Well first off I have to thank RKB75 for selling me this car. Shes a little rough around the edges but in due time I think its gonna be ok. So I guess I will start with what she looked like when I picked her up.

Body is a little rough but nothing serious







Interior needed lots of help (sunroof had been leaking for a while it seemed)



So after I got her home and into the garage I started tearing into it almost immediately. I gave Archie a call to see I would get lucky enough that he might have a good used engine for sale as this one was shot. Pretty good size hole in one of the pistons. Since my claim to fame was not being a full blow auto mechanic I thought it best to start with something a bit easier. As it happens Archie had a nice 60K motor that had been pulled from a car that drove from Texas for a V8 swap. Archie sold it to me for what I thought top be a very fair price.

I think with a little elbow grease this should work just fine.







Maybe someday I'll get to do a 3800 swap but for now I just want to drive it and shake out all the bugs. So pressing on I got the new motor home and started tearing it down. Wish I hadn't got all excited and forgot to take pics but this motor looked brand new on the inside. I tore it down to the oil pan and replaced the pump and a full gasket set. Timing chain and gears looked perfect. Left them alone. Took a bunch of brackets and parts to work to sandblast. Turned out pretty good with a fresh coat of paint on her. Can't wait to take her for a spin. So while I was cleaning up the new I started pulling out the old.











So this is where I lost my picture taking skills and forgot to snap any shots. Did the bulk of this by myself. My youngest son did take a lot of interest in helping once the motor was out. He helped me wheel it out from under the car and helped a ton with the clean up of the cradle and setting the new engine in place. I was really pleased he was taking such a huge interest in doing this with me. I have to thank the forum for being able to do this on my own. I had never pulled a motor from the bottom before and this was interesting. Not without its snags though. Just for the record 800lb funiture dollies will NOT hold a fiero motor and cradle without breaking! LOLGot the motor halfway under the car and the wheels just snapped off. Talk about pissed and now what am I gonna do! This is where my son shined at helping me pull the cradle back out from under the car and helped me fish it back in with a floor jack and the cherry picker. Anyway all is well in Who town now. SEE

All bolted back in and fired up for the first time. That too had its little snags as I didn't have it grounded well enough and the starter would not engage. Thanks to O'reilleys though I have a new starter that I didn't need but its in there now and I aint taking it out!



So while tying up loose ends on the motor swap I worked on the interior some. Think its coming along nicely. Still have some more to do like I think I will pull the console and shift surround back out and gorilla glue the edges where its pulling away. I did go ahead and dye the carpets cuz they where pretty stained up beyond my carpet cleaners capabilities! A fresh set of Iggies seat covers and a new headliner makes her even smell better on the inside! LOL

This is where she is today



Think I may still dye the door panel carpets black too.











Well gang thats where I am today. Still haven't gotten to drive it yet but hopefully I can pull it out of the garge tomorrow for a quick shakedown, Today I ran some new brake lines in the rear. When I was trying to bleed the brakes I wasn't getting any fluid to the drivers rear caliper and I figured it was the rubber line going to the caliper from the brake lines. So I soaked it for a few days hoping it would come apart. It did once it twisted the line in too! LOL Anyway I have the rubber line ordered and it should be in tomorrow so I can bleed the brakes and take it off the jackstands. One more thing I would like to add. After I found out I had to wait for the brake line I went home and pulled one of the wheels out to see how well it would clean up. I found something that workes pretty well at getting the clearcoat off. This stuff works in about 30 seconds and you can scrape the clearcoat off with a plastic putty knife. See the pics I just taped off a small area sprayed this stuff on and wiped it off. Afterwards I did one quick round of polish just to see how it looked and I was amazed cuz these wheels are in bad shape.

This is the stuff I used



The next 2 are before and after shots of the little bit of work I did on this one.





Thats all for now. Will update once I get a little more progress done. Wish me luck tomorrow on her maiden voyage!

Looking good, your car is really coming along. And I must add, much faster than mine!

