If you let it cool slowly you annealed it; made it softer/removing some of twist or springyness in that section. If you quenched it, -cooled it quickly- you probably kept the spring in it but may now have a brittle area. Either way..... Good luck with it. BTW do you have any plans for addressing one of the Fiero's major shortcomings for these long races; namely it's small fuel tank? With a required minimum of 5 minutes for every fuel stop You will likely lose at least a lap or two with every stop.
Thanks for the explanation regarding the heating and bending of the sway bar. We let the bar cool slowly on it's own. We read conflicting comments back when we did the bending. And decided to let it cool on it's own. If we did effect the springyness, I suspect it was countered at least a bit by using a significantly larger bar. As I commented, I cannot say if it was a good move or not. We changed so many things.
As to the fuel tank. At least we have the '88 tank which was slightly larger. I think that at the last race that lasted approximately an hour and forty five to fifty minutes. That was at the newly expanded Thunder Hill 5-mile course. LOTS of wide open throttle time. I would love to be able to run between two and five hours.... but our regulator seems to have some relationship to the average age of our drivers. We are leaving happy and tired.
The 5 minute minimum fuel stop is a ChumpCar thing. The last pit stop at Thunder Hill was with less than three minutes stopped. That was an all time best .. to this point.
I was actually wondering this as well. What kind of stint times are you guys able to achieve running the series1 3800sc? Im' going to be running a series 2 3800 na and am wondering if i'll be able to hit the 2 hour max stint time. Oh yeah I haven't said it yet but your build id freeking AMAZING!
Well, there's a Series 2 in the car now. The Series 1 we stared with didn't even make the green flag before detonating. I guess it wasn't as good a deal as we had hoped.
At the last race, the stock tank gave up between an hour forty five and an hour fifty. We haven't yet found a "legal" way to get more than an extra pint or two. And, short of trying a fuel cell, I doubt it will be messed with. It's too much of a safety and rules consideration and we wouldn't want to come down on the wrong side of that line. Depending on the track, you might get two hours. But we haven't seen it.
Which races have you run? I'll have to look for pictures in the galleries.
Don thanks for the info! I'm feeling a little better about the fuel duration now. My na 3800 should be a little better on fuel than your modded 3800sc. My engine is stock except for a short intake runner mod, a 3800sc throttle body and F-body iron manifolds.
We were getting close to finally installing our front cradle into the car. But of course that just meant that we had other fitment details to consider.
Except for an undetermined (but very small ) number of '88 Fieros, none escaped the factory with power steering. I don't know if the few that did were all considered prototypes as mentioned on the forum, but there were apparently just a small handful. That meant we had to deal with plumbing the rack. Of course none left the factory with a supercharged 3800 L67 out back. So we were not constrained by thoughts of originality. Luckily, virtually every Park Avenue (the source of our engine) came equipped with power steering. So I ran out to the "Residual Parts Pile" out in the back and located the original Park Avenue power steering pump and brackets. Okay, that was fairly easy. Now to the rack end.
The 2011 Camaro rack that we used had two different sized fittings. The pressure port uses an 18mm x1.5 metric thread with an O-ring. The return port has 16mm 1x5 metric threads with an O-ring. But because the stock Park avenue hoses were something on the order of 16 foot too short, we needed to adapt to something else. Our choice was to adapt the fittings to a -6 AN fitting. That type of fitting can easily interface with a hose appropriate for the very high pressures encountered in a power steering system. A quick search online, and I was headed to Summit racing for the appropriate adapters. For the pressure side we used the Earls Performance part number 961956ERL http://www.summitracing.com...-961956erl/overview/ and for the return side we used an Earl's 961955ERl http://www.summitracing.com...-961955erl/overview/
Because of the extreme pressures that a power steering pressure side can encounter - often reported as well over 1100 psi - we chose to spend the bucks and use a high performance braided steel hose similar to those used on brake systems. Only bigger. For the return side, which faces significantly lower operating pressures, Rich chose to use aluminum tubing with -6 AN ends. The advantage of the aluminum tubing, besides the cost differential with the braided hose, is the ability to help dissipate heat. We had kind of a 15+' of radiator on the return side. What Rich found was aluminum tubing sold by Speedway Motors which is listed as fuel line. It also showed a 250 PSI operating pressure, far more than we expected to see in operation. http://www.speedwaymotors.c...-8-Inch-OD,1633.htmlhttp://www.speedwaymotors.c...-3-8-Inch,34353.htmlhttp://www.speedwaymotors.c...-3-8-Inch,34192.html
You can see here how we routed the hose and tube from the engine compartment. We used a short rubber hose on the tubing/return side to mate to the pump reservoir itself.
Rich used a couple ninety degree -6 AN couplers coming off the rack fitting so that we could use straight -6 an fittings on the pressure and return hose and tubing. That helped so that we were not faced with having to "clock" the hoses.
Next we were faced with adapting the rack itself to the steering column. In our case this wasn't too much of a problem as we were using a simple 3/4" heavy wall tubing and a couple u-joints. It would have been much more difficult to adapt to a stock steering column.
Now we had a choice to make. One were we had no real data to base the decision on. We knew that the Camaro rack was faster than the stock Fiero rack. That was one of the benefits we were chasing in adding power steering. But was it enough? Doug had an extra 1.5:1 steering quickener that we could add as well. Would the rack be enough by itself? Would also adding the quickener make the car unmanageable? What the heck, we didn't have to pay for it, so on it went. I believe we used a Howe steering quickener. http://www.speedwaymotors.c...36-Spline,24447.html
Since we were talking about plumbing, I'll mention that we found it best to re-route the stock brake lines. The stock lines attach to the original upper arms with a small clip. We could no longer do that as the mounting point was gone. And we feared getting into the relocated spring assembly.
The stock location
We made a hard line to move behind the upper control arm.
That white box ahead of the upper arm is the mount for our timing scoring transponder.
Most of the front suspension construction was done prior to our outing at Buttonwillow. We really only had the finishing up stuff prior to installation of the front cradle. But, time being the constant enemy of the racer, we had to delay the installation documented above until after that race.
The other big task that became evident at the Buttonwillow weekend was the necessity of dealing with the cooling system. We had been using the Champion 3-core radiator starting at our first race. http://www.championradiator...ntiac-Fiero-radiator And that radiator had been fine with the original 2.8 liter. But, given the fact that we had not REALLY had a successful weekend with the 3800 SC power plant, we had no hard data on how well it would work over the long haul race weekend. Given that the track temperature was reportedly 150 degrees on that weekend, we found that the cooling was, uh, challenged. We had, as I mentioned earlier, installed the modified hood scoop from Paul "Tha Driver" here on the forum. http://angelonearth.net/customfiberglass/
Actually, Paul had modified his stock offering to enlarge the opening of the scoop.
