Well, I figured that I'd make a build thread of my car so I can keep track of what I've done and what I plan to do. And to show it off some too. (Granted, there's not much to show off right now). Anyway, a quick history. In June 2002 I bought my 86 SE V6. I don't have any pictures of it from then, but picture a Red Aero Notchback and you've got it. I paid too much. $3000 but the body was in great shape and had a 2 year old paint job. Plus I got another parts car along with it. This was basically my first car I drove. (I got a 68 Corvair in 2000 but never really got it road worthy.) Anyway, the engine went out about a month after I bought it. I was really new to the Fiero scene at that point and didn't know anything about engine swaps or the like, so I missed out on the perfect oppurtunity to upgrade to something better. Instead, I had the engine replaced with a new 2.8. (I got ripped off on that too) I drove the Fiero through my Senior year of High School. Only mods done were the typical eBay CRX CAI in February of 2003 and the stock speakers were replaced with Eclipse 4x6s and 4x10s. The POS tape player that came with the car was replaced by some Eclipse deck. I also threw a JL Audio 8W1 in the passenger footwell powered by a Phoenix Gold 250 watt amp. I know the intake offers little to no performance gains, but I don't care because it was cheap and sounds good. Shortly after graduation in June I picked up some WCF headers and a Borla exhuast and had them installed. Cat deleted as well. Later that month I had a little run in with a Lexus and ****ed up the front of my car. No pictures, sorry. Damage wasn't actually that bad, but the fender, front fascia and hood were done for. I ordered a 355 style fascia from Twin Lakes to replace my busted up stock one. I had to go to college shorty after it arrived, so it all got put in storage for the winter and I went to school without a car. The next summer (2004) just prior to the front fascia being put on, my mom backed up into my car and messed up the driver's side fender, door panel and rocker. The parts car sacrificed its hood and fender for the cause due to the Lexus incident and I had to find another door panel and fender for the other side. Thus my badass colorscheme started. That same summer I picked up an 84 K5 Blazer for a daily, so the riceresque primer paint didn't really matter too much.
Anyway, not much else got done that summer, the Fiero went back to storage and I went back to school.
I had decided previously that I preferred the fastback body style, so over Winter break I swapped out the rear clips, decklid and grills for the Fastback parts. At the same time, the Stage 2 sidecoops I ordered over a year before (I was one of the one's with a lost shipment) were put on as well. Before: During: After: So, back to storage with no taillights and back to school with the Blazer. Part of the reason I wanted to do the fastback conversion in the first place was I love the 355 style taillight panels. So, I picked up one of those and the Vette lights that go with them. They went on after I went home for the summer. More colors. That summer I also hooked up the MSD set-up (6A box, coil, wires) and NGK plugs I bought the previous school year. I also hooked up the nitrous set-up I bought from Shaun, but never got it working before I went to AFROTC Field Training that summer (2005). Between camp and some other not good family/personal issues, nothing else got done that summer.
I'll have more later. Feel free to comment, criticize, inquire and bash.
moi perfecta! or some sort of bable thats makes it sound good!
seriously though... nice work so far! Primer is only riceresque if is is your permanent paint job, and on yours mothers DD.. yours has always progressed, nullifying rice-ness.
The conversion wasn't that hard. There's threads covering it in more detail, but basically you'll want to remove your decklid, quarter panels, taillights, wheel well liners, your headliner and B pillar interior pieces. Then you should be able to get to all of the bolts. Remove the notchback clip and replace with the fastback clip. Like I said, it's more in depth than that, but it wasn't too bad. It helped to have a buddy or two for actually taking off the clip as to not break the roof.
Okay, this is somewhat out of order, but I forgot about the sub upgrade. So I had that 8W1 which sounded pretty good, but I wanted more so I decided to upgrade. I bought this center console box and JL Audio 10W6v2 off of Mr. Pat. To power it I picked up a Kicker 500.1 amp off of a friend for a good price. It's mounted up front above the spare and my Optima Red Top. Also, I got these bass shakers and an amp from another friend for pretty cheap so I decided to give them a try. My step-dad and I fabbed up some brackets that mount to the seat frame so the vibration is felt throughout the seat. They also move with the seat. They add a nice little extra bass feeling. Although I do like the current audio set-up, I plan to change it in the future. I want to get another sub and put one behind each seat as well as build a carputer with an in dash touch screen.
Last school year I didn't really make much progress. Same goes for this last summer. Again, there were alot of issues which kept me from the car. Not to mention, I'm only in college and barely make any money and have bills to pay. But I did begin my trim/door handles delete. I mounted solenoids and door poppers in the door and door frame, respectively. They work, but they're not hooked up to my new alarm yet (pager, remote start, window roll down, yadda yadda). Not really wanting my first fiberglass project to be on a piece as big and crucial as the doors, I bought a pair of the fiberglass door skins that Driven Visions sells. The wing has also since been removed since that picture. A few more exterior mods to go, and it should be ready for paint. I have one of the 360 style rear fascias with diffuser sitting in my storage garage ready to go on either this Spring Break or summer. I also just bought Chris/Oslo's mustang style decklid vent off of his silver car. It's actually sitting right here next to me on the floor. I need to put those two pieces on, the rest of the trim needs to get taken care of, I need to decide on rockers and a hood vent, and a few other minor things need to be take care of before it's ready for paint.
Here's the only engine bay shot I have. It's blurry as hell, but it is just a 2.8 afterall. Here's one that kinda shows the debadged headlight door. And another showing the detrimmed door.