I think you could get away painting the lower part of the car silver or black again without having to do anything with the white other than brush touches. Can't go all white without complete respray but i am sure you could do a good rattle can job if you didn't have a paint gun for the lower two tone and have many more years of tidy motoring.

Paint is actually a lot worse than the pictures show. It has already been rattle canned in a couple of spots (rear quaters, hood). I do have a spray gun and a detail sprayer for door jambs. Think I am going to go all white when the time comes. I'm pretty sure that paint is a ways down the road though. If I'm going to paint it I want to use good stuff and I just can't swing the cost right now. I will do someting with the rockers in the meantime though. They look terrible!

Donnie

Well tomorrow I'm taking her over to a buddies house so he can set the timing for me and he's gonna hook up his scan tools and check all my sensors for me. I have already noticed (without letting it run too long) that my temp gauge does not seem to work. I probably let it run maybe 10 minutes to check for leaks when I realized that the gauge was not reading anything. The fan never kicked on either. I got worried and shut her down just in case until I can check with the scan tool. Hopfully its nothing too serious. Still having the issue with the hard to get in reverse. Haven't had time to see if its just a cable adjustment. I did pull the shift surround up to make sure nothing was caught in the shifter keeping it from going in gear. Hopefully I'll have more updates tomorrow afternoon.

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Donnie

So today I got the scan tool hooked up and looks like I need to get an oxygen sensor and temp sender. Tools says I'm only running around 180 degrees though. Actually seemed kinda cool to me thought it was supposed to run a little higher than that. On the plus side though she runs tons better even with the bad O2 sensor. Realized too that I wasn't charging correctly from the alternator. Once I got her home I crawled under to take the alternator out and have it checked and realized that one of the pins to the regulator had bent over. God you just have to love an easy cheap fix! lol I also made an adjustment to one of the shifter cables (it been hard to get in reverse) this seemed to help a little but its still a bit hard to get into gear. All forward gears work perfect. I had anther problem this morning that I read about on here before but I don't remember who it happened to. I was in the garage early before anone got up in the house and while it was quiet I heard a click sound. Narrowed it down to front of car and opened the hood. This sound lept happening about every 15 seconds or so and sounded like a relay click. I felt all of the relays and none seemed to be the one. I just happened to put my hand on the headlight raise lower knob and it happened again. I also realized the darn thing was pretty hot too. I will go to the tech section for help as I couldn't find anything in the search. Wierd!!!

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Sad to say this is the best looking part of the car so far!

Donnie

Haven't done much the last couple of days as mother nature desided to turn the heat and humidity way up around here. Guess I'll suck it up and try and get a little done tonight. I at least wanna pull out the shift surround and start the glueing process on that.

Donnie

Well I finally got my new O2 sensor installed today. What a difference that made. She starts 1st try now and purrs like a kitten! Also got my exhaust donut gasket for the y-pipe to the rest of the exhaust. Quieted it down a little but not much. Sounds way better at idle though. I did screw up when I ordered my temp sending unit from rock auto though. For some reason I ended up with a single pin sender instead of a duel pin. Have to send that back tomorrow. Guess I'll just run to Oreilleys and grab one. Probably what I should have done to begin with so I could see what I was getting to make sure I got the right thing. Figures the only one on rock autos page that didn't have a picture and I pick it lol!! I do have a question for the masses though. My exhaust of course has duel twin tips. I am wondering how I know if they are resonator tips. ( I don't know how they sound) This thing has a pretty good growl when you burp the throttle!

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Sad to say this is the best looking part of the car so far!

Donnie

quote Originally posted by donnie072003: My exhaust of course has duel twin tips. I am wondering how I know if they are resonator tips. ( I don't know how they sound) This thing has a pretty good growl when you burp the throttle!

Can't really see all that well in your pics, but it looks like you have the stock horn style tips. They're not really resonator tips.