The short story is that with engine temperatures hitting 230 and climbing when pushing it, the driver had to back down fairly regularly and let the engine temps become manageable. You know how hard it was to back off when chasing down a car that had always been untouchable at past events. So it came time to try to address that issue.
To this point, we had left the front bulkhead intact. And we had positioned the fiberglass scoop to drop down in front of the bulkhead. It worked okay at Sears Point. In March. With just a threat of rain. But when summer came roaring in, we needed some help.
The first step was to actually remove the bulkhead. From that point, we mounted the radiator and fan (we were and are still using the factory fan.) And the work started on routing the air directly from the radiator through the hood scoop. No more just relying on the air pressure to make it all work effectively.
You may note that we also removed the plastic tub from the front compartment.
Once we established the bottom-curving-up-to-form-the-rear-wall piece, we broke out every fabricators friend, cardboard. With the hood down and the rear of the shroud held in place contacting the fiberglass scoop, we made some cardboard templates to use in creating the side walls.
You might take note in the first picture of this series, we had already tried a kick-up in front on the scoop opening to deflect the airstream up and allow exiting air to move easier.
Once we had the templates made, it came down to transferring the design to sheet aluminum. Of course we also had to give some thought to allowing material for tabs and flanges. Gotta love those Cleco fasteners!
Naturally the next step was to bring out the tubing bender.
We needed a brace, going between the two frame rails, with attaching points to provide support for the structure. Remember, the scoop needs to drop inside the shrouding as the hood comes down into position. And conversely, be free to move up and out of the shroud when the hood is raised. So, to this point we had no real support for the structure. And obviously we expected some serious force to be applied by the moving air. I'm sure Rich had no thoughts of bracing the front structure to replace the strength given up in removing the bulkhead.
We replaced the plastic tub with a sheet of aluminum to re-seal the front compartment. In this next photo you can see the new aluminum floor. In addition we creared some aluminum extensions coming forward to seal between the frame/cradle rails and the bottom of the shroud. this was to limit the amount of extraneous air allowed into the front compartment. That small aluminum angle piece - the shiny piece below the bar/brace is there to support the front edge of the aluminum tub pan. Without that, it would droop and we would lose some effectiveness.
Next we tackled some repairs to the cooling tube. Rich would only let me post this next picture if I blurred the repairs. The tubes need to have a ring bead to hold the hoses on securely. We had to lay down a welding bead.
We lacked the proper tools to put a real ring bead into the coolant tube.
Any sponsor donations gladly accepted.
Just joking.
Sorta.
At about this time, Brother and fellow driver Doug showed up with a couple new rockers. After the heating incident at Sears Point, we had some chatter to deal with.
Our next track day outing with the Reno SCCA guys took place at Reno-Fernley. The car felt FANTASTIC. The new suspension handled brilliantly. Cooling was a non-issue. Even with the relatively hard LeMons legal tires I do not think we could have made the car understeer. And this with 57% rear weight bias.
John Wood, the Reno-Fernley track manager and a former Porsche North America development driver/manager found it necessary to drive outside the track to keep some wild mustangs away during the event. He took the time to watch our car closely. His observation was that the car handled very well. But the rear looked " a little unhappy." that mirrored our observations. He told us of some of the creative engineering the Porsche teams did with their rear engined 911s, but none of that seemed to be practical for us.
Rich began thinking about the rear suspension and how it might be tweaked. Because he does most of his inspired engineering in the shower, he took several daily showers for the next week. And darned if he didn't find a simple solution.
Rich began thinking about the rear suspension and how it might be tweaked. Because he does most of his inspired engineering in the shower, he took several daily showers for the next week. And darned if he didn't find a simple solution.
I just finished catching up .One of my favourite threads and I wish Cliff would put you in the construction zone .Not only great entertainment for gear heads (I think women call us losers but who cares) but also lots of great how to and reference material .Great work , I always look forward to the updates .
Originally posted by DonP: Hey, someone was actually reading the thread! Thanks KurtAKX!
some of us are just quieter than others...
------------------ "I am not what you so glibly call to be a civilized man. I have broken with society for reasons which I alone am able to appreciate. I am therefore not subject to it's stupid laws, and I ask you to never allude to them in my presence again."
The camber on the rear of our '88 has long been a point of concern for us. Really, the stock setup needs help to make the car work better. Particularly on the track. And we are not allowed to use those really sticky tires that other racers can use. The coil-over conversion was a good place to start in taming the rear because it enables us to use different spring rates. And it had been obvious to an experienced observer at the track that the rear end "wasn't happy."
What to do?
The stock setup at the rear obviously uses a strut attaching the upright to the shock/strut tower. Bloozberry has posted a really nice photo of some really clean suspension pieces in another thread. If you don't know how the strut attaches to the upright, I suggest you take a look at the 9th picture on this page. https://www.fiero.nl/forum/F...L/000116-9.html#p331 Bet you stop at all the other photos as well.
Fierosound has already posted some pictures that show the stock adjustment here https://www.fiero.nl/forum/F.../HTML/129289.html#p8 You'll note that he has a picture of a new "cam" bolt used in the slotted (lower) mounting hole. Turning the bolt head works the cam against stops on the strut body. This alters the relation to the rear upright and controls how much camber is introduced into the rear suspension. Most of the reading seems to indicate that it is possible to gain between 1 and 1 1/2 degrees of static negative camber. Fair, but not as much as the racers want.
BTW, I am referencing actual threads found on the forum instead of just copying pictures. That's because I haven't taken time to get permission from contributors like Bloozberry, Fieroguru, SCCAFiero and others. Hopefully you can just follow the links and check out their photos.
Having said that, here is a picture I pilfered from the internet
So what's to be concerned about? Here SCCAFiero posted some pictures showing rear camber problems on his build thread https://www.fiero.nl/forum/F...HTML/084322.html#p26 Note pictures 4 and 5. The rear tire not only does not exhibit negative camber so important for maximizing cornering forces, but actually lean out at the top - positive camber. BTW, he is exhibiting great form in the second picture on that page by looking ahead to where he's going and not at the back of the car he's following.
We aren't trying to obtain excessive amounts of negative camber here. Just enough to be helpful.
This is a picture taken after we converted to rear coilovers on the car.
Now we started researching how others have accomplished this. The first thing we found was something we had already seen on other performance machines. Camber caster adjuster plates.
These adjusters bolt to the top of the strut and to the strut tower. You can see how the top mounting point can be moved along an axis (towards the center of the car or towards the outside) and therefore change the amount of camber in the setup. Actually, they change the relationship between the lower ball joint, or in the case of our '88 the lower bolt attaching the lower arms to the upright and the strut mounting point. This "tilting" effects the angle of the attached hub and wheel mounting flange. That means the camber or tilt in or out of the tire is changed.
