I am doing an updated thread on build progress minus the comments and drama so.....
The information posted has been compiled since March 11,2007
Alright guys and gals...as promised, here is the build up of my 87 GT. I bought the car in August 2006 and it has 94,000 mile on it. The guy I bought it from really took care of it and it has no problems at all.....so I decided to hack it up !!!! The kit is from the Fiero Warehouse and is one of the finest I have seen. I started on March 11, 2007 at 3:00pm and called it a day at 8:00pm. In that time, I was able to strip the entire car and test fit one of the rear fenders. The kit arrived in a crate the size of a refrigerator. Everything was very well packaged.
First off, this is one of the best tools for anyone to own. It allows you to push your car from side to side without starting it or having to do the old forward/back push while steering. I will tell you that the best procedure for me was to 1-Remove all wheel well screws, 2-Drill out all of the rivets that hold the stock panels on to the car.They hold the rocker panels to the frame and also have to be drilled out from the door sill plates after you remove the covers. I won't get too in depth with the destruction details but lets just say that I am using very little of the existing car so I had no concerns about saving too many parts. Here is the car with the molding removed....you can really save the existing tabs if you pry from the top of the molding rather than from the bottom. This is the stock door with the plastic panels removed exposing the steel lip where the my new panels will mount. Once the body panels are removed, you can focus on the rear of the car. First, remove all the sail panel screws and then the trim. Be aware that the factory used a slight adhesive so be careful with prying these out or you could snap them.I actually bought new windows so I took the old windows out. This is not necessary for rear clip removal. I will warn you that protection is needed if you decide to remove the old windows as they will shatter. After removing the trim and the tail light assembly, all of the necessary bolts and plastic fasteners will be accessible. Before removing the rear clip, the roof paneling must be loosened. Remove the headliner and there are 3 nuts for the rear roof section and 6 bolts for the front section. The reason for loosening these is that the front section is hooked to the rear so they have to be unhooked. Carefully lift the front portion of the roof panel to unhook it from the rear. Once unhooked, all of the bolts can be removed from the rear clip and it can be lifted off the car in one piece. I will give you a warning for the novice builder...the fuel door latch is held in by one screw. To get to this screw, you have to remove your gas cap. Be aware that this is a plastic car and does generate static electricty. If you touch the screwdriver to the gas filler neck, you could be in for a surprise. I know,I know it probably won't happen but I just put the caution out there for you.Here is a pic with the clip removed. After I removed the rear clip, it was time to call it quits for the but I decided to do a test fit of a rear fender. One member of the forum was asking about the difference between the stock look and the IMSA look. Here is your answer. Stock........ IMSA.........
I was able to remove the front bumper cover which is held in by screws under the front of the car on the left and right. Basically, you are removing the rubber dust protector from the bumper but leaving it attatched to the car. One thing I am slowly seeing about this car is that you seem to only need 1 or 2 sizes of torx bit, a 7mm and a 15mm wrench or socket....this is great !! Below is the pic of the front end which is just hanging on the factory bracket. I also temporarily mounted the front fenders to get an idea of door clearance and hood clearance...this will require a little finessing to get it right. The pic above also shows the fenders mounted with the front end. I also mounted the rocker panels and sill plates. The sill plates simply slide over the sill mounts and the rocker panels slide down into the factory clamp strip and rivet from the bottom of the door. This strip is seen in my previous pics. Here is an overhead view of a very rough constructed car. Testing the wing....
Many of you already know this but some may not....the IMSA kit is not joined at the roof or rear bumper from manufacture. The stock clip is a one piece that you can just lift off the car. Due to this, a filler strip or joining strip has to be added to tie the rear section to the roof. Also the taillight section is not included. This also has to be fabricated. The first pic is of what I start with....the stock rear clip with the roof line marked out, and the taillight section marked out.
The next pic is what I end up with after the cuts are made. If you notice on the roof panel, I left the 3 mounting studs intact even though the IMSA kit covers the holes where the studs mount to the roof. I want the maximum strength so I will modify the kit rather than the factory mounting points.
This is where the roof piece will be installed and glassed in to the left and right side of the fenders. If you look close, you can see the center mounting hole and on the far side, you can just barely see the other mounting hole. This is where I will modify the kit to allow maximum strength.
Finally, here is the rough fitting of the stock taillight section. It will be glassed in after the rear bumper is properly mounted to the car. I also cut it so that all of the stock bolt locations can be used.
Here is the front and rear clip temporarily assembled
And this is what is left of the original body.