Do they kind of have a megaphone look and a tube on the inside? Pardon my ignorance but I haven't been around too many fieros so I'm not sure how its supposed to sound lol! I do like that growl sound. Even though its not a V8 type. I'll try to get a pic of it later. Just a curiousity thing mainly. Thanks

Donnie

Yeah, the stock tips are megaphone look. I meant to say megaphone instead of horn earlier.

The stock V6 is louder than a lot of passenger cars with V8s that come off the line today. The Fiero exhaust is pretty short, which means it's going to be a bit louder than other cars you might be used to.

Well just a quick update for anyone who may be keeping up with this one. Came home from work today and desided to invest a little time to the toy since it was quite crappy out tonight here. Thought I might start my tail light freshening up. I forgot to take a close up pic of the before but you will get the idea when you seee the pic of where I'm at with these. Thanks to IMSA for his thread on repairing delaminated tail lights. So I have scuffed up all the black and taped them all off and and gotten 3 coats of matte black down. Tomorrow I will be wet sanding and then 5 coats of clear. Hers what they look like right now.



So I sat them off to the side to do a little curing overnight before the clearcoat steps and I thought I would work on one of the wheels a little more to see what I could do with them. Here is the before pic.



Keep in mind my son picked this color to spray the centers. I'm still thinking I like the idea of black better. Going to do one in black tomorrow to get a better idea of how it will look on the car. Anyway here is the after shot.



What do you all think? This is sprayed with engine enamel aluminum color. Well more to come tomorrow.

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Sad to say this is the best looking part of the car so far!

https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/080998.html

Donnie

Spent the bulk of the day working on the toy. Worked on my tail light repairs (delam) Have the right side done. Still have to buff out the left side and reassemble. Took a little extra time today to drop the rear bumper cover and realign. The strip that holds the top of the cover had dropped down on the drivers side making the bodyline mouldings not align very badly! About a 1/4" or so. Looks much better now. Still not sperfect but damn close. Got my new sanding pad for my random orbit and went to town sanding out bad spots in the paint. Whole car had cracks in the paint seemed like. I have the roof hood and most of the front bumper cover sanded down already. Sure made a mess in my garage I know that. I tried to pull it aoutside so do the sanding but as soon as I did it started to sprinkle again. I was able to pull my sail panels off with out destroying but they were already cracked so not sure what I'm gonna do with those yet. Will try to post a few more pics later.

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Sad to say this is the best looking part of the car so far!

https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/080998.html

Donnie

Well just another quick update. At least I got a few more pics this time. Played hell finding batteries. Stupid X-box controllers!! LOL So this past weekend I stayed pretty busy as you will see. Thought I would share my progress.

These first pics are the progress on the body work. Not my favorite thing to do so I skip around alot. Again probably not the best idea but it somehow works!

Over the drivers and passengers door on roof. Nothing bad but had a couple seriuous chips.





Body pics no real damage just lots of cracked paint.















So these next couple of experiments are just cuz I can't afford new sail panels yet so I thought I would try this. Both side were carcked pretty bad so I gorilla glued all the cracks and then gave them a good sanding (well one of them so far) and a shot of black paint. You can see that the one with black paint has a bit of bondo on it since it had a wave that I really didn't like and the crack line was still showing. Don't know if this will work but thought I would give it a try. Will keep posted on progress..











So the next couple are of my tail lights. I didn't get a good before pic but trust me when I say they had serious delam. They are not perfect by any means but thanks to IMSA for his thread on repairs. Mine probably would have came out much better had I used higher quality paint.







The next couple of pics are just a little interior work. Gorilla glueing edges of console door and shift surround.



Shift surround was coming loose everywhere. Took me 2 days do get it all glued!



So thats all I have for now. Still pecking away at it. Lots of little jobs to keep me busy. Think I have a short in the headlight motors cuz sometimes they work and sometimes not! Give me your input as I go along. All critiques appreciated! Especially from the paint and body guys. Been a long time since I've messed with this kind of stuff and never on a plastic body! Thanks

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Sad to say this is the best looking part of the car so far!

https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/080998.html

Donnie

Are the headlight motors running after you've put the up or down? I had the same issue with mine I just needed to replace the headlight motor pins that are made of plastic. They deteriorate over time. If it is those, it's a cheap fix, just a little time consuming.