On the forum, we found references to caster camber adjuster plates available from that purveyor of great automotive technology, E-bay. But there were lots of responses along the lines of "I tried it and found it lacking."
Besides, we had seen this type of thing on other Lemons cars - the Mustang guys from Reno come to mind - and they are always penalized for the "high tech" "cheaty" parts. Nothing attracts attention like a new aluminum part or the outlandishly anodized parts so popular with all these tuner cars.
Fieroguru had a nice write-up on relocating the upper mount here. https://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...130314-2-121291.html This approach looked closer to a stock solution and might make it past the tech inspectors, but we finally decided to look elsewhere.
Here on the forum Vince - AKA Snapperhead started down the road of producing some adjustable devices for use with coilovers, but ultimately abandoned the project in 2011. https://www.fiero.nl/forum/A...130314-2-117370.html It looked as though they might have been a bit stealthy which appeals to us. But....
An even more elaborate solution was created by Fieroguru. He actually attempted to address the inherent problem of a less than optimal suspension geometry. Fieroguru created some "lateral link relocation kits" https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum4/HTML/060635.html Cool but not totally unobtrusive. If we had the money, we might have gone this route anyway.
As I mentioned in the last post, Rich had an inspiration in the shower. This appears to be such a common occurrence that I suspect he has a waterproof white board in there. Don't know. Don't want to know.
Okay to understand what Rich thought up, I would recommend that you look at image #4 entitled "1988 Fiero Rear Suspension Rear View" on Bloozberry's thread here. https://www.fiero.nl/forum/F...L/000116-9.html#p345 Again, I do not have permission to copy the image, but it's magnificent. Now, let's assume that the face of the wheel hub is exactly perpendicular. That would mean that the rear camber is zero. Now, draw a line between the bolt that attaches the lower control rod(s) to the upright and the bolt at the top of the strut. Where the strut attaches to the tower. These two points are fixed. See those two bolts where the upright attaches to the strut bracket? The ones in the red crosshatching. Now, if you recall, the lower hole is actually slotted. And the bolt goes through a cam which can therefore move the attaching point. If you turn the head of the bolt, turning the cam, - pivoting on the upper fixed bolt - you can move the top of the upright towards the imaginary line we drew earlier or away from that line. In this case, moving towards that line, towards the center of the car, changes the angle of the whole upright, changing the angle on the attached wheel flange on the hub to create negative camber. Turning the cam to move the upright out adds positive camber.
In each case above, turning the cam pivots the upright/strut interface around the upper bolt. Why is the upper bolt hole fixed? What if we move the upper pivot point? Not through drilling the upright which might be a bit questionable. But what if we could place the upper pivot bolt on a cam like the lower adjustable bolt had? We might be able to effectively move that pivot point in or out as well.
We purchased a couple more of the camber adjustment bolts from NAPA and went about modifying the brackets on our struts. We slotted the upper holes to start.
We found that it was necessary to relieve the back surface of the strut bracket. Most of you who have replaced the back struts have had to do similar modifications to relieve an interference fit. Very common.
The interesting thing was that we had to turn the upper bolt in the opposite direction than the lower bolt required. So Rich had to add a stop on both sides of the cam.
The results? We were able to dial in just over 3 degrees of static camber. We did limit ourselves to three degrees, just because.
At one point we had the car professionally aligned. Rich bought the extended service which allowed us to bring the car back in at any time to have it re-aligned. Great deal. So we started by scaling the car so everything would be as we intended to run.
The very first time we took the car in, we were lucky and one of the old-timers was there. Our desired alignment specs were a bit unusual and he had no problem. He understood what was desired, why, and how to get there. This time when we showed up, that guy had moved on. Frankly, the new guys knew nothing about alignment. They knew how to read a computer but couldn't help on anything out of the box. We no longer used shims. Rather it was necessary to adjust heim joints. Huh? The computer doesn't say nothing about that. Ultimately, we ended up redoing the whole thing ourselves. Oh, and they suggested we not come back with that modified car.
We were able to run on the track once again, and the results were very good. In this photo, you can clearly see that we have signs on negative camber at the back.
The Reno-Fernley track has some nifty elevation changes that can really load the suspension. The car definitely felt significantly more stable with the front and rear suspension changes. And the additional rear camber gave the car a more planted feeling. Even with the wore out tires we were testing with, the feeling of always being on the edge or fearing the sudden change into massive oversteer wasn't there. I think there was no doubt about the front end after the re-design and construction. The rear now felt much closer.
So we tweaked the spring choices and were ready for our next race at ThunderHill.
You guys are doing a hell of a job on this race car. I really enjoy reading this thread. And as for as finding old school mechanics, I have one about 4 miles from my house and I told him he can not retire as long as I have my Fiero. He worked for a Pontiac dealer in the 70's thru the 80's. He thought he was done working on Fiero's lol !
[This message has been edited by davylong86 (edited 02-15-2015).]
You guys are doing a hell of a job on this race car.
Thank you. It's always a struggle to A.) do what needs to be done and B.) remain a LeMons car with all those constraints. Build it instead of purchase it.
I hope all those ads I see on Velocity for places like Wyotech are producing actual mechanics and not just computer operators. My brother repairs heavy equipment and tells me that everything is computerized even there. And it has become a "read the computer and replace the indicated module" world as opposed to days when you broke down a failed component and repaired it. Surely those skills are retained somewhere.
Wait, I'm sounding old enough to justify this gray beard.
Awesome thread, I especially enjoyed reading the whole process behind designing your front suspension, I am planning on making something very similar for my front end.
I would look into raising the roll center in the rear, similar to Fierogurus relocation brackets. You could also raise the inner pivot points if you have room. I bet your lateral links are near parallel to the ground or pointing upwards at your ride height, which means that every bit the suspension compresses that roll center keeps migrating down causing the car to roll more. That is probably why all that static camber helped so much, but it is probably very worth while to do something about the rear roll center.
I have been reading through this at work the past few days, now I need to go through it at home to watch all the videos, thank you for taking the time and the effort to thoroughly document everything!
The entire team was really stoked to be taking the "new" Fiero to Thunderhill. At our last race on Buttonwillow, we had finally experienced good power with the 3800SC. The car had handled quite well. But just a few test laps had us convinced that we would be on a whole 'nother plane.
This was the last time that LeMons would be running on Thunderhill Raceway in it's original 3-mile configuration. Even as we were racing, we could see signs of ground being cut for a new addition to the track that added 2 more miles and resulted in a full 5- long road course. The next race was scheduled to run on the new 5 mile configuration.
