people that seem half heartedly interested in purchasing the car once it's done. If someone buys it from me then I'll be starting on project #2.