After looking at the fiero store website, I don't know if the '86 headlight motors contain the same pins that the '88 do, hopefully someone else will be able to enlighten me on the subject.

Its kind of wierd actually. Sometimes they come up 1st try and other times they don't even try to come up. And one time I had them up and they went down and then I was hearing a clicking noise and it was the drivers headlight tryin to do something (not sure what). Sounded like a relay clicking anf then the knob would twist and move and then stop. Was happening about every 15 to 20 seconds until I unplugged them. I have a bushing kit but I think its for 87-88 and am not sure its going to work on these since its an 86.

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Sad to say this is the best looking part of the car so far!

https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/080998.html

Donnie

Lookin' good, Donnie. Wish I was as far along as you .

Its been a lot of fun so far. Was es[ecially fun to hear the motor run the 1st time. The rest is just cosmetics that I could do anytime. I figured since its already in the garage I might as well keep working on it until its looks like something. I even turned a coworker on to these things. He bought an 88 notchie with a duke. Drives it back and forth to work every day. He keeps ragging me on when mine will be done. I'm really in no hurry especially since you can rack up a lot of money quick workin on these things. Right now I'm just working on small things that don't run into a bunch a money really. Would like to be driving it but I want to wait until I get paint on it 1st. Wish I had a couple of fiero gurus here in LaSalle to help me out on occasion. Sometimes this trial and error stuff gets annoying! LOL

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Sad to say this is the best looking part of the car so far!

https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/080998.html

Donnie

Keep up the good work!

Didn't get to work on it any yesterday. Worked on my daughters car. Just about have it road worthy for her. Had headlight problems. Got both motors rebuilt and then had an issue with them not going down after tehy got up. Just small items on hers. Might get a chance to work on mine a little more today. Thanks for the support!

Donnie

Looking good, its a labor of love.

Rob

quote Originally posted by Darth88Formula: After looking at the fiero store website, I don't know if the '86 headlight motors contain the same pins that the '88 do, hopefully someone else will be able to enlighten me on the subject.

The 84-86 cars are different from the 87-88 cars. The 87-88 (2nd gen) headlight motors are much better and fail less often. If you can find any, you might want to upgrade.

The lights on my daughters are 2nd gen. Hers is an 87 base coupe. Very easy to work on. Wish I had them in mine! If she hadn't needed a car so bad I would have used hers for a parts car. It was very clean but had been wrecked and I couldn't get all the front panels to line up 100%. That car is the one I bought originally for me to be my project. It runs great with its little duke motor. Will be a good car for her to drive back and forth to work to keep her gas costs down. I will be taking it in for an alignment probably next week for her, hopefully that is the last of the work on this one for a while. Well I did promise her I'd paint it too. I have a silver hood and nose on it right now to replace some damaged panels. Probably just gonna paint from the belt line up everything else is in very good shape.

Talked to my daughter today and shes OK with me swapping dashes with her. Mine has a couple of small cracks in the usual place and is 2 tone grey/charcoal. Hers is solid charcoal and perfect. Might start on that project this weekend so I can get the dash back in her car right away. She will start driving it next week once we get insurance on it and an alignment done. Shes really not too choosy about how it looks but I made a trade with her. Told her I would install the extra spoiler I have on her car if she would trade me dashes! LOL I told her I would put it on before I do the paint later on this summer. I already have it prepped for paint anyway so it should be pretty easy. I will have to drill the decklid though because hers didn't have a spoiler from factory. She likes the way the formula works. That was my original thought with her car when I bought it for me originally. Now If I could find her a set of mesh wheels she'd be set. Hmmm Maybe I could buy me a new set of wheels and put the ones from mine on hers! Nah already got a bunch of money in her car! LOL Here is a pic of her dash.