184 cars were entered into the race. That meant that we had a minimum of 736 drivers for the two day event. At the end of Saturday, we were running in 81st position having completed 126 laps with a fast time of 2:29:206. Not as good as we had hoped. Unfortunately, the Mustang guys had really got their act together and finished Saturday in 44th position, having completed 146 laps with a fast time of 2:29:922. So they were way ahead of us despite our faster top speed. Our only excuse was that they were killing us on pit stops. They had added a new fuel cell (and I suspect practiced between races) and could pull of a 3-4 minute pit stop. We were giving them as much as 4 laps per fuel stop. And they carried a lot more fuel, requiring fewer actual stops.
Worse yet was a new entry from Reno. Grant and Dante had put together a 1981 BMW 320i. Grant had been aware of us as he owns a "84 Fiero that is autocrossed in the area. They finished Saturday ahead of us in 74th position having completed 129 laps at a top lap time of 2:37:633. Thos pit stops and a bogus black flag were really killing us.
Oh, the leader in a 1983 BMW 533i was four laps ahead of second place Porsche 944 with 168 laps in the books.
For some unknown reason, I didn't get very many photos of the weekend. But I do have a couple which clearly demonstrate the rear camber gains.
Chasing down the (yellow) Mustang.
If I was totally ruthless, I would say that our Sunday prospects looked better. The Reno-based BMW lost a rear hub.
Thunderhill at Willows Ca is roughly 12 miles from the middle of nowhere with regards to car parts. The local parts guys had nothing for the BMW except maybe some oil. So, like any good racers, Grant unloaded the race car and drove 117 miles into a suburb of Sacramento, purchased another BMW off of Craigslist and canabalized it for the necessary parts.
During Sundays race session, one of the guys hauled the now disabled BMW to Pick-N-Pull. Great effort guys.
Our most serious incident, surprisingly, involved Rich. He was moving forward through the pack. And of course that meant he was observing several cars in front of him to see what they were doing. One car in particular always took a, uh, sub-optimal line down the front straight-away. As Rich was moving up to pass entering turn one, the driver grenaded his brakes way, way too early in response to a car entering the track. Rich braked and took evasive action. I never said we fully removed the infamous snap over-steer. And Rich went spinning through the inside of turn one at a high speed. Luckily, he missed the flag stand. Unfortunately the GoPro had quit.......
Things were going great. The car felt much more stable. We could drive it in places and ways that would have been disastrous before changing front suspension design and gaining the rear camber. The only thing that we all observed was that the engine seemed slightly soft. Running at 235 plus degrees at Buttonwillow may have had an impact on the engine. We were still ahead of the stock 2.8 liter. But we weren't pulling as hard as expected.
Over all, things were going good.
THEN DISASTER STRUCK!
. . . . . . . . . No, not for us. The BMW guys lost a rod. And who knows where the wrist pin got to.
We motored on.
Robert and Paula watching the Fiero leave the pit.
So, we finished in 69th place out of 184 entries. The Fiero Libre guys finished 17th overall. And the Mustang guys with their new found range finished in 45th place 18 laps ahead of us. We definitely needed to deal with slow pit stops.
This link will show several laps from the ultimate winners car. Very quick. Very aggressive (but appropriately so.) Definitely experienced drivers making the correct decisions. You can see the Fiero Libre guys at 40 seconds in. https://www.youtube.com/wat...mcI&feature=youtu.be
I watched that video... around the 8 minute mark a GTO goes flying by. I thought there was a limit on how expensive the entry cars could be?
#79 was listed as a 2004 Holden Mondaro, the basis for the GTO. Looked like more than $500 driving down the track. I guess you have to convince the judges that the rusty and twisted unibody/frame made it possible to buy this car from the underwater salvage company for less than $500 but more than the $50 scrap value that it was going to sell for. I've seen a couple instances where someone shows up with a "real" prepared car. Sometimes they are allowed to run with a high number of penalty laps guaranteeing they cannot win. I recall a prepared BMW where the BS tech officials asked for his VIN. That number was the number of penalty laps he was assigned.
At that same track, there was a guy who showed up with a Mustang (in a hauler) obviously prepared for something like the NASA Mustang series. The story that I heard is that he's allowed to run though not really scored. The car owner evidently uses this as a training session for new drivers being cultivated for other duties. So he pays the fees as well as a healthy donation to a charity and the driver gets LOTS of on track seat time in race conditions. At least that's the story his crew told us as we were parked next to them.
Talking with Rich, we believe that the quickener MAY be adaptable to the stock steering column. That's the short answer. But it has been like two years since we have even seen the stock column. That was as we were yarding it out. I suspect that the quickener would need to be mounted outside the firewall. And more than likely you would need to eliminate the "collapsible" tubing connector which is an important safety feature in the case of a front end collision. In our case we used a couple u-joints that built in some angled connection points. In the event of a front end collision we anticipate that the different angles would more or less accordion instead of driving directly through to the driver's spine.
If you can gain access to the steering shaft coming through the firewall make sure you add probably a good 3 inches to the required room for the quickener. I would anticipate needing to add u-joint adapters to mate the quickener's splines to whatever you feel safe in attaching to. A simple good quality 3/4" inch spline to 3/4" inch spline u-joint (which is almost certainly NOT the one you will need) will cost more than half of the quickener cost. http://www.summitracing.com...r=steering%20u-joint
I'm sure you are aware that adding a quickener will require more effort to turn the car. That's why we elected to add power steering.
A week after our return from Thunderhill, we had the opportunity to get back on the Reno-Fernley track with the Reno-SCCA. If you recall from a much earlier post, Rich and I had drawn Sam McCord as our instructor for our first SCCA track day. https://www.fiero.nl/forum/F...L/090867-4.html#p154 Anyway, Sam was intrigued. Once we introduced him to the whole Lemons concept, he actually got onto another team. He had been driving with the Mustang guys. And at Buttonwillow we had let him drive the Fiero. So we called Sam up to go over the car on the track day. Sam brought his brother Alan with whom he has been vintage racing that Lotus for, well, forever.
Obviously with the Lotus being a mid-engined car, we had hopes Sam and Alan would be a good resource.
After taking Sam out for a few laps Rich asked for his opinion. Remember, Sam had driven on Buttonwillow before any of the suspension modifications. Much faster than we had. Sam actually gave some thought to the question, dissected a couple turns and the cars transient responses and came to the same conclusion we had. The car was significantly better but was being let down by the shocks. The spring rates were appropriate but not sufficiently controlled.
Everyone agreed that the next step should be to purchase newer, better shocks.
I am hoping there is a catch to what you just said .We have not seen the area 51 themed car yet .So I hope you got another fiero and the story is not over .Love the racing links , thanks for a great thread .