I am waiting for my panel bonding adhesive to arrive and then I can start permanently mounting and glassing the body to the car. For those interested, it was extremely difficult to buy this adhesive. It comes in a double tube and I get the stuff for about $35.00 per tube....no big deal. Where I start to cringe is the price of the gun.....roughly $255.00.....OUCH !!!! Oh well....I guess I need it.
[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 02-17-2008).]
Well guys and gals, I have not had a chance for a major update do to work and my supplies just showing up on Friday. Now that I have them, updates will continue on a more regular basis. The first quicky is the roof panel. First, I was able to remove the factory skin from the rear roof panel plate and set it in place to test the fit. I then trimmed the plate to fit under the new fiberglass panels and trimmed the factory skin to fit within the new quarter panels. These will all be bonded with 3M panel adhesive and then the gaps will be sanded, beveled, and filled with fiberglass filler. I will post more pics tomorrow of the surfaces being bonded since I was not ready to use the adhesive today. The next small item was the rear wing. I was told that the proper way to install this was to "split" the rear decklid and insert the wing flange under the opening. Then, it is bonded to the decklid. I am also going to be adding nuts to the bottom of the wing and bolting the wing to the decklid as well as using the panel adhesive. These are to be sure that the wing doesn't move even after I glass the wing in to the rear lid. First, I set the wing on the car and positioned it for proper fit. I then marked the edges with a Sharpie and used frisket masking to trace the contour of the flange. I then cut the frisket and removed the excess and the wing. I placed my cutout on my marks that I made with the pen. I then cut along the line with a dremel tool. I used such a small tool just because I am limited on space and could not afford to have a fiberglass cloud in my garage....plus, it is very accurate. I then "split" the lid with a screwdriver. I then slid the wing under the split and checked for proper gap. Here is a look from the underside of the lid. This is what the gap looks like until it is sanded and filled to fit the wing properly. This is the wing with the lid opened. Notice how important it is to keep the decklid contour lines straight???
So today, I took off the rear lid and started on the rear wing. Since I had already made the cut in the decklid and posted that previously, I will just get into the permanent mounting of the wing. First, I test fitted the wing and make sure that everything lined up. I then drilled 8 - 1/4" holes to really sucure the wing to the decklid and again did a little test fit with rivets to ensure nothing moved. After the test fit, I added 1/4" extra wide washers on the wing at the holes that I drilled to give the rivets something extra to grab on to. These were glued with the panel adhesive. The next step was to prep the decklid for the adhesive by removing all of the finish in the areas to be bonded. I then applied the panel adhesive to all areas to be bonded and assembled the wing with the rivets around the edges. The next step was to bond the front of the wing to the stock skin. This is fairly easy since the skin is already loose from the cut. Simply pry up and glue. Once this was dry, I used an Evercoat Vette Panel filler to fill in the 1/4" gap between the wing and skin. This actually took about 3 coats and I will apply 1 more tomorrow. I am really against any type of filler so I am trying to use as little as possible. The wing looks rough but trust me, it is smooth as glass. One thing you may notice is what appears to be black "runs" at the edges of the filler at the body lines. This is the area underneath the paint and primer. When you remove these coats, it creates a small dip in the panel at these locations. I will also have to build these up slightly to keep the smooth transition from panel to wing. After one more coat of filler, it should be ready to go. For those wondering, this is the adhesive that I use. It is a "must have" for this type of work. Be prepared to pay for the quality,however....$35.00 per tube and $250.00 for the gun....OUCH. Anyway, they say rain for tomorrow so hopefully, I'll post more images on Sunday.
Sorry about the lack of updates. My wife and I are expecting our first son so my focus is on her and our soon-to-be child. This week, I wanted to give you guys a pretty good option for an intake. I recently won an APC Universal Intake kit on Ebay for $20.00. It contains the filter, chrome pipe, adapters, clamps, smog hose, and a really cool heavy duty flex pipe.
I mounted the rubber adapter and the flex tube with the supplied clamps to the stock air cleaner mount.
I then test fit it into the car. It fit perfectly and gives me the ability to do whatever I need with the intake. What is really funny is how much tubing they give you. You literally can run this from the stock airbox to the roofline if you wanted.
You can also run this from the stock intake manifold all the way to the side vent and use the aftermarket air filter if you like. It gives you plenty of flex tube. You just have to worry about the vacuum hoses and make adjustments for the fit.
Alright....finally back to business !!! Today, I focused on one of the harder parts of the vehicle.....removing the curve from the hood, trimming the front facia, and lining up the front end to fit perfectly. I wanted to leave a 1/4" gap all the way around the hood. Since this is not a perfect fit kit, I also had to be aware of the rocker panels in relation to the front fenders and how the doors open with the lower door panels.
