quote Originally posted by Russ544: front track as in tread width? or fender width? In eather case, no, I like it just fine the way it is now. the widebody kit may not sound like much of an increase, but it did change the look quite noticeably in front as well as rear.

HI all

Ya know how some kitcars require longer suspension arms to get correct fittment.... Like the 355 kits you need a front track increase of 3 inches per side of the front....... You had said that the car is 1 1/4 inches wider per side on the front, and I was curious what you mighta thought about using held motorsports front track width increasing suspension parts....... With an inch and a 1/4 each side of the front you could widen the front end with this type of suspension an inch, that's if you don't want to go with meatier tyres on the front....... Either way though I wonder which would be for better handling...... Meaty tyres or an inch track increase..........Hmmmm... I hope this answers the questions.......

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Me, I sell engines, the cars are for free, I need something to crate the engines in....
Enzo Ferrari....

Today they are called garage's, yesterday, they were stable's! Eric Jacobsen....

The rear of a Fiero is where you want the huge tires to be.
The front needs to be in proportion to the rear to get good handling with minimal suspension tuning. With 275's in the rear, I don't think he should go bigger than 225's in front.

I finally managed to get a few hours away from picking out kitchen cabinets and toilet seats long enough to work on the car a bit today. over the past couple weeks I've had time to mull over the blown ECM fuse issue and had come to the conclusion that I must have the 0-2 sensor wired wrong. it was the only thing I was guesing about when I wired everything up, so first thing I did today was to just unplug the 0-2 and see if the fuse blew when I turned the key on. it didn't so I twisted the key and VIOLA it fired up. not wanting to gas myself at this stage of the game I only ran it for a minute or two inside the garage but it sure sounds good. the idle was up due to the cold start, but it was idling smoother than it EVER did with the Holly computer. I'll get the 0-2 wireing figured out, and if it ever warms up and dries out around here I'll take er for a spin and see how it REALLY runs

Russ

[This message has been edited by Russ544 (edited 02-25-2007).]

quote Originally posted by Russ544: Well.... I took the easy way out and used the Holly 3 wire 0-2 sensor. by splicing on the Caddy plug to the Holly 0-2 I was able to just plug it into the wire harness connector I already had. It's been snowing for a wile today, but enough rain has come down with it that the roads are clear at the moment so I snuck out and took a little test drive. WOW. this thing runs like a Caddilac . it runs much smoother and quieter now in both closed loop and open loop. the idle is smooth as silk and the hesitation off idle is totally gone. Ryans ECU really did make this a whole new experience to drive. and obviously that's a good thing I can't wait for a sunny day so I can really get out and thrash the thing, but I sure don't see any surprises coming up. Thanks Ryan. you da man Russ PS: anybody want to buy a low milage Holly Commander setup

Glad to hear it's working well for ya', every time I hear of one of Ryan's systems coming to life I get more exited about mine.

Joe

quote Originally posted by motoracer838: Glad to hear it's working well for ya', every time I hear of one of Ryan's systems coming to life I get more exited about mine. Joe

Yup. you'll love the "plug and play" aspect of Ryans setup. of course the down side would be if you wanted to put in bigger cams or other mods to the engine at a later date, but for the stock motor, this really is the cats meow.
glad to see you getting your N* put together. looks like you're doing a really clean install. I like that.

Cheers,
Russ

quote Originally posted by Russ544: Yup. you'll love the "plug and play" aspect of Ryans setup. of course the down side would be if you wanted to put in bigger cams or other mods to the engine at a later date, but for the stock motor, this really is the cats meow. glad to see you getting your N* put together. looks like you're doing a really clean install. I like that. Cheers, Russ

Thanks. Joe

Russ, have you had a chance to run it hard yet?

Joe

quote Originally posted by motoracer838: Russ, have you had a chance to run it hard yet? Joe

Sorry Joe, but no, I haven't had the IMSA out of the garage since the latest test drive a couple weeks ago. the weather has improved here, but that mostly just meant that we could finally pour cement and set blocks for the new house. I'll try to get the car out next weekend and report a little more in-depth on how Ryans computer system does. it sure felt strong on the mile & 1/2 drive I did take however.



Russ

quote Originally posted by Russ544: Sorry Joe, but no, I haven't had the IMSA out of the garage since the latest test drive a couple weeks ago. the weather has improved here, but that mostly just meant that we could finally pour cement and set blocks for the new house. I'll try to get the car out next weekend and report a little more in-depth on how Ryans computer system does. it sure felt strong on the mile & 1/2 drive I did take however. Russ

I just hate it when work gets in the way of fun, it looks like youv'e got a good start on a new house. Good luck with that.

Joe

just a bump out of archive land. I've been a bit busy to work on the car for a wile, but my other project is coming along nicely
Russ

Looking very nice! Hmmm, where is the shop going to be?

quote Originally posted by cptsnoopy: Looking very nice! Hmmm, where is the shop going to be?