I am hoping there is a catch to what you just said .We have not seen the area 51 themed car yet .So I hope you got another fiero and the story is not over .Love the racing links , thanks for a great thread .
Short answer (you know there's a much longer version being written) is that the car was sold, continues to run very effectively as the Area 51 car. I'll have some of that story and pictures I'm compiling.
We built another car. Fiero elements, but definitely different. I'll give an overview shortly.
Originally posted by thesameguy: (Side note: My friend drives that '83 533i )
Cervezza racing are always a threat to win. They are very good drivers. Aggressive and if you watched that video you can see that they drive very far ahead and read the traffic in order to put themselves in the right place at the right time. I loved the race at Thunderhill where Jay Lamm, the series organizer finally had enough of the complaints about the fastest guys using built/cheaty engines and that's why they won. The "bastiges." So he paid the on-site dyno to run the top five cars at the end of Saturdays race. Every hp over the "spec" would result in some penalty. The leaders, Cervezza racing were supposed to be putting out something like 205 horsepower. They came in well under that power level. So Jay was able to say that just perhaps they were winning because they were better drivers than all those people complaining. Of course at least one car came in well over the stated spec. But the point had been made.
The Fiero has continued to race. And I'll give a brief write-up about their great results. But of course I'm limited in describing what has been done to the car since we had it. Thanks for the nice comment.
I raced against a few obvious cheater cars, but I don't actually remember a time when the cheater cars were real threats to the podium. You'd see them out there pulling everything in the straights and losing people in the corners, but whether by mishap or lack of talent they never spent enough time on track to win. Most of the victors are just really good drivers in average cars set up well. Often times maddeningly so - for many years we had one of the fastest cars with some reasonably talented drivers, but these top teams would always stay just ahead, just out of reach. So frustrating!
I guess the upside of this thread ending is maybe I well be less tempted to jump back into the ring. Been eyeing a friend's disused XR4Ti...
We actually ended up selling the car to Sam and his brother Alan. (Hope I'm spelling his name right. Allen?) They had been racing Sam's Lotus for a couple decades. Also on board was Craig who we learned had actually raced against Sam at the inaugural Reno Gran Prix held in the Hilton (now Grand Sierra or GSR if it matters.) driving I believe Formula Fords. A fourth partner was brought on-board but I cannot remember his name.
Let's get the first thing out of the way. This is how the car looked at their first race in March of 2014 at Sears Point/Sonoma Raceway.
Okay, they had a better theme than we did. Obviously the Area 51/White Men In Black theme was a winner. Sam actually owns a Pug and had a black suit made for it. He got strict orders from Mrs. Sam that the dog was off-limits. So I'm not sure who the stand-in was.
A few this to note. Francis T commented in a private message that we really "needs and effect -in the air-stream- wing." The Area 51 boys were all over that and eliminated the rear wing in favor of a rear spoiler bracketed by those huge wings. He also commented https://www.fiero.nl/forum/F...L/090867-6.html#p208 that we should be adding a splitter. They had already gone down that road. Sam said they could actually stand on that front splitter. Having driven the car in both configurations, Sam reported huge gains in handling.
And who wouldn't run a pair of .50 cals on the roof of their Stealth Alien Hunter?
I'm not sure why they left the passenger seat installed in the car.
I wanted to get something up to show that the car continues to race. I need to contact Sam and ask for a more comprehensive story on their efforts. As I write this, I know they have been accepted for the next race at Sonoma March 21-25 2015, just a few weeks away.
The Final pictures of the Fiero as it departed Rich's driveway on it's way to a new home.
Of course we gave them the original front cradle. It's always good to have spares at the track.
It's hard to continue the story on the Fiero as I was obviously no longer involved in the updates or repairs.
But here goes.
We sold the car without the engine. We already had thoughts on our next project and the 3800SC, coupled to our spare Getrag would slide in nicely. Sam's crew had no problems with that as they knew how easily the engine could be replaced.
So between the time we sold them the car, on October 10th and their first race in March, they had a bit of work to do. They found a running car with a 3800SC in California. I believe Sam was able to drive it home which raised everyone's confidence. I do know that in the transplant they took the much easier route and left the alternator in it's original location. That meant they had to notch the inner deck lid support for clearance. I heard a rumor that they terrorized the neighborhood on a couple test runs before hiding,.. uh before moving back into the workshop. Yes, they evidently have a workshop instead of a garage. Obviously the Area 51 theme for the car took time and effort. And I think they found one of the suspension gurus here on the forum for a long discussion of springs and shocks. And the other improvement I am aware of was the addition of an expansion tank in the cooling system. This made filling and burping the system much easier.
You can see the new engine here along with the expansion tank.
The Stealth Alien Hunters car debuted at Sonoma in March of 2014.
The Fiero Libre car was also there. They showed up at tech with this set-up. I'm guessing in response to "other" supercharged Fieros.
The race was not without drama for the Stealth Alien Hunters. 168 cars started the race and at the conclusion on Sunday, Stealth finished 59th. They completed 286 laps, versus the winning Porsche 944S with 352 laps. The Fiero Libre guys finished 29th over-all with 315 completed laps. The Stealth guys ran off a 2:06:082 lap versus 2:07:823 for Fiero Libre and 1:59:622 for the winning Porsche. But the Stealth Alien Hunters suffered engine problems which was later diagnosed as a bad head gasket. None of these problems had shown up while terrorizing the neighborhood. But then that's what endurance racing will do for you. The official video wrap up can be found here. https://www.youtube.com/wat...BfniYNHDS9Izu8diHH7A I do not vouch for the "humor."
Sam's guys had the head gasket problem fixed in time to attend a Reno-SCCA test day at Reno-Fernley Raceway. The engine seemed good to go, but they had a mishap when a rear brake caliper let loose and wedged in against the hub. That was easily fixed from the stack of spare parts we had included in the purchase. But it did have consequences later.
On May 31 and June 1st, the 24 Hours of LeMons traveling show took over Miller Motorsport Park in Tooele Utah. http://www.millermotorsportspark.com/ This was the first time that the LeMons group had visited Miller Motorsport. I had been there once to witness the Grand Am series as well as the final Mustang Challenge race and was really looking forward to making the event with our new project car. Unfortunately we were not ready and had to miss the race. But Sam and the Stealth Alien Hunters managed to make the trip. The Mustang guys also made the long haul. From the forum here, Canyonflyer made the long trip from... wait a minute he was a local. https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum1/HTML/094136.html LeMons wisely chose to use the 2.240 mile East Track configuration instead of the full course. Had they used the full-length front straight-away it's likely at least half the field would have blown up.
With their newly installed afterburners and reconfigured rear spoiler, the Stealth Alien Hunters were prepared to dominate!