First, I measured and marked the hood to make it straight. The blue tape indicates my cut line. Keep in mind that the IMSA kit has straight fender lines, not curved like the stock hood.
While the hood was off the car, I then trimmed the edge of the from fascia to increase the gap between the front of the hood and the fascia.
Here is a picture with the hood roughly installed after the trimming was complete.
After adjusting the fenders and the hood hinges, this is the gap that I wanted...
For some reason in this pic, the gap looks incorrect but it is 1/4"....must have been the camera angle
Now I just need to clean up my cuts, round over the lip of the hood so the edges are not sharp, and do a little minor filling of the front fascia to level it with the front of the hood. While taking a break from this part of the build, I decided to draw and cut the intake port and test fit the screen that I will be using. I am also making an air box to fit behind the screen.
Ok, today I wanted to get as much done on the rear of the car as possible. The first thing was mounting and aligning the rear clip. Since this is not an exact fit using factory mounting locations, a measurement must be made to ensure that the clip is centered on the vehicle....if it is not, you will have a 10" wide wheel on one side and a 12" on the other Once the measurements were done, I attached the clip by only the rear bumper mounting points. I still have to install the side intake so I need the flexibility of being able to move the front portion out to work. I also temporarily installed the gas cap door and one of my new tinted quarter windows from Ken Hines products.....just to tease myself
I really wanted to attack the taillights today because this kit is very unforgiving with the rear end !!! Nothing lines up and this probably is one of the more labor intese areas as far as cutting, filling, sanding and almost making it custom for your particular vehicle. There is a trim strip that covers the bumper at the trim level and it is a pain to get this piece to fit under the lights. Lots of fab work and here is what I came up with today.
Tomorrow, I am hoping to finish the wing and get it mounted. I have some custom nascar air ducts coming this week. They are a split intake so one of the 3" pipes goes to the intake and the other goes to the rear to add cooling to whatever...brakes...engine?? I am making both side intakes work on this car. There is no point in having fake intakes....this isn't a Mustang
Well, I got a little sidetracked today when my order from the Fiero store came in. The IMSA body has the older grooved moldings formed into the panels. My 87 has the smooth moldings so I could either round over the IMSA or change mine to grooved.....I went for the grooved look. Fiero store offers the reproduction grooved side marker lights and used grooved door moldings as well as the grooved caps that are behind the door handles. Here is a pic of these nice new lights and used moldings.
This is a picture of my current molding and the IMSA front fender molding.
Here is a pic of the factory GT side marker with the round molding built in. Notice the cutout on the fender....these would never work.
After some cutting and filing, the fender is ready for the new side marker.
And as usual....nothing seems fit on this vehicle so....I cringed doing this.....I filed the new marker lights to fit the fender
Here are a couple of pictures of the marker fitted. On this pic, you really can see the amount of work it will take to "line up" the IMSA grooves with the sidemarker grooves. Before I prime the car...as a final step, I am going to "harden" the lines on the body. Right now, they are too soft and flowing....I want them to be sharper to match the marker grooves.
Also, my intake scoop came. This is going to be pretty nice when I am done. Since I am using a fairly open screen for the grille on the intake, you will be able to see into the scoop....it should look kinda cool I am using these on both sides.
Today, I started to adjust the gap on the roof line. This IMSA kit is open in the center so you have to cut out the center section of your stock roof and use it. The front seam lines up perfectly with the skin of the forward roof. The rear area does not line up however. The lip is off by about the thickness of the material so sanding is not an option.
Here is what I started with.
This is what I mean when I say that the back lip does not line up.
After drawing a line across the skin and directly above the factory mounting strip, I cut a groove across the roof and removed the rear piece.
After cleaning the excess old adhesive and strands, here is the part ready to be glued...notice the lip of the factory mounting piece on the roofline.
One the glue has been applied, the part is assembled and taped to hold it in place. The purpose of me cutting and regluing the strip right back on is that the cutter bit is about 1/8" wide. It removed just enough material to allow me to remount the piece and have the part fit almost perfect.
Here is the adjusted piece. The "before" picture is the 3rd one down and this is the "after"
This will be my end result when done. I am removing all seams and blending the rear clip into the roof to make the car really flow.
Well, I didn't know the adhesive would dry so fast so here is another update. I am a firm believer in using as little filler as possible. I hate cars that are 90% Bondo. Here, I filled in the gaps lightly with Vette Panel Filler. Tomorrow, I will remove all of the excess filler from around the joints and add a little more to finish filling the gaps.
[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 02-18-2008).]