It's in the same place it's always been just out of frame to the right is a 36x24' shop with 4 car carport off one side (the wife has her own freestanding carport for her Miata cause "mine" is full of Fieros )

glad to see you getting back to work on your N* project BTW. better get er done soon before it's 110* in the shade down there.

Cheers,
Russ

dang. where is the summer going? I already need a bump before the Archives catch up to me.
I pooched a disk in my back a week ago and will be going in for an MRI on Wed to see if I'll ever be able to get in a Fiero again (I'm voting yes, though it may be a wile).
The IMSA will be back in the news before too long............. I hope.

Russ

Dang! That sucks! I hope that you get better soon.

My bet is that you hosed your back working on the house didn't you?

Good luck and post some picks when you can.

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Kendall (Icelander) Whitlatch
'85 Fiero 2M4 - 5spd Isuzu
'67 LeMans/GTO clone 6.5 litre TH400
All the rest aren't Pontiacs, so what does it matter?

Been dealing with the lower back thing since I was rear-ended by a 3/4ton Ford back in 1998. It seems way worse than it is for about a week then things get better. I have to do stretching every morning to help make sure it does not happen as often as it used to. Sorry to hear about your back, this is not a fun club to join....

BUMP

I'm back! the back is doing surprisingly well after a regeim of drugs and pt. I was expecting surgury this time, but it looks like that can wait a wile longer after all. The house is esentially done now also, so play time can't be too far away

Does anyone know of a reputable shop that can cut apart an aluminum rim and change the offset?? preferably on the left coast to ease the shipping costs. I want to give the front rims some more negative to get the handling better, and reduce the kick.

Russ

You'd think that a person who enjoys fabrication projects as much as I do would really enjoy building a new house.......... I don't
EVER want to build another house. that was WAY to much stress for an old man like me I spent all of last weekend cleaning up sawdust and re-organizing my shop so I could work on cars in there again. during last week I began ordering parts for a couple projects I have in mind, and today I finally was able to actually get my hands dirty for the first time in months. It felt GREAT. a couple of my upcoming projects involve my SBC car, but I'll start another thread on that when the time comes. in the meantime, I received a new 3 core radiator from Archie on Thursday, so that went into the IMSA today. The stock radiator that was in the car worked pretty well, but didn't have hardly any reserve capacity. on the occasions when the car got up to the 220* - 225* range, it took a very long time to cool it back down again. most times it just stayed there until it was shut down for a wile. 225* isn't too hot for this motor, but I prefer to keep it in the 200* - 210* range
The increased capacity is pretty evident when you place it side by side to a stocker:



Installation is very straightforward, but I did grind out the opening around the fill neck in the support bracket, as it just kisses the radiator tank in the lower corners of the opening.


I suspect it would have been fine as is, but I feel more comfortable after giving it some wiggle room.


After topping off the radiator again I went for a little test spin. I did manage to get it up to 220* after sittling in traffic for a wile, but as soon as things got moving again it cooled down right back down again in less than 1/2 mile. a very worthwile afternoon project I think.

By next weekend I expect to have a new pair of rims and tires for the front of this car. I never did find anyone willing to change the offset of the Racelines for me, so I settled on buying a new pair of 17" x 7" Falkin Torque 5 (gunmetal) rims with 215-45-17 Falkin FK 452 tires. they have a similar look as the Racelines and should work out better for me. The front tires hang out a bit, and since the car was lowered, the front tires tend to kiss the fender lips during "spirited" driving. that and the offset isn't really very good for this car anyway, which I feel is hurting the handling somewhat. I'll have to drill the Vette rotors for the 5x100 bolt pattern, but that's no biggie.

after the IMSA is squared away again, I plan to pull the motor from my SBC car and do some "re-formatting" of it's power band. a new cam is going in, and I'll be trashing the Edelbrock carb in favor of a Demon.

I love grease
Russ544

Russ; I too have built my own home and garage and would rather build cars and race motocross. Of course I'd rather get a root canal than build another house, the pain would be over a lot sooner ( ha ha ) oh ya I hate drywall, the dust gets into everything.

btw cool rims, I'll bet those look nice on the IMSA!

Cheers Beers N Gearz. Joe

As promised, the wheels and tires showed up today via UPS, so when I got home from work I set about removing the wheel studs and re-installing them in the 5x100 pattern. I had already redrilled the rotors, wile at work the other day, so it was pretty much a bolt on from there. I guess I'll get used to the new look, but this new setup does hide the tires a bit more than I'd like. the 1" narrower rim, 1/4" smaller diameter tire and slightly (1/4"?) different offset all add up. My slight disappointment in the look was MORE than made up for in the driving impression however, as I went for a 10 mile "test drive". I'm not sure if I should attribute it to the better offset of the rims, the stickier tire, or what, but it sure is a lot more fun to toss around corners now . there was just enough "dew" on the roads to make the drive exciting, but I never felt like I didn't have good control over it. a much more........... "balanced" feel than before.
I'll get a pic of the new wheels posted tomorrow before I get to work on the "SE350". I pulled it into the shop and put the IMSA in the carport already, so I'll be ready to rock first thing in the morning.