Unfortunately, it didn't quite happen that way. With a short field of 67 cars, the Fiero finished in 21st place overall with 337 completed laps. The overall winner ran 391 laps, some 5 laps ahead of the second place car who had a fast lap time some 4+ seconds faster. Even though the Fiero ran a fast lap nearly 5 seconds faster, the Mustang guys placed 5th in class, 1 place ahead of the 6th in class finishing Fiero. The Mustang finished 18 laps up in 15th place overall.
A Real crowd favorite.
Even though the Fiero was one of the fastest cars on the track, they also had problems. That rear caliper incident at Reno-Fernley had come back to haunt the team. Alan was out on track and started hearing something. And the car started to lose it's handling. He came in with the diagnosis of a failing front hub. The team was aware of the fact that the '88 front hubs are a weak point. They also knew we had installed Rodney Dickman's upgraded front hubs. They gave the front hubs a close look-over while changing drivers. Grant went out and came back reporting the same thing. I believe they lost over a half hour during these two stops looking for a problem. Ultimately they found that it was NOT a front hub but a rear hub that was giving them fits. The hub which had been jammed by that rear caliper was actually cracked between the studs. They were devastated. But then someone asked "didn't they give us some new hubs in that pile of spare parts when we bought the car?" Yup, we had. I think Canyonflyer reported that Sam talked to him about extra lug nuts because the new hubs had not had their studs changed. So they got up and running. Lots of lost time. They lost the other rear hub later in the day. And yes, we had provided two rear hubs. I believe they were able to change it out after Saturdays racing stopped.
Given the mechanical problems with the hubs, their final results were very positive.
Everyone agreed that the Miller Motorsport Park is a truly spectacular facility. And the staff was as top notch as the facility. We look forward to racing our vehicle there later this year.
The Fiero returned to Thunderhill on September 13 - 14, 2014. This was the inaugural LeMons race on the new 5 mile course. And it was AWESOME!
Some enterprising soul put in the work and submitted the event to the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest field of cars starting a single race. The Official record listed 216 cars taking the green flag. But the actual time sheets show 228 cars being timed at some point during the weekend. And over 240 actually registered.
Note that not all 216 or 228 cars are shown in this photo. It was a very time consuming process getting everyone lined up prior to the race. Particularly since most of us didn't know what was happening.
I know that 216 cars sounds insane. Well it is, but I mean it sounds worse than it is. If you recall, the previous year we had 184 cars on a 2 mile course. This year we had 216 on a 5-mile course. After the start it was rarely congested to the point that it was a concern. Think of driving on a freeway. But with something like this right next to you.
We saw the infamous and very fast Model T GT at the hotel. Yes, it is licensed and can drive on the street or o the races.
Anyway, back to the story. The good news was that the Stealth Alien Hunters trounced the Mustang. And the Fiero Libre car, now going under the name "Fiero Jackson." The Stealth drivers came in 5th in class, and 29th over-all. The Mustang guys finished 7th in the same class 1 lap down to Stealth and 31st over-all. Fiero Jackson came in 100th over-all. I'm not sure if Peter had sold the former Fiero Libre but I'm sure we saw him at the track.
Sam's guys got very creative and came up with a solution to the fueling problem. The Mustang guys have been running a fuel cell. With the cell, they could dump fuel in as fast as it would flow from the container. That enabled them to get in and out in a very small fraction of the time Sam's guys needed. They were getting killed in the pits. What they developed was a way to vent the stock tank for quicker fuel stops. They still weren't as quick as the Mustang, but it was enough to even up the contest.
Of course it didn't help when Sam had to take evasive maneuvers at one point and went off the track backwards at just over 100 mph. The black flag took time to deal with. But overall it was a successful weekend.
Sonoma in December was another great event for the Fiero. Unfortunately, I don't have much to tell. But I can say that when we were home watching the live scoring over the internet, we saw the Fiero set the fastest lap. And held it for maybe 10 minutes. At the end of the day, they held the 4th fastest lap for the event. They finished in 12th place overall out of 175 entries. Unfortunately they were second in class two laps down to first.
I do know that they were hit in the rear with enough force to remove the afterburners. Repairs have been made and the team is ready to continue at Sears point later this month.
Oh, and at Thunderhill, Rich, Robert, Doug, Paula and I debuted our latest project. Unfortunately, fuel delivery problems on the new vehicle meant we were not at all competitive. We were working on the fuel system into the night.
Even though we did not place very well in the race itself, we had a terrific weekend highlighted by winning the Judges choice award for our new vehicle. Honestly, that was a huge pick-me-up for the whole team.
Our original plans for the new vehicle was to debut at Sonoma in March. idn't happen. Then Miller Motorsport in May. Not ready. Surely The Ridge in Washington State. Nope. but we did make our first showing at Thunderhill.
You may recall that we kept the 3800SC out of the Fiero to mate to a Getrag. We liked the mid-engine concept a lot. So what did we build?
This. . . . . . . .
A mid-engine S-10 extended cab pickup with fiero suspension(parts)
That truck is awesome! Do you have a build thread?
Thanks. It was a lot of work, but fun as well.
Because this is a Fiero Forum, I will not be doing a build thread. But I'm hoping Cliff and everyone else will tolerate one or maybe two posts where I discuss what we did.
Because this is a Fiero Forum, I will not be doing a build thread. But I'm hoping Cliff and everyone else will tolerate one or maybe two posts where I discuss what we did.
Don
Other cars forum !!!!!!!! Besides if it has a fiero rear in it we can just call it a rebody!
Originally posted by DonP: Because this is a Fiero Forum, I will not be doing a build thread. But I'm hoping Cliff and everyone else will tolerate one or maybe two posts where I discuss what we did.
Don
I would love to see a build thread! The number of really cool threads on PFF is becoming quite small and with this current one coming to an end, there will be one less, unless you do one on the S10 Rebody.
I was asked why we sold the car. Why was that even close to being a logical action? In most ways, it wasn't even close to a logical course of action. After all, we finally had a complete car where the only real task left was to do some sorting and tweaking. We could unload it from the trailer after a race and, assuming no wreck damage, spend a couple hours on maintenance, maybe buy a couple new tires and be ready for the next race. The Fiero was cool and had real character.
What is probably overlooked here by those who have not closely examined the pictures is that only one of our regular drivers is under 6'2"; only one driver is under 240 lbs; only one driver is under 55 years of age. And they are all the same guy - Robert. The Fiero is a small car. In this case made smaller with a roll cage. It wasn't a good fit. It's rough climbing through a window that small. With that in mind, we started looking for an option. We liked the whole mid engine concept. The 3800SC is a great choice for this race venue while not being the most powerful engine going. But we needed more room in the passenger compartment. And frankly we saw no way to get there with the Fiero. Rich began talking about building a new bigger vehicle, perhaps a truck. Then we ran across this posting about someone's mid engine truck being run in the Chumpcar series. http://forums.vwvortex.com/...Truck-Chumpcar-Biuld Well that was interesting. And it reinforced our mid-engine truck idea. Of course it needed to be a GM product.
