Hi guys. No progress, but itching to go. Steve hit it on the head, and life has gotten in the way of fun. Between work, a new deck, soccer, robotics, and weather, the life long project is on hold. The ideas are still flowing and the will is there. Just need mild weather...yeah right...
Hi guys. No progress, but itching to go. Steve hit it on the head, and life has gotten in the way of fun. Between work, a new deck, soccer, robotics, and weather, the life long project is on hold. The ideas are still flowing and the will is there. Just need mild weather...yeah right...
Updates will come eventually.
Bob
...And everyone have a safe and fun holiday.
Lol, your just giving me time to get started on mine, I. Blew up my shop a couple of months ago to insulate and drywall, still not done...
Actually got a little bit done. I sanded two coats of paint and primer off, down to gel coat, on about a third of the car. Something I was dreading, but it turned out not too bad.
Getting warmer, soon I'll be able to do some glassing again.
Managed to get in the garage last night. I started playing with the headlights because mechanicals are pretty temp independent.
What I found is that somewhere in the last 5 years that the headlights have been disassembled, I lost the passenger side relay. Not happy about that. Driver's side headlight works, though, and the passenger side fits over the battery. I was seriously worried about that.
Now I need to figure out how to package two 60mm projectors and come up with the box and hinge mechanism. I spent a little time studying Don's 308 setup this morning, so I have some ideas to play with.
Looks like it's going to be quite a challenge. (Nothing is easy on this ).
I glassed the hood shut.. Opps. After cutting it free, I still couldn't open it because the flange on the side of the hood was hitting. Fortunately, the head light doors are out, so I was able to reach the hood bolts, loosen it up, and move the hood back far enough to open it.
Then it was off to Harbor Freight to add to the tool set. I picked up a 3ft metal brake and mounted it to my work table.
That's as clean as my table has been in a long while.
Looking good Bob! So question for you are you going to do the Ferrari hood mod as well or just cut the hood back to allow for vents behind the head light buckets as you have now? And Retain the stock Feiro hood opening width. I can send you a PDF of the brackets we used to mount Don's Ferrari buckets to the fiero mounting points, it might help for refrence designing yours. I've been busy block sanding my front clip the last few days getting it ready to build a mold of the front clip. I decided it was probably a good idea to have in case I was ever in a fender bender. It would be much easier to just repoduce the damage panel than try to hand build a new one and replicate all the the lines again.
As for the 355 Mirrors, I'm still sorcing new mirror motors for the build rather than using old mirror motors from the junk yard. Looks like nothing in North America ,I'm talking to China right now.
Looking good Bob! So question for you are you going to do the Ferrari hood mod as well or just cut the hood back to allow for vents behind the head light buckets as you have now? And Retain the stock Feiro hood opening width. I can send you a PDF of the brackets we used to mount Don's Ferrari buckets to the fiero mounting points, it might help for refrence designing yours. I've been busy block sanding my front clip the last few days getting it ready to build a mold of the front clip. I decided it was probably a good idea to have in case I was ever in a fender bender. It would be much easier to just repoduce the damage panel than try to hand build a new one and replicate all the the lines again.
As for the 355 Mirrors, I'm still sorcing new mirror motors for the build rather than using old mirror motors from the junk yard. Looks like nothing in North America ,I'm talking to China right now.
Hi Wayne, thnx for checking in. Looking forward to the mirrors.
I plan on leaving the hood the Fiero width, with the exception of around the lights. As of now, the vents will remain on the car, behind the lights, like the 308.
Yeah, if you could send that pdf over, I'd appreciate it.
How do you like the HF bender so far? Looked at that one too, trying to decide between that one and just building one from scratch, or looking for a used one.
Hey Wayne, any possibility I could get a copy of that PDF too? sage@suddenlink.net
Sage: I like it. Worth the money if you have a coupon. I think it's better than something I could make, but they do have clamp on ones that are real cheap.
Seriously, they are coming along slowly. Not sure what I'm doing, but I think I moved the ball forward.
Let's start with some bling. The Flowmaster 40 series was just to loud. Hopefully this helps.
Now the lights... After some trial and error, I made a jig to hold the pivot location steady and constant.
Then I made a bracket for the chassis, and using cardboard, mocked up the arms. I made all of the arms out of 1"x3/16" bar stock.
Then tacked them in.
Reversing the process, I made the connections to the headlamp bucket. I used a cross piece of 1"x1/8" stock to connect the arms to the bucket. I'll then bolt the buckets to the x-piece.
Bucket in the up position.
Now to figure out how to mount the lamps to the bucket.
