(like The Holy Grail. Camelot! Camelot! Camelot! It's only a model. Shhh!)

Besides the Fiero, one of my other hobbies is radio control vehicles. They're mostly scratch built, generally about 1:10 scale (ie fairly large, especially if you're talking about, say, an M-1 Abrams tank and its associated prime mover and trailer.) Was chatting with fellow enthusiasts in that hobby and came to discover that one such enthusiast and I share another hobby: Fieros. They were kind enough to share with me this picture of the cars:



Look very closely on the roof and you'll see a matching Fiero on top on his Fiero.



Anyway, I thought this was a great idea, appeals to both my OCD "match all the things!" and to my Fiero habit, without having to buy/store/maintain a second actual car. Plus, I could modify the little car to look like the big one. I mean,



Okay, enough memes. So there's a few remote control Fieros like that, all those horrible cable-controlled ones (ie no actual radio.) Found one on Fleabay that wasn't exorbitantly priced (some people think they're made out of unicorn poop), good cosmetic condition. The mechanicals were pretty bad after 30 years, but that's all gonna get replaced anyway.

Started with this:



It's actually surprisingly accurate in dimension and detail and, besides the Rube Goldberg-esque electrics, fairly well-built. The steering mechanism was a convoluted worm-gear thing, and while yes, it has working pop-up headlights, they're actually MORE complicated than the Gen-1 setups =)) For this one, we just directly couple some appropriately sized servos to the pop mechanisms



(underside of hood, front to left of car. White patch in the driver's side front wheelwell is behind a crack in the plastic.) They're shmancy digital metal gear servos that are programmable, so you can set the start and stop points and reverse them so that they both spin the same way even though they're mirrored, and cleverest of all, you can slow them down so the lights just gliiiide up.

However, the model is a notchback and a sunroof car, and the big one is a fastback with T-tops. Oddly enough, I'm actually putting pad-style bumpers on the big one, so those match. The tail lights, however, don't match (Keith, how come you and George don't make your lenses @ 1:10 scale?), nor really does any of the back end. Sadly, you can't just swap the rear clip as I've never seen a fastback model, only the notchies.

Fortunately one of my other hobbies is 3D printing, so I think we can make it all work. First, we tear the whole thing down and then start cutting into the shell. After some Dremel work, there's enough space down the center of the roof for the T-top bar, and the higher fastback trunk:



Just like installing the T-top kit into the big car, I won't cut off the tops of the doors and the front roof line until the very end of the body work. Must prevent any more cracking of 30+ year old plastic.

The notchback trunk has the vents forward of it (is that all notchies, or just early ones?), so gonna change out the black piece (original to the car) to a new one with the vents on the sides (here, yellow):



The yellow one is just a test piece as it was what I had in the printer, gonna do it black for the final version as it'll come out better than trying to paint it. The rectangular holes are for the luggage rack, which I'm not going to have, so aren't present in the printed version.

[This message has been edited by dremu (edited 05-30-2021).]

The next bit is to extend the notchie tail to the fastback's rounded butt. There is not a single straight edge on this car, and man, is it hard to model.



That glues onto the back of the car and gives it a fair approximation of the GT tail. Later I'll print one of these in translucent filament -- again, Keith, I'm hurt! =))



I just don't see bending actual clear plastic to those curves, thus the printing. Some details are still TBD, like whether I can get "PONTIAC" in the middle (might be too small or might not show through the translucent, might just have to do the center as black), and lighting is still TBD yet. Might only have red on the corners, might have turns too. It will all be illegal LED's, got some nice big white ones for the headlights. Pretty sure the DOT police don't enforce inside my house.

These guys then go inside and behind the existing rear wing. This is LH; one thing I love about printing is once you get a thing designed, you can get a mirror of it for the other side just by pressing a button.



Left image is the rear view, shows how it curves from the trunk lines in towards the roof. Right image is outer side of the piece. The left bit is what slides behind the existing notchback and glues in there and to the roof for strength. Part of the center will get cut out for the wing window (see below), but I'm trying to keep like 2-3mm top and bottom to attach the window.

I am hopeful that the wing windows can be done in actual acrylic (vs printing), thinnest tinted I could find is ~2mm. These are templates for me to start from



Because, as mentioned, everything on this car is stupidly shaped. Gonna take a lot of manual work, Dremel sanding and filing, to get these Just So.

[This message has been edited by dremu (edited 05-17-2021).]

The big car has some other non-stock bits that need to be modeled, namely the side scoops (off a Fiat X1/9)



Again, just click "mirror" for the other side, yay. Did have to veeeeeery carefully Dremel out the LH slot for this, and then cut a new one on the RH.

and the spoiler



After repeated application of the Dremel and more filler than I'd care to admit, the shell now looks thus



The wing window cutouts still need a bit of filing and cleaning, see how that works once the tinted pieces are cut. But it's starting to resemble a fastback, yay.

Also will take some juggling to paint, as the T-top area and behind the wing windows is black, but the rest of the car is silver, etc. The little car just had removable plastic bits for each color, like the bumper pads and trim are molded in black vs the body molded in red, so at least they all come nicely without having to be masked for painting.

I do want to redo the interior to more accurately match (grey seats and steering wheel, but black floor and door panels). Another set of "burn that bridge when you get there" items.

Gotta see what tires I can find because the ones that are one there are (1) 30+ year old rubber and (2) securely glued in place. Really don't want to touch them for fear of irrevocably damaging them. New tires about the right size would mean I print matching lace wheels, yay.

More to come.

-- A

[This message has been edited by dremu (edited 05-17-2021).]

More packages arrived in the mail, including thin tinted plexi. Still need trimming and lordie the shell needs more sanding. Body work on little ones is just as much work as on the big ones! The tint on this is a bit darker than the existing windshield/rear, but it was all I could find. In any event it means I won't have to fuss so much over the black behind it, basically looks like the GT wing window as is:



The translucent filament printed properly for once (the last roll I had was so brittle it kept breaking in the printer)



Not as good as Keith's, but the LED's should show through just fine. Also, I have hope that this guy



will work in the center. A quick test of it with one 5mm LED had only one letter showing through legibly. Ordered some larger diffused LED's, hoping they do better. It's not so much the brightness, but the dispersion pattern of the light.

TX is now set up for the car; seems silly, but helps me remember which TX goes with which vehicle(s).



Finally, got the headlight pops working to my satisfaction. First, the illegal and blindingly bright LED's:



and then a demo of the mechanism (with lights disabled, as otherwise the camera got all confused and you couldn't see squat)



They don't quite lift simultaneously, but the big one's like that too =)) I gave up on using the servo's stupid digitally programmed end limits, now just driving them with an Arduino. This lets me set the up and down points with actual 1000...1500...2000 values, instead of arbitrary "37" numbers that don't mean anything, so they're at least aligned when up or down.

Also started laying out where to actually *put* the components inside the car, and there is surprisingly LITTLE room for the RX, battery, switch for the headlights, and the one Arduino for the headlight pops and the rest of the lights (gonna have brakes, backup lights, and turn signals, because LED's yay!) I see why the folks who do conversions from static models to RC tear their hair out doing so. My scratch builds generally don't have an interior, and/or are larger vehicles like trucks.

-- A

[This message has been edited by dremu (edited 05-30-2021).]

I went a different direction with mine...... No RC though. I eliminated the sunroof and made it a hardtop. Looks like someone parted out a nice yellow Formula and a Blue '87 too! Lots of clear coat fade on the roof and bumper; I did that with oil paints.

[This message has been edited by css9450 (edited 05-20-2021).]