So, the official "description of your LeMons Theme Concept" statement goes something like this. "If Chevy could create a mid-engine Corvair truck and Volkswagen chose to do the same with their VW truck we were positive Pontiac always meant to carry on with a Fiero truck. The Fiero died an early death with production stopped midyear in 1988, so it was left to us to build it. What could go wrong? " That was the official description we devised to gain acceptance into a LeMons race.
After a bit of consideration we decided to tackle this project. Our early measurements indicated that the mid '90s S10 could work for our concept. Our thoughts were that we could graft a Fiero nose to the front of an S-10 cab. It looked like it would work because we would not have to accommodate an engine up front. An additional advantage was that by placing the cell into the front engine compartment, hopefully behind the front axle, we would come closer to a 50/50 weight split. And from the start we realized that an extended cab would give us more of the much needed leg-room. We would sacrifice truck-bed space for cab space while retaining a reasonable length. And really, how hard could it be to graft a Fiero rear cradle to a truck frame?
Craigslist provided the first portion of the build. Just over the hill in Elk Grove Ca., just outside of Sacramento, a muffler shop was parting out a 1995 S-10 delivery truck. At 285,000 miles they had replaced the transmission only to have it grenade 5,000 miles later. Figuring it was an omen, they decided to replace the truck. Though they had been advertising the truck for over four weeks, much of the parts still remained. If we could make it the next day, we would get a smoking deal. Robert and I jumped in the truck, grabbed the flatbed trailer and headed west.
The front sheetmetal was gone. But since we intended to draft on the Fiero nose. that was of no concern. What came as a surprise was that they were keeping the frame for a custom build project. Surely we could get something out of Pick-n-pull. The other surprise was that it had a second small door on the driver's side. Rich was less than thrilled with that revelation. But it actually became a great asset as we worked on the truck.
Once we got back with our new cab, the first thing we tackled was finding a frame. I know we could have started with a small pick-up using uni-body construction. We really wanted a full frame to have a secure mount for the roll cage. This was far preferable to welding spreader plates to a sheetmetal body as we had to do with the Fiero. Unfortunately, what we didn't want was a frame as heavy as the Chevy S10. Rich and I spent 2-3 days at the local bone yard looking at various frames. Rich, the die-hard GM guy was even willing to look at a Ford frame if necessary. He was spared that fate when we came across a Chevy Tracker. With several hours of labor, we lifted the body off and removed everything from the bare frame. We hauled it through the yard to the front gate only to find that Pick-N-Pull could not sell us a complete frame. They could sell portions of the frame, but not a complete assembled frame. Our option was to cut the frame in half and buy two separate pieces. We ended up buying a battery powered reciprocal saw because we a.) could not take the complete frame through the gate and use a generator and tools to break the frame. b.) run a power cord into the yard. c.) use their power. d.) use any gas powered tools. e.) well just about any other logical method. f.0 it was the last day of a half price sale. Oh, and the published price (for the complete frame they couldn't sell) was less than the price for the two "sub" frames we created. At this point, Rich boiled over and had a high level discussion with the gentleman we were trying to deal with. The manager overheard the discussion and ended up giving us a discount to the complete frame price.
We spent time removing all the bracketry and all unnecessary pieces from the frame(s) before sending them out to be sandblasted. Robert had a contact who gave us a great price.
In this next picture, you can see that we started down the path of mounting the Fiero body to the Tracker frame.
Before rejoining the two frame halves, we took the time to go through the suspension. Here you can see the frame on our particle board surface plate. The Tracker lower control arms were used. But we ditched the struts for upper control arms. In this case, we found that Fiero upper control arms gave us the configuration we wanted. We went to the stock (pre metric) 5x 4.75" bolt pattern front and rear. And we used the regular GM single piston metric calipers front and rear.
On the passenger side of the front frame rail, we found damage from an impact to the wheels. We had to add a plate to repair and strengthen that portion and attach the upper Fiero control arms.
We used Corvette wheels front and back. We were able to get some stagger with 9.5" wide wheels up front and 10" wheels in back. It's amazing and amusing that every time we show up at the track, people ask "are those Corvette wheels" or "is that truck on a Corvette frame?" All the stuff going on and people notice those right off. Actually, we found that Corvette wheels are the most economical choice we could make. It seems that the first thing Corvette owners do is change out the wheels. Then those wheels that have been stored for 15 years are sold off cheaply to appease the significant other. Or, you would be surprised how often you can find three wheels on Craigslist. Lots of wheels have been lost to misplaced curbs. Three wheel sets are cheap. In the 3 sets we have ultimately ended up with, we haven't spent more than $50 for any wheel with most wheels coming in at $35.
We also moved the firewall back to accommodate the safety fuel cell. We used a flat sheet of steel because we didn't have to provide a transmission tunnel. We would have preferred to keep the firewall forward for better weight distribution (it effects the placement of the driver, a heavy component of this team) but the fuel cell required the move. We never could get the pit stops working as they should given the fueling constraints. Oh, and with the small tank we were at a disadvantage in the number of pit stops required. https://www.fiero.nl/forum/F...L/090867-6.html#p239 We were able to fit a 16 gallon cell into the space. Obviously we would have preferred to fit something closer to the 22 gallon rules limited size. But we couldn't get it in the space with going to a custom cell. Price drove the decision. Even with the 16 gallon cell, we now have more fuel than driver stamina.
You can see that odd white piece of sheet metal above the cell. That was the remains of the bracket left to hold the windshield motor in place. We went with the Bosche 044 external fuel pump plumbed in-line.
Bubba, the muffler shops 300 plus pound driver had over the years actually cracked the floorboards where the seat mounts. Our solution was to save money and use the floor of the bed to replace the interior floorboards. That also made it easier to eliminate the stock transmission tunnel. We also mounted the Kirkey race seats to the Fiero seat slides. Sooo much easier with different size drivers.
We also moved the switches from the dash to a panel on the console. The switch plate was located directly in front of the Fiero's Getrag 5-speed shifter.
Rich made some custom cooling tubes to connect the engine to the front mounted radiator. These tubes ran through the console tunnel well above the bottom of the frame well out of harms way.
Out back, we just couldn't get the Fiero rear cradle to mount to the Tracker frame rails. So we made a new cradle from square tubing. We ended up actually welding the cradle in place.