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Sad to say this is the best looking part of the car so far!

https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/080998.html

Donnie

[This message has been edited by donnie072003 (edited 06-16-2010).]

Nice work Donnie! Got to love the do it yourslefers! All that hard work is well worth it as that car will be "yours" when it's all done. How do you like the iggies so far? How were they to install? A friend of mine has them in his Fiero and they look very nice. I'm thinking of getting some for my Formula. Keep up the good work.

Pat

Got ambitious and went ahead and pulled the dash out! I felt up in the sub enclosure and there were no wires so I figured the amp had been pulled. After pulling the dash I found the missing wires and traced them back the amp. Woo Hoo!!! Now all I need is a 5-1/4 sub. Found a few on e-bay. Noticed when I was pulling the dash that someone has already upgraded to pioneer speakers up front!

Got a little abitious again today check out my before and after shots of the interior.

Before shots









After shots













Well thats it for now. Ran out of the black stuff before I could finish my doors. Might run back out later and grab more.

Pulled her out of the garage today and gave all that gravel mud a good washing. Took both bumper covers and rockers out and gave them a bath too. Let it all dry in the sun a while so I could clean up the garage a bit. Most of the mud fell on my floor while removing panels! After I pulled her back in I cleaned up a few areas and sprayed undercoating on them. She looks good with all her guts black again. Had a good fathers day. Kids gave me money for more car stuff. My oldest wants to buy my primer so I can start shooting soon. Hopefully by next weekend I'll have some more updates and look like I'm really making progress.

Wow almost 600 views since I started this thread. Hope everyone is enjoying this as much as I am.

Your the man!!!!! Too bad I hadn't joined this list sooner as I would have helped you out if you want. I sent you a PM.

So I got a few more pics of my progress from the weekend. Sure does look better thats for sure.

Front after cleaning up and undercoating some stuff.





A couple of shots from the rear.





Nice and clean under the hood.



Wish I could say the same for my once clean motor. Got tons of dust on it already! lol



And last but not least. I started pulling the door panels off. Guess while I'm in here I will clean up the glass tracks and lube everything up real good. Windows were a bit slow for my liking. Still trying to get the outer skins off. I figure the more I take off the less masking I'll have to do!



I am really liking the way the interior is coming along. Couldn't help myself so I popped off another couple shots of that too.





Found out today I have a friend in town who just recently became a fiero owner. I chatted with him on here a couple of times and didn't know who it was until he stopped by the house. He has gotten himself a REALLY nice 88 T-top GT. I can't remember the fellas name but he had it posted on here for a while. Now I guess I've got someone to help out when I need it! lol

Bought a set of new kahines sail panels today fieroeater. My little project with the cracked ones was a bust by the way! LOL One of them turned out OK but the other continued to crack on me until it broke in half. Wasn't too keen on the looks of solid black anyway!

You realy should paint your shifter surround piece too. I did mine, and it looks so much better, and completes the look.

Yes I have a couple of ideas of what I want to do with them but I'm still a little leary of putting leather or vinyl over them since I am a smoker. I concidered just painting black. I hate to paint them though because they are in really good shape and not scratched up any at all. But, still the silver does look bad against the lighter gray. Got any pics of yours! I'm open to some ideas still. Thanks for looking

[This message has been edited by donnie072003 (edited 06-22-2010).]

quote Originally posted by donnie072003: Yes I have a couple of ideas of what I want to do with them but I'm still a little leary of putting leather or vinyl over them since I am a smoker. I concidered just painting black. I hate to paint them though because they are in really good shape and not scratched up any at all. But, still the silver does look bad against the lighter gray. Got any pics of yours! I'm open to some ideas still. Thanks for looking

Dobey, what color did you use. Looks charcoal in the pic. Looks very good too!

quote Originally posted by donnie072003: Dobey, what color did you use. Looks charcoal in the pic. Looks very good too!

Flat black. Looks a little more grey in the pic due to the lighting, probably.