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| IMSA Racecar resoration:The rebirth of the Seyfert/Buist Fiero (Page 1/10) |
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Dave Deerson
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JAN 03, 03:11 PM
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I finally put time into uploading most of my pictures of the restoration of the Seyfert/Buist(then the Jack Ondrack) Fiero racecar that ran in IMSA from 1985 to 1987.I hope it will be of interest to some to show how the car went from this:
To this.....
To how i found it like this.....
and turned it into this.......
So,here i go..................
P.S. If at any time someone would like to see another view of something done to the car,let me know as I have many more pictures than what I will be posting.
Dave D
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Dave Deerson
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JAN 03, 03:34 PM
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The car started off as a sparetime project betweeb Pontiac suspension engineer Terry Satchell and his longtime friend Greg Seyfert.It was built over the winter of '84.Number 10 or "Geraldine" as she was named by Seyferts wife,was raced in mostly SCCA GT2 events and was entered in IMSA GTU races that were within reasonable distance to the Detroit area.Satchell later sold his share in the car and Seyfert then partnered with David Buist to continue to campain the car up to the cars sale in 1992 to Jack Ondrak of Canada.
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Jack raced the car in GT2 up to 1999 when he replaced the car with his newly purchased toy-a real Huffaker Fiero.The new car is the V6 GT1 car seen in many pics on this forum.The old car was sold to his buddy in Arizona to be used as a chassis for a Porsche bodied project.As most projects go,the car languished away in a horse barn,untouched, until I bought the car in late 2004.I really was only looking for wider rear quarter panels for my '88 racecar when I called Joe Huffaker to find out who had the old moulds for the race bodies.He put me in touch with Jack(who owns them now)and told me about this old chassis sitting in a barn and how I should make an offer to help his buddy make some room and get his wife off his back about the unfinished cars stored in there and ............that's how I got involved.
She came to me as a roller with crates of parts and old body panels.
So next........what was usable and what had to be trashed...........
Dave
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mcaanda
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JAN 03, 03:36 PM
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Subscribing, and wow that thing looks like a lot of fun.
--Allen ------------------
And it begins again...
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Fiero1Fan
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JAN 03, 03:56 PM
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Wow, what a fun project to work with. One question, is there anything on the car that is still original Fiero?
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Kyle1016
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JAN 03, 04:14 PM
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New Favorite Thread! I love looking at these older pictures! Post as many as you can! I really enjoyed reading all of it, and look forward to more!
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IMSA GT
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JAN 03, 04:18 PM
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This will be good.....been waiting for this thread to form 
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IMSA GT
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JAN 03, 04:19 PM
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| quote | Originally posted by Dave Deerson:
So next........what was usable and what had to be trashed...........
Dave |
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Let me know if you decided to trash the chin spoiler....I'll gladly take it off your hands
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Dave Deerson
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JAN 03, 04:53 PM
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The only original Fiero parts on the car are the taillights and the windshield.All the IMSA GT cars(GTU and GTO) are/were dedicated tube chassis race cars.The early IMSA rules stated that at least the roof,front hood and rear decklid must be production pieces,but later these rules were relaxed and the complete car could be total race parts.Much along the same vein as NASCAR "stock cars" are actually Malibus,Taurus' ,etc..
IMSA GT,
There were not many panels left with the car(including the front spoiler).In fact the only body panel reused was the roof,and that was a major project as there were at least 14 coats of paint I had to remove to get down to the original gel coat(although it was neat seeing the individual colors of the past come off as if a book's pages were being flipped from the end).The rest of the panels were new from the original Huffaker/GM moulds-and let me tell you,it was difficult finding who had each of the moulds to what pieces and in what part of North America they had to be shipped from!!
The chassis was pretty beat up from many years of racing-there were patches over old patches,suspension mounting points were not symetrical side to side and off by as much as 3/4 to 7/8 in!!The chassis was so bad from behind the main hoop that I descided to cut it off and rebuild it with a longitudinal V8 instead of the Super Duty 4.
A few reasons why:
I am a staff member of a racing organization here in the northeast and can get up to 4 hours of track time at such venues as Watkins Glen,Lime Rock,NJ Motorssports Park,Pocono and a few more,so I wanted a powerplant that 1.had low maintenance 2.ran on pump gas (race fuel is expensive if you log alot of track time) 3. put at least 320 to 350hp to the ground(with 2100lb,it's a good power to weight ratio)
The Super duty motor is expensive to put together now as the parts are getting rare.The Muncie/Getrag/Webster-geared trans is equally as rare and expensive.
So I went with a Corvette Z06 LS6 engine(warmed up for now at 410hp to the wheels) and a Porsche 930 trans(will be converting it to dog ring style syncros this winter) since a Hewland DGB is out of the buget for now at near $12k just for the trans.Paul Hosler very gratiiously gave me his chassis dimentions(x,y,z coordinates) for the updated(for 1986) suspension pick up points as done by E.J. Trivette.I must say my life hasn't been the same since I opened a certain Car Domain Blog of a Yellow IMSA V8 powered Fiero! Thanks Paul,I am sure my wife feels the same!!!!!!!
The engine enen has a race history itself!It is a used take-out from GM engineer John Heinracy's SCCA T1 car! The race shop that prepares his car is located near me in Philadelphia and sells off the used engines as they hit 20 hour of use.It should be fine for what I use the car for.
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Dave Deerson
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JAN 03, 05:02 PM
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Here's some pics as the car was raced back in 1985 by Seyfert/Buist:
Terry Satchell in center of the pic with his arms crossed
on the grid
1987 Cleveland IMSA GT
I'm not sure where in Canada Jack took this one,Hey Mickey Moose!Help me out with that info!
Here's some pics of the chassis as I started:
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Dave Deerson
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JAN 03, 05:17 PM
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Here are some as the engine mounts and new suspension pick-up points were done:
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