Our rear suspension took some time to develop. We used '85 rear Fiero lower control arms, 2005 Grand Am altered front spindles, altered Fiero front upper control arms, and the larger low friction screw in ball joints. This double wishbone rear suspension allowed us to get away from the struts and gave us great flexibility in designing the rear geometry including completely eliminating any rear bump steer. This flexibility came at a price as it took numerous design changes along with a lot of fabrication and a month to complete. Just one of the many reasons we were late debuting our new ride.We used the stock Fiero axles but had to change out the drive ends to fit Grand Am hubs. Oddly, the cheapest rotors we could find with the offset and size we needed was off of a C4 corvette. And again we used the single piston GM metric calipers. We used Wagner thermoquiet pads front and rear because of our good results on the Fiero.
Ryan at Sinister Performance http://www.gmtuners.com/ had created two 3800SC PCMs for us to use on the Fiero. We had never gotten around to using them there, but they worked on the truck just as well. Rich handled the wiring. And later on we had a local speed shop do the final tuning.
We came to appreciate that small back door that Rich originally complained about. He is now extremely thankful as it gives us easier access to the area behind the seat. Rich is now looking for an extended cab with back doors on both sides. We wish him luck with that one! We also have access to a small cool shirt cooler mounted in back.
These are photos of the first time we really dropped the vehicle to the ground.
We ultimately ended up abandoning the Fiero nose idea. It was too restrictive. We did find S10 fenders and hood, but ended up using an Oldsmobile Bravada grill and front fender cover. S10 and Jimmy pieces are in high demand, but nobody wants Bravada pieces so they are easier to find. We actually like the look. And it tends to sow more confusion with the judges.
This post is getting a bit long. I'll continue later with more on the rear of the truck and theme elements. As well as a few on track pictures.
Work continued on our S10/Fiero truck. With the engine/transmission and suspension cradle securely connected to the rear frame rails, we ended up with a wheelbase of 106 " versus the stock Fiero's 93.4" wheelbase. That's a fair gain. We fully expected that this would make the new vehicle a bit less twitch without losing the quickness that the Fiero platform offered . Most of the additional length was captured in the extended cab.
There was no way that we could add a full size bed to the back. Not even a mini-truck bed would fit. If you look at the pictures without the bed, it's apparent that the wheel arch has to start about 1-2 inches behind the cab bulkhead. And extending past the wheel arch a "normal" distance would result in a very large overhang that would be really ridiculous. In addition, we then could not use the stock rear frame components that create the crush zone. What we did was take the sides panels off the bed. We then cut the front of the bed panels away until we could center the wheel arches over the wheels themselves.
The fact that the tailgate was damaged presented another problem. First of all, a replacement tailgate was too expensive. Secondly, it was very heavy. So Rich came up with the solution of utilizing the FRONT panel of the bed at the back. It already had all of the contours in place to match the bed side panels, And it was lighter. So we created some mounts to hold the front/back panel in place.
It then became a matter of trimming the side panels where they intersected the new rear panel.
We used an aluminum bumper from that donor Park Avenue.
Naturally, we needed a way to seal the engine compartment. We had already assigned a higher use to the bed as a floor to the cab. So we elected to seal the bed at the top with aluminum panels. Rich bent up three separate panels that interlocked so that we could maintain some access to the back.
Robert came up with the great idea of using a diamond-plate truck bed tool box as an engine cover. This was a nifty idea that played into our theme of having a "handyman" work truck.
Working in a small garage means that you are always very close to the project. It was hard to get a long view or perspective on what you are building. Frankly, we didn't realize just how short the bed was until we got it out of the garage. You too haven't seen the truck from anything other than that 3/4 shot I posted above. But here it is in a full profile showing the true proportions.
The last two pictures were taken at our first on-track test day. Honestly, the car wasn't yet complete. You'll notice that the rear bumper is still exposed and hanging out in the wind. What we intended to do was use a Fiero rear bumper cover. And we probably COULD have made it work. But instead Rich and I spent a day in the local pick-n-pull measuring all sorts of bumper cover to fit our truck. What we ultimately ended up using was a Chevy Lumina rear bumper cover.
We also added a couple more thematic elements. For the purposes of tech, we bolted on a small tow hitch to our actual tow (as in tow me off the track) hook.
Because the new rules required a rear glass or partition on all mid-engine cars, we added a lexan rear window made to accommodate the rear down bars.
The interior successfully met our goals with a much roomier and friendly space.
The biggest theme element that we had on the truck was this lumber rack that Rich bent up for the occasion. We mounted a ladder and some power cords and air hoses and a couple boards to the rack to sell the theme. And no, we didn't actually race with the rack on the truck.
We pretty much brought the tech station to a halt when we showed up with the truck.
I never thought I would say that we were lucky to be inspected by John "Evil Genius." But Jay Lamm the first gentleman looking at the engine compartment was saying "so essentially, they are a tube frame chassis?" This would have been pretty much the kiss of death for us. But head technical inspector Evil Genius the guy on the right looking into the front compartment, said no we were using a production frame. Which of course was correct. So we did pass muster as a "unique" but legal LeMons car. At least from a safety tech stand point.
Next came the "BS" inspection. That had to be the most fun I ever had during a tech inspection session. It became pretty clear where the Judge's ruling was headed, we were going to be judged an "A" car with more than a few penalty laps. So as the head Judge started talking I interrupted and talked right over him. "We understand that you are going to have to call our Fiero based S10 a "C" car. Don't worry we understand and can live with it." That took him back for moment. When he started to continue I again talked over him and said "no, really. Trust me, our egos can handle it. And we can understand you having to do that." Again he paused, and then started laughing. Finally he came back with "you gotta have a huge set of balls to even say that! Nope, you are an 'A' car and we have to give you some penalty laps, even if we don't really want to. So we'll give you 25 penalty laps." Something got lost in transferring everything to the official timing sheets and we got an official 2 lap penalty.
Rich and I are both convinced that, had we left the truck rusty with jagged body panels and poorly constructed dash and a cracked windshield, we would have been judged less severely and at least avoided penalty laps. But poor workmanship is just not a possibility with Rich.
A few gratuitous on track shots.
We were part of the Guinness Records starting grid.
And I'll mention again that we won that Judges Choice award.
So that's pretty much all she wrote for this build story.
As I type this, the Fiero is just a couple hours from the next race at Sonoma Raceway. Sam and the rest of the Area 51 Stealth Alien Hunters are looking for a good result on Saturday March 21, 2015. I will attempt to get him to post any progress notes he might want to share. For my part, I'll be monitoring #51 progress in tomorrow's race via the internet at https://www.race-monitor.com/Live/Race/24412
So, anyone looking for a straight, rust free California '88 Fiero to start their own project? The first Fiero we bought on our Lemons journey.
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