So today, I made the rear clip one with the roof panel and I finished the roofline as planned. I put on 1 coat of House of Kolor primer to check my work and make sure everything was smooth. Here is the finished product.....and yes, I am changing the sunroof weatherstrip so I didn't care about the overspray !!
I am also going to shorten the roof trim piece. Originally, it went from the front fender, over the door, and down to the rear of the quarter window. In the first and second picture, you will notice a slight change in the roofline just above the quarter window. It looks like a mistake but this transitions the roofline up to the quarter window body line. Now that this car is slowly coming together, it is really going to kick a$$ when I'm done....if I say so myself
For some reason, the whale tail was very difficult to sculpt which is why I have been working on it for so long. I mounted it and gave it a very light coat of House of Kolor primer just to check my body work and make sure the body lines were straight. Still needs some filling of some pinholes but overall, it came out nice.
One of the biggest problems with this kit is lining up the rear fender line, rocker line, and the front fender line. The fiberglass for the lower door is 1/4 too thick which makes it impossible to line up body lines and the door scrapes on the sill plate. To fix this, I had to cut the entire bottom of the GFX off and shave down the mounting surfaces of the GFX to line up the body lines.
Here are a couple more showing how the parts line up. I have a lot of shaping to do to get it perfect.
While I was working on the lower parts, I ran a test fit on this 2 port intake. There will be a working one on each side of the car.Pretty good fit.
This is a little break from the IMSA updates and kind of a helper topic for some of you. For those of you who always crack your chin spoilers and have to spend a lot of money to repair them, here is an easy solution. It seems many members love the chin spoiler but have many problems with them breaking. These things cost a lot of money and sometimes get completely destroyed. This is a cheap and maybe a free alternative. First, find a beat up, or in my case an unused GT front end. Make a cut along the lower seam ( Marked in red ) and follow that into the center until it is removed from the whole bumper piece.
Next, cut the center section out. You want to follow the curve of the front end and cut far enough back that you just cut in front of the center support.
Next, remove the reinforcing strip from the lower part of the bumper, cut it, and install it where you just cut out the center support. You will have to hammer this piece on because it has "teeth" built in and they will really grab the plastic with no need for other fasteners. This will strengthen and straighten the piece.
After this, the piece is flipped upside down and the extra plastic of the spoiler is cut off. If you are mounting this on a stock car, leave the plastic intact. It will give you more mounting areas. For the IMSA, it has to flare out more so it needs to be bent to a different curve....the plastic has to be cut off.
Here is the piece temporarily held up with paint cans so you can get an idea of what it will look like. Notice how the IMSA opening curves around into the GT piece and really looks like it should have been there from the factory.
The side pieces that curve around can be cut more level towards the front tires or can be left at an angle as you see in the pics. This is not going to be mounted right now because there are WAY more important things to do on this build.
So, what have we done? Cut a factory front end down, flipped it upside down, and created a break proof chin spoiler....kinda cool
Well, this was supposed to be an update about the build but I got royally screwed with this...
I needed to change the hinge pins because the door was sagging so I had to disconnect the wiring from the door and found out that the former owner or owners wired in 2 different alarm systems. They had about 8 relays and wiring everywhere. I need to get this all back to stock before the build continues.
Went to Staples and bought an "EASY" button. " That was easy "
Also changed the hinges as planned with the Rodney Dickman set. Great product
Alright....real quick....this is what the molding now looks like with the new hinges.
Now on to the bigger stuff. Today, I had to fit the quarter window trim to the new fiberglass body. First issue was to test fit the plastic and mark where to cut the body.
Next was to trim the excess fiberglass and also trim the lip of the plastic trim.
This is what the trim looks like if I used the stock mounting locations.
This is after some spacing and adjusting.
This is what the piece should look like with the proper height in relation to the decklid.
While I was working on this, I was letting the panel adhesive dry so that I can blend the rear and front fenders into the sill plates to make the car really "flow".....I'm not a fan of seeing too many seams where one part meets the next. Also, since this is going to have a race car theme, the Dzus fasteners arrived today for the hood....
A quick update.....Just to get back into the feel of this build, I decided to test out the logos for the hood. The first pic is the negative masking decal that I will use to paint the logo on.
The next pic is of the Pontiac logo that will go on the windshield....this will just be a decal, no paint on the windshield.
