OK Gentlemen and Ladies, I figured I would shower you all with the wonderious building of the first car I purchased outright.
I will start at the beginning, some of these pictures you all may have seen before but there will be many additional updated photos and notes so here we go.
To start off, it was 2008, there I was, the center of Iraq, just gotten off patrol, and I thought to myself, "hey, I've got some money saved up, it would be sweet to own a kit car, lets see what I can find", so after searching around for a bit I found that most were ridiculously overpriced and didn't warrant that price considering they generally all still had stock Fiero engines in them. Then I stumbled across this gem
Anyways, after seeing that picture i said oh sweet a ferrari kit, those I always thought were cool, so I looked at the price, which was insanely doable, so i started to get excited, below are some more of the photos with the listing
I decided to pull the trigger on it without seeing the car in person, which, in retrospect was a bad idea after seeing the condition of the car when it arrived at home.
this photo sums up how rough the car really was
I bought the car thinking I could use it as a daily driver, those dreams were out the window as the car was gone over and we realized it barely ran, when it did it ran terrible, and it wouldn't shift into gear at all
Fast forward....4 years, 2012, we (we is my brother and I) decide it's about time to rip into this car to try to see if we can get it up and running, I had tried selling it to no avail due to the issues it had, so with this in mind we decided to pull the engine, which as a side note is a ridiculous task when you are using your driveway as a bay -_-
here is a video of it running and a few shots of it prior to us pulling the engine
So, we tore into the engine, ripped it out the passenger side wheel well, transmission and all, to begin the process of repairing it.
First things first, because it wasn't shifting properly we figured the transmission was bad, but it turns out the transmission was out of a Beretta, which being a FWD car, had a FWD shifter mechanisim on it, so we put a RWD one on and boom good to go. Then my brother ran the computer through some checks and decided the whole thing was junk, so more money later we put a new computer in it and it started to read out proper codes.
Without too much detail pretty much all the vacuum hoses were junk coolant issues a few other things here and there, here's a few shots of some of that work
Sooo, cleaned up the top of the engine make it look alot better repainted some of it, and then it sat again for a little while.
fast forward to this summer, I had purchased a year or 2 ago the front Fi512 bumper from Amida, and decided it was time to get some serious work done on the car to get it either drive worthy or sell worth which ever comes first....
so we went to work, we sanded and bondo'ed and primed and sanded some more and one problem lead to another, we were going to just touch up the areas that had issues, however, after much deliberation we decided to just do the whole car and get it over with, sooooo.....
here's a few shots of it hanging out at the house next to my brother's car
so here is my rugged self while home working on the car in the garage, my dad's working over the front end
after a week straight of body work and fixing the exhaust on the car it was time to get going on it. The exhaust it felt was a big issue for why the car didn't run right, and then we realized some idiot before us had adjusted the car's idle, so instead of running at a cool 1100 range it was set down to around 550, which caused it to pretty much never stay running, so problem solved it ran great after that.
here's my bro welding up some exhaust patches
and now onto the pre-final product, sanded ready for paint
and a sneaky shot while work is happening....
[This message has been edited by FakearriGT (edited 08-09-2014).]
And, a few coats later, this is what the car came out looking like....I will go ahead and admit that it didn't come out perfect, and as i type this the car is finishing wet sanding and is being resprayed a few more coats to make sure it's good to go, it's a learning process sometimes, but the pictures thankfully don't show any issues so you can appreciate it for how it will be when complete.
Overall very pleased with the car, however it's definitely been a money pit that i'd much rather get rid of, that said I love owning a fiero because I love the community, I rarely post up here but I love reading the threads here and the DIY that everyone does to make their cars that much nicer.
I'm sorry I don't have more photos, I had some but they've come and gone, one funny story before I go, the mail man stopped by to drop off a package and he expressed concern to my dad because the "red car" was gone, it had not moved in so long that it became almost a fixture in the yard haha, I'm hoping that will change with it being back up to snuff, enjoy.
I love TRs, but honestly I've always hated that kit,,,Until you put Amida's 512 nose on it. That is sooooo much better. Looks really good so far. Way to stick with it.
I love TRs, but honestly I've always hated that kit,,,Until you put Amida's 512 nose on it. That is sooooo much better. Looks really good so far. Way to stick with it.
Bob
+1 It's looking great!
I've never understood the super long overhung facias that kit makers seem to think will pass as more authentic just because it matches the overall length of the original car. That original nose... uck.
[This message has been edited by carbon (edited 08-13-2013).]
Alot of the body work we did the first time we cleaned up a bit this time around, and i did alot of finishing touches to it, as well as working on the engine a bit more, turned out we replaced the ECM with another bad ECM, so I found another that was still good, and it runs and drives fine now, finally.
some of the body work being done
the main problem area being fixed up again and again until it got right
some shots of it in the booth and then completed in the booth
didn't stop there though, i was rejuvenated from having the paint done by a professional, even if it was still in the garage, so I went about doing a bunch of finisher work to get it perfect
firstly i undercoated the wheel wells, which came out great, really gave it a professional finish feel
you know, i don't know why the photos are upside down, they are rightside up on photobucket and on my computer, i hate you technology So then i went about painting the doors, giving it them some depth
And so here's the finished product as she sits. it's been a long road the last 6 years. I decided after having it that long and bringing it back from the dead that I'm going to sell it, let someone enjoy it, since it will only sit in my garage collecting dust and breaking down from lack of use otherwise, bitter sweet but i think it's the best call to make
Brought it to a local weekly car show and drew a crowd the whole time, and have had drivers stop on the road to ask me if it was real or not, so i'm very happy with the final product, and to as of right now call it mine.
thanks for looking hopefully not too many pictures.
