A History of the Blue Demon (Page 2/17)
L.I. Fieros JUL 18, 10:05 AM
Hey Jen, you've done an incredible amount of work on that car and it really came out awesome! It's definitely one of the nicest Fieros around. And I remember it way back before the rebuild. Looking forward to keeping an eye on this thread and seeing you, the family, and the car at the 25th!
Fierochic88 JUL 18, 04:31 PM
Thanks for your posts guys and thanks for the pic Lar! :-) I remember that show at Zinn's - that was such a great place!

So the car sat in the driveway all summer through my 21st birthday party/Fiero picnic and our October Tech Day it occupied this spot:



As you can see from some of the pics below, it was a rather filthy mess:

Gotta love the hole in the carpet and the crusty dash and surrounds...fortunately it had a nice Grant wheel when I bought it...one less thing to purchase on my college student budget!



Also, the yellow "line" paint in the wheel wells on the left side really added to the car's character!




I had meanwhile gotten the number of the car's owner prior to Steve by looking up a name that was on an insurance card I found in the car. His name was Jeremy and he had owned the car for a few years prior to Steve's purchase of the car from Hershey Motors near Parksburg. When Jeremy bought the car it was a black 85 GT. He worked for a shop that painted helicopters and decided to paint the car the same color as a helicopter he had been working on because he really liked the color. Once he painted the car, while browsing Spring Carlisle, he came across the wheels and purchased them and put them on the car. He also bought the Grant wheel and had many other upgrades planned before he ran short on cash. He had even taken the car to Carlisle in 2000. Ironically, my boyfriend at the time I got the car had taken a picture of the car when Jeremy had it at Carlisle....little did I know when I first glanced at that car in 2000 that it would someday be mine!

After getting the car upgraded, Jeremy broke up with his girlfriend who was in possession of the car for some reason. She and her new boyfriend took the car out and ran it through the line paint, repeatedly burned the tires off of it and ran it out of gas after doing a series of donuts in it near Hershey Motors. After the car died, they proceeded to gouge the seats (unforunately I can't find the pictures to show) and they jumped all over the hood, decklid and roof of the car, which explained the terrible scratches and poor fit of those pieces. My poor little car had a rough go of things, but had that not happened - I probably would have never owned the car. Jeremy decided his hands were too full to repair it and he left it at Hershey Motors to be put up for sale...hence, the purchase by Steve.

Since 2001, Jeremy did end up buying another Fiero from a friend of mine and put a 3800 in it. He painted it orange and occasionally lurks here on the forum....

To be continued....
Fierochic88 JUL 19, 03:38 PM
So as we know, the car sat in the driveway from it's date of purchase until the following December. On nice days it got washed, but no amount of washing could really bring the car up to what I envisioned. To achieve that image, it was going to take far more than some soap and water and the occasional push around the driveway.

I'd like to entite this next segment, "How Jen & Dad nearly killed each other." For those of you who were there, you know that was nearly the case!

The real project began in late November of 2001. A local guy had a 3.4L engine for sale at a seemingly good price ($400) so I decided to take a look at it and see about doing a 3.4L swap in the car, as the existing motor was already shot. Dad andd I went over a few times and looked at the engine and at 60k, everything seemed to be in pretty good shape. As an added bonus, the engine owner offered to dill the starter holes in the block to make the Fiero conversion. He was already working on his own 3.4L so this seemed ideal. We took him up on that offer and committed our first big mistake.

Meanwhile, on December 26th, with the assistance of Dave Horst (skitime) and Denny Lambert (Denny), Dad and I pushed the yet to be named "Blue Demon" into the garage where it would sit until May of the following year. We still did not have possession of the engine and persistent phone calls finally revealed the problem. The guy who had the engine had screw up the starter holes and was attempting to re-drill them! No go there! We decided to pick up the engine as is and got another surprise. It seemed like the possibility existed that this guy had switched blocks on us as teh condition of the block had "rapidly detoriorated" since the last time we saw it. Since time was short, and the price was still pretty cheap, we decided to make a go of it anyways and brought the block home.

