In early 2011, my team drove this '78 Mustang II in a 24 Hours of LeMons race in Reno, Nevada. We were being lapped by the leaders ever 3.5 laps with the exception of the 2:30 a.m. snow event when we were in the top half for speed.




I was hooked on racing (again) and decided to form a new team and build a new car. After a few minutes of research I found a website with the following quote.
"The Pontiac Fiero may be one of the most perfect 24 Hours Of LeMons racers that very little money can buy"

Cool! Let's get a Fiero. Never mind that I'm 6'2" 240 lbs and my partner's 6'4" and neither of us had ever even sat in a Fiero, we were convinced. What could go wrong? Of course that quote was the first sentence of the article, and we didn't read the rest. You can do so here if you want. http://jalopnik.com/5056010...the-gray-ladys-pages

Because I use a digital camera and do not have to process film, I took a ton of photos. So I'm planning to document our efforts in turning this into a Lemons racer.




In July of 2011 we were searching Craigslist for a suitable Fiero for our LeMons endeavors. At that time we were aware that the '88 was the most desirable from a suspension stand point, but didn't really know why. We actually found two over the hill in Sacramento, CA. The first was this '88 coupe with a broken 4-cylinder.




We purchased it while on the way to the car we were most interested in, an '88 Formula (whatever that meant) with a v-6. A younger guy named Lance had this yellow Formula from his Uncle, the original owner. It had 98K miles and had obviously be run hard. Just a tip, if you are going to sell a car, at least make sure the oil registers on the dipstick. Just saying, it makes a better impression. Anyway, two weeks later we made the trip back over the hill and bought the car at a price we were willing to pay. To our advantage, Lance was hot to buy a new bike and had incentive to sell.



We had under three months until our first race, October 22nd. at Infineon Raceway.

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-04-2017).]

Our first step was to scale the car. As it was unloaded off the trailer, with approximately a 1/2 tank of gas. That works out to 42% front weight, 58% rear



After cleaning out the trunk and removing the jack and spare, same split 42% front, 58% rear weight. The interior was intact and nothing really taken off the car.



I will jump ahead and say that our final, as raced weight was 2450, 57.4% rear and 42.6% front. With the heaviest driver in the car, (me) the total was 2688, 57.1% rear, 52.9% left side. That's fully built out with cage and everything.

[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-04-2017).]

Just a couple "Here's where we started" shots.
The car itself was pretty sound. It was definitely just a daily driver.



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Hey, it even had a rear swaybar. That will come up later.

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Wondering if some IMCA tires might fit
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[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-04-2017).]

So, where do you start when stripping a car down to make it a track car? Right, the interior. At this point we're not sure how to deal with the body, but seats are easy to rip out.
Neither Rich or Robert were available on the first weekend that we had to start the project, so I was the one to jump in and start on the interior.

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I gotta say, this was probably the last day that, when it was time to go home, it looked as though you had accomplished a lot. If it went this fast, surely we could build the whole car in just a couple strong weekends.... It's also the first time we started to get a real appreciation for how the car was constructed. In essence you have a space frame with a body attached.

Our car was exactly what people mean when they say they have a California car. Rust was virtually non-existent.

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[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-04-2017).]

It's at this point that we could see the reason for some of the updates people are recommending for these cars.

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We followed suggestions we had picked up here on the forum and ordered a rebuild kit for the shifter as well as bushings for the transmission levers from Rodney Dickman. At the same time we added pedal bushings for the brake and clutch pedals.

I don't think we ever even considered new door hinge pins. They were stripped much further than this and weight wasn't a concern.

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All the a/c and air controller stuff had to go. It wasn't until much later that we missed having a defrost, but that's much later in this story. Removing all of that structure meant that we had a much cleaner firewall...once we built a sheet metal plate to cover the hole.

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If you have never had to remove the dash from your Fiero, this is what you can expect to find. I have to say that I am always amazed at the amount of engineering that goes into designing a car. Just the packaging is fascinating. The engineer has to place dimples or tabs to attach parts and pieces that have nothing at all to do with the part being designed. The level of integration is awe inspiring.
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See that tube or cross piece that supports the steering column in the picture above and below? In addition to supporting the steering column and dash, it's actually part of the ventilation system!
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Air travels inside the boxed structure.
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Didn't matter too much, because we ultimately cut it out flush with the top of the central console. We made some effort to label wires in order to help in deciding which could be removed later. Rich is a certified electrician and that can be a real PITA when you want to just rip everything out indiscriminately. But it paid dividends later when we had to put stuff back in.

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[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-04-2017).]

Next job was to strip down the body in our efforts to "add lightness" Once the body was removed we could evaluate what needed to be changed or eliminated. A couple of the postings here on PFF were invaluable. A lot of the body stuff isn't readily apparent.

Robert gets after the front end
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And Rich tackled the rear bumper cover.
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If you have ever had to remove the roof structure, you know what a pain that is. And yes, there are studs bolted through the roof!
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Pulled the rear cradle. Thanks for the write-ups we found on the forum!
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[This message has been edited by DonP (edited 07-05-2