Just to get a feel for the lettering size, I made the whole logo set from decals to see how close I am to the original. This is actually hard because I only have smaller pictures of the original car so everything has to be measured and converted to real scale......this is much easier to correct before paint
Now on to the new year.....Tomorrow, I start work on this car again after some time off the project. Hopefully, it will be done before any of the west coast events
So today, I began to tackle this build after a long "parenting" absence and boy am I rusty !!! I ended up reshaping the top of the driver side fender to contour with the hood a little better and also completed the blending of the front and rear clip to the door sill plates. I lightly sprayed some primer on the areas to check the angles of the parts. I am not concerned with the sanding marks since this is still in the rough stages. During the final finishing before paint, the car will be gone over with a fine tooth comb to correct the scratches. A major warning to the members who want to do this kit.....I believe that when my kit was made, it was during the winter months. Consequently, the gelcoat is collapsing due to air pockets on multiple edges so I am having to test each part by tapping with the edge of a screwdriver to see if I can make the area fail. So far, each part has had about 4-7 failure points which means that I have to do repairs before I can even start priming and finishing.....this is what is a real time killer Anyway, here are the front and rear blended together at the sill plates. I am only showing one side due to the fact that the other side looks the same.
Thank you. The decals are just to see if I like the design.....which I do. When I do the final paint, I will airbrush the logos and clearcoat the whole car so you will not see any bumps where the logos are painted. I really don't ever use decals other than testing purposes and don't like the fact that they are a "wax trap" when waxing a car, especially black.
Thanks for redoing the thread, good to see it continue. It's one of my favorites I really like the 'racecar replica' styling you chose. I have two quick questions: 1) I know you did a before-after pic of the rear fender (incidentally, I was the one who asked for it, thanks ), but do you have a measurement of how many inches different the front/rear fenders stick out from stock? I can never tell for sure because the pictures always seem to be somewhat of an optical illusion, with the size decreasing with depth. 2) (ok, not so quick questions ) if the logos and paint scheme were more involved than the #55 car, would you use a vinyl wrap instead, or would you stick with the airbrushing? I know very little when it comes to paint and such, so I'm all ears.
Thanks for redoing the thread, good to see it continue. It's one of my favorites I really like the 'racecar replica' styling you chose. I have two quick questions: 1) I know you did a before-after pic of the rear fender (incidentally, I was the one who asked for it, thanks ), but do you have a measurement of how many inches different the front/rear fenders stick out from stock? I can never tell for sure because the pictures always seem to be somewhat of an optical illusion, with the size decreasing with depth. 2) (ok, not so quick questions ) if the logos and paint scheme were more involved than the #55 car, would you use a vinyl wrap instead, or would you stick with the airbrushing? I know very little when it comes to paint and such, so I'm all ears.
Looking forward to seeing more progress
First off, I'm glad you enjoy the build. I am getting more excited as the little things get cleaned up and the car nears the finished state.
To answer your first question, the fenders are about 2" wider in the front and 3" wider in the rear. I know that if you look at a tape measure, it seems like nothing but if you look at the photos, it totally changes the look of the car. As far as the paint, I would rather paint ANYTHING than use decals.....even if it involves heavy graphics. I really like the satisfaction of doing a beautiful paint job rather than have a machine do it for me. I use my vinyl machine to cut the templates for my paint jobs so I can get an idea of the look before I paint and make it permanent.
To give you an idea, here is Troyboys car with the IMSA rear end. I think the rears are 12" wide wheels.
[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 02-18-2008).]
If I go, I will probably just fly in. I don't have a way to trailer the car and the paint job will be too high end to drive all the way from California with all the goodies that manage to hit cars on those long trips
Speaking of paint jobs, I have a question for the members. I am torn between the 2 cars. I like the Huffaker because of the clean color combinations but I also like the Valvoline car because it is off the wall with colors. I have to decide which color scheme and start ordering paint. Any opinions???
[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 11-17-2008).]
if u r gonna put all the ad stickers then valvoline because that would look like a race car not a rice car, if you don't put all the little ad stickers then the valvoling would look rice but the gm would look good thats just my opinion
Good wrench, because the body you have is an exact copy of the Huffaker 55. If you look the proportions of the Valvoline car, the side scoops, the ride height, all of it is slightly different. Goodwrench is a little classier too.
The [GM] should be closer to the Goodwrench IMO...
I would go with the Valvoline, it looks way more up to date, the Goodwrench car looks too oldies. You have to go all out tho, if you just get the paint then; as other said, it would look too ricey...
For some reason in this pic, the gap looks incorrect but it is 1/4"....must have been the camera angle
Once the measurements were done, I attached the clip by only the rear bumper mounting points. I still have to install the side intake so I need the flexibility of being able to move the front portion out to work. I also temporarily installed the gas cap door and one of my new tinted quarter windows from Ken Hines products.....just to tease myself 
), but do you have a measurement of how many inches different the front/rear fenders stick out from stock? I can never tell for sure because the pictures always seem to be somewhat of an optical illusion, with the size decreasing with depth.
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