Russ544

here's a pic of the Raceline GT wheels 225 - 45 - 17 on 8" rim:



and the new Falkin wheels and tires 215 - 45 - 17 on 7" rim:



The Falkin is a 40 mm offset, but I don't know what the Raceline is. they sell by backspacing only. I figured the offset out when I first put them on, but have since forgotten. I think I figured about 10 mm difference over stock, but I need to check again. I'm really amazed at the handling difference and road feel now, but like I said, that could be partially due to the tires. the Zexius tires weren't the best handling tire I've ever used.

Russ544

[This message has been edited by Russ544 (edited 10-12-2007).]

beam me up Scottie.
I've been working on the ITB injection setup over yonder, so I'll keep this thread active in case I need to add an install page.

edit: I was concerned that no-one would be interested in following along on this build when I first started it back in 04'. I see it has well over 40,000 hits since then, so I guess people have been interested after all

thanks,
Russ544

[This message has been edited by Russ544 (edited 12-03-2007).]

russ i'm a new member, and a new fiero owner, but in browsing the pages for dash modifications, i saw yours and i have to give it credit for the best one i've ever seen. Most of the dash conversions on the site dont match the car at all, most are very curvy and modern looking. I think in reality that they are poorly designed, you have to consider what its going into, and its going into an older car, with older styling, and that modern interior does not match the rest of the car.

having said that, your dash is a perfect match, it matches the styling of the car perfectly and gives it an awesome performance feel.

i think i'm going to duplicate it to some extent for my 86, but i think i'm going to make mine either red to match my existing painted back plates, or redo them all with a wood veneer.

is spring here yet?
bump.

It's spring somewhere. A bump to keep this alive for when I can finally start restoring mine.

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Bob
84 SE IMSA Widebody
87 GT 5spd
05 Vibe

quote Originally posted by Russ544: I can see a light at the end of the tunnel at work now, so I took a day off today and puttered on the car a bit. I cheated the engine over to the left a tad too much when I built my sbc car and had a small problem with the cv joint bottoming out under acceleration. it wouldn't take long to destroy an axle if this were allowed to continue, so I figured out a way to shorten the left axle by about 5/8" without having custom axles made up. Now that I'm building this Northstar project, that lesson \has come in handy, as the 88 chassis is even tighter than the earlier models and the Northstar needs every bit of "cheating" you can get away with to place the engine further to the left and out of reach of the right hand shock tower. A 1/2" or so can easily be taken up by the cv joint, but more than that requires some alterations to the LH axle. What I did was to disassemble the left axle and cut (grind) new snap ring grooves as far in on each end of the splines as possible. this ends up being just over 1/4" on each end. with the new grooves cut, the ends of the axle can be shortened by a like amount which gives the tripot about 5/8" more clearance before it bottoms out in it's housing. I did some measuring today and it appears that I'll be able to get away without any cutting of the shock tower at all. I may have to remove a small piece of the side of the tower cap, just to give a little wiggle room for the cyl head, but that's about it. stock axle compared to modified. I received an invoice from CHRF on Friday for the flywheel, clutch, computer and wiring harness, so I expect to see brown on monday or tues with a box of toys in tow. hang on tight... here we go Russ

Russ, how did you grind new grooves on the axle? Did you use a lathe and perhaps a grinder? Also what did you use to cut the ends off?

[This message has been edited by Erik (edited 05-03-2008).]

quote Originally posted by Erik: Russ, how did you grind new grooves on the axle? Did you use a lathe and perhaps a grinder? Also what did you use to cut the ends off?

Sorry Eric, but I haven't had much time to get on the Feiro board lately, so I missed this question until today.
The grooves were ground in the axle wile it was chucked in my lathe, but of course the axle is way to hard to cut with normal tooling, so I jury rigged a mount to hold a cheepy air die grinder, with a narrow cuttoff wheel in it, to the lathe tool holder. as the axle turns in the lathe I could possition the die grinder precisly where it was needed to grind the groove. To cut off the axle I just used my chop saw with an abrasive wheel.

Cheers,
Russ

I decided to sell this car for real this time. it's in the mall, and will soon be on Craigslist. it's listed at 12K, so even a Fiero person can't complain about that price

Cheers,
Russ

^^ stayin alive ^^

Russ

quote Originally posted by Russ544: ^^ stayin alive ^^ Russ

Hmmm, I wonder what is next?