To be continued...I have to go back out to the garage and see how the latest project is "drying"!

[This message has been edited by Fierochic88 (edited 07-23-2008).]

Fierochic88 JUL 19, 04:50 PM
Dad told me that if I wanted a "new" engine in my car, I would have to prove to him that I was committed to the project. My first task, he said, was to unhook the anti-freeze lines attached to the engine, under the car. He handed me a screw driver and gave me a few pointers. I figured that this couldn't be all that difficult, after all, I had handed Dad numerous screw drivers and paper towels on our other engine removal projects. I was also determined to not be a wuss about getting a "little" dirty.

After jacking up the car and placing the special "engine removal" jack stands underneath, I crawled under. Dad had meanwhile gone upstairs to spend some time with his brother, who was visiting from FL. I realized as soon as I was under the car that this was going to be more difficult than expected. The car had been sitting for so long that the drain plugs were immovable. The only other option was to remove the hoses with the fluid still in them, which was sure to be a messy task. Undettered, I set about my work. An hour later, I was covered in anti-freeze from head to toe (yes - it does turn your hair green!), and I still couldn't get the fasteners all of the way off. I called up to Dad on the intercom and a few minutes later, he and my Uncle Ron were having the time of their lives laughing at an anti-freeze covered girl. They felt so bad that they changed, sent me up for a shower and then assisted me in removing the lines. Needless to say, my dad realized I was committed to the project!

Unfortunately, no one thought to take pictures of this mess!

Next up - engine removal!
Fierochic88 JUL 19, 06:24 PM
Getting the engine itself out didn't prove to be a very difficult task. By this time we had done no less than a half dozen engine removals and we had an outstanding "crew." Within two hours, the engine was out and on the floor!



It sure was "crusty" looking!
Fierochic88 JUL 19, 07:20 PM
We set to work disassembling the engine as some of the parts from the 2.8L would of course be used in the swap. The new block was at our machinists where it was being cookeed and bored .30 over. We decided to go with hypereutectic pistons because the overall game plan was to turbo the car. In retrospect, I wish we had made another decision because the compression ratio we ended up (9.2:1) with was not optimal for eventual turbo-ing. That is not saying it won't be possible but I won't be able to use maximum boost and expect this block to hold together well.

My dad was the fearless leader on this project, and shortly after the picture below was taken, he and I had the engine ready to come out of the sub-frame. We documented nearly every step of the way with photographs so that the future assembly would go smoothly.



The below pic is one of my favorites...I'm not sure why I was confused but I definitely was! (Probably because I felt like a marshmallow person inside that mechanic's jumpsuit that was fifty sizes too big!)



Success!
Jncomutt JUL 19, 07:35 PM
Holy flashback... lol. I had to double check the date on the original post here. This thread took ya long enough to make Story sounds good so far, watch for overusing the word 'crusty' =P
JimmyS JUL 19, 07:40 PM
Ya have to admire a girl who will dig in and work on her own car! I asked my girlfriend to help me once... asked her to hand me a phillips screwdriver and her response... "is that the pointy one"? Haven't asked for her help since.
Fierochic88 JUL 19, 07:40 PM
It was also decided at this time that we were going to attempt to paint the front and rear compartments the same color as the car. Dave had suggested this as many hotrods already used this idea. The only Fiero we were aware of that was painted like this (at that time) belonged to Chris West, and he was all the way over on the other coast!

What a big project this would be! We began with the front compartment and stripped everything out of it. I never knew exactly how many little pieces were involved in that front area, but let me tell you from experience - there are a lot!









(Am I posting too many pictures? Please let me know!)
Fierochic88 JUL 19, 07:42 PM

quote
Originally posted by Jncomutt:

Holy flashback... lol. I had to double check the date on the original post here. This thread took ya long enough to make Story sounds good so far, watch for overusing the word 'crusty' =P



Yeah just a few years...you know, I have been sitting around twiddling my thumbs