Looking good Bob, are you still planning on using the fiero headlight brackets and motors? Looks like a total new design very interesting. 😗😎 What model Magnaflow did you go with, I have the Flowmaster 40 as well on my 88 SC 3800 and it is load my wife is always complaining , but it is one of the only 21/2" in and dual outs availible I to fit in the stock Fiero position. But as I have cut the bottom half of my rear boot off I now have room that I can probably try the Magnaflow. Let me know how it sounds once you have it installed.
I was really looking forward to this weekend. But... Let's call it setback weekend.
First off, I started to do the passenger side headlight mods. Cut the opening and started glassing it in.
Then I made a new bucket for the passenger side, similar to the driver's side. When I put it in place, it didn't fit. Double checking my measurements, I was off a 1/4" on the hood mods. i had to cut out a days worth of glassing...
So I decided to do it different and glassed some flat panels on a piece of plate glass. You can probably guess what happened next. Yes, I couldn't get the piece off the glass. Probably should have waxed it first.
So, back to the drawing board. No biggie. I waxed the glass and made another. Now I need to figure a way adhere it to the hood...
Now, to top off the weekend fun, I ran the car out of gas Friday, so I put in some premium and restarted it today. For whatever reason, it seems to lose the IAC setting whenever I turn it off. This time was no different, so the idle shoots up until it warms up, then it will drop down. After running for what seemed forever at 2500, the revs finally started to drop. Then I noticed a major leak on the passenger side, so I quickly turned it off. I went to investigate when I suddenly heard a hiss and a pop. Ka boom, the driver's side let go. Steam and coolant everywhere.
Everything is soaked in coolant.
And to top it off, someone rear ended my Traverse yesterday. Wife and daughter are fine, but truck took a beating...
Not a whole lot going on. Been very busy with work stuff. I did get a couple hours off last weekend.
After cleaning the mess, I started doing some more work on the rockers. I grafted in the portion I cut out. I think it looked better than the flat piece I was going to use.
I also played with the front and decided the piece from the rocker panel didn't fit right, so I was going to use the original like the back. But I couldn't find it. It was probably tossed out during a cleaning, so I had to make a new one...
Also worked on the headlight opening for the pass side.
I also removed the slats that I had added to the hood vent. not sure what I will do here yet, but the curved slats really didn't look right.
On your hood how about going with a modified Warber hood using a dual outlet design with the cutouts you already have? Or elongate them back inline with the back of the fender light cut out. Going a little deeper on the front of the vent.keeping the curving front.
Wayne
[This message has been edited by dobie1 (edited 06-13-2015).]
A few more updates. Always seems to go slower than expected, but with all that's going on this summer, I'm happy just to get little bits done.
As previously mentioned, I've started on the front rocker/fender area. I ended up filling a hole in the rocker, and building it out to provide a mounting point to the chassis.
Then glassed the fender portion back in.
While the door skin was off, I filled all of the holes and gaps from flipping the bottom of the scoop. I also glassed in the body line from the belt line to the scoop.
Back together.
I also started more work on the rear. I finished glassing the license plate area and popped the whole thing off.
Hi friends... Summer has been crazy busy as usual, but I've managed to squeek some time in between other projects and obligations.
First off, where I left off was peeling off the rear fascia. I did this to get access to the exhaust. I've pretty much hated the previous exhaust since I installed it (TOO LOUD!!!), and since it didn't fit in with the new style, it had to go.
I think I mentioned that I picked up a single 3" in dual 2.5" out Magnaflow to replace the Flowmaster 40 series. The Magnaflow is for a 3'rd/4'th gen F-body. I also picked up some SS 2.5" bends to make the tail pipes.
A little sawing, twisting, a metal melting and it came out pretty nice. And, it sounds so much better than the old system.
'nuff chatter, here are the pics...
I have some crazy assed tips for it, but I'll post those later...
Also on the agenda was to fix my blip[ from earlier in the year and get some coolant back in it. I found the culprit for the blowout, a piece of pipe without flared ends that was used as a hose union. Pressure blew the hose off the end. So, I took the part and welded on a steel ring around the ends (sorry no pics). I'm also buttoning up all of the coolant hoses.
The other issue was that I did not have a fan in it, which led to the over heating in the first place, so time to fix that. It's still a work in progress, but I've taken a 16" fan I had as a spare at work and grafted it into the stock shroud. I've added some aluminum stock to provide a little more support, as cutting so much out seemed to leave the shroud a little flimsy. More pics:
Originally posted by RCR: Then i spent the rest of the day staring at the headlights again. Starting to wonder if I need to try plan 3. Hmmm???
Funny how much time people spend just staring when working on projects of this magnitude... I probably have as much time staring at my build as I do actually working on it...
I had a lot of fun welding on my project. a Lincoln 110 wire feed for most of the work and then converted to mig for the remainder. Still sitting out in the shed wanting to be used...
).
I probably have as much time staring at my build as I do actually working on it... 