I had decided previously that I preferred the fastback body style, so over Winter break I swapped out the rear clips, decklid and grills for the Fastback parts. At the same time, the Stage 2 sidecoops I ordered over a year before (I was one of the one's with a lost shipment) were put on as well. Before: During: After: So, back to storage with no taillights and back to school with the Blazer. Part of the reason I wanted to do the fastback conversion in the first place was I love the 355 style taillight panels. So, I picked up one of those and the Vette lights that go with them. They went on after I went home for the summer. More colors. That summer I also hooked up the MSD set-up (6A box, coil, wires) and NGK plugs I bought the previous school year. I also hooked up the nitrous set-up I bought from Shaun, but never got it working before I went to AFROTC Field Training that summer (2005). Between camp and some other not good family/personal issues, nothing else got done that summer.
I'll have more later. Feel free to comment, criticize, inquire and bash.
In the middle of those tail lights are those back up lights?
They're not backup lights. I have red bulbs in there, so the whole housing lights up red. I may put in seperate white bulbs in the same housings for backups some day.
Speaking of the tails and how they light up. I have them wired so that the outer two serve as brake and turn signals. When the headlights are on, all four light up.
A + coming from me for all the years you had her and never did give her up ..going to look great when finish ..it does now whit the all the body style ..Rob
The car looks fantastic. I love it that you are patient and just keep plugging along.
Unless you are madcurl, troyboy, or a few others on the forum (= $$$), it takes time to build your dream car and you are obviously well on the way.
Can't wait to see it with the rear diffuser and some better rims.
Ever think about the bowtie style wing ?
Yeah the whole being a student only making about $8k a year and having to pay bills thing makes it hard. But I will be graduating this May and then will be making real money. Things should pick up then.
As for the bowtie wing, I've thought about it, but I think all of them that I've seen stick up just a little too far. If I were to use one, I think I would like it only about half as high as most are and more rounded on the sides to follow the lines of the rear clip. It's hard to explain exactly what I'm talking about.
I'm still undecided on the hood vent I want. I know I made a post about this earlier, but I think I have it pretty much narrowed down to a few options that I like. There's the Fie Ro style vent as seen here on his and Yellowstone's cars:
The Warber style vent, seen here (not sure who's cars):
GTRWidebody/creator's vent as seen on the orange widebody:
And then there's the Driven Vison's vent as seen here on TroyBoy's and Motorhead's Fieros:
Any thoughts or other ideas? All four have their pros and cons. I'm having a hard time deciding which style vent would look best on my car and flow with the other mods well. If anyone is willing to whip up some photoshops, that would be great.
Also, if anyone has a problem with me using pictures of their cars, let me know.
The pictures aren't the best and don't show everything being that the batteries in the camera kept dying.
Anyway, last week the first thing I went to work on was the decklid vent. This mod has been documented plenty of times so no real need to go into much detail.
Mounting the vent itself was alittle frustrating being that it was alittle bowed and the bolts aren't in the same place on both sides. I got it on though. Looks good I think. I plan to glass it in as well as add a slimline fan to the bottom to force the air out. Sorry the pics are so dark.
After the decklid vent, I moved onto the doors. I already had the poppers and solonoids hooked up like I've said before, but I finally got around to running the wires. Thus far only the driver's side door will open via the remote. I'm going to wait until the new alarm is installed before I get them both working. I've never seen remote doors in person before. It's kinda cool. You can see the solonoids in the lower latch side of the doors. Pretty easy install.
After those were hooked up and I could actually get into the car with door handles, I put the shaved door panels on. The driver's side door had better fitament. There's a slight gap between the window and door on the passenger's side where the panel bows out slightly. Also, the hardware mounting points didn't line up as well on this side either and required more modifications to the door than the driver's side. Still I'm happy with the results.
[This message has been edited by Unsafe At Any Speed (edited 03-21-2007).]
Next up was the rear fascia. I'll admit I was a little intimidated by this project being how large and how expensive of a piece it was.
First I obviously had to remove the tails and the old fascia.
Then I hung the fascia with no fasteners to see how it fit.
I ended up having to remove all the honeycomb support underneath as well as that thing laying on the ground in one of the pictures. A big issue I noticed is that the license plate cutout is about two inches too skinny and an inch short. That problem I haven't figured out yet. Also, the bottom mounting tab on the fascia hit the bottom of the trunk. Its hard to see, but here's a picture of what I'm talking about.
To remedy this last problem, I took out the cutting saw ($10 at Harbor Freight ) and went to work on my $1200+ piece of fiberglass. This is about where the camera I was using went dead. I cut off the obtructing tab and made a brace out of metal across the remaining piece to help distribute the force. Then I fabbed up a couple L shaped brackets to mount the brace to the bottom of the trunk. Worked out pretty well and is completely out of sight. Also, this method requires none of those damn rivets the stock fascia is secured with, so future removal is less of a pain. These brackets combined with the lip up in the taillight region alone secured the fascia in place pretty tightly. Still, I made another brace across the top lip and secured it to the rear clip/frame using two stock mounting points. None of this is visible once the taillight panel is in place. I still haven't attached the wheel well liners yet, but they seem to line up well. I need to find some of those nylon rivet type things that the liner bolts can screw into.
Sorry that I don't have any pictures of the fascia mounted on with the taillights in place. In my opinion it looks pretty good.
Have you figured out the rear license plate mount? Any room behind rear fascia? Any potential for automation behind the rear fascia? Get more pics
I haven't really done much in regards to the rear plate mount yet. There is plenty of room behind I believe, so what I may end up doing is take a mold of the stock plate area, cut the fascia and glass the mold in. That is once I get some practice with fiberglass first though. As for automation, thats something I may look into.
Also, I have my car up here at school for the first time. That said, I'm going to take some pictures this weekend, so if you want pictures of anything or angles in particular let me know.
I tryd to give you a + but I guess I already did from way back from a helping hand ..Nice job your doing and wish to see more of it around the pff .Keep it up .a bump
yours has always progressed, nullifying rice-ness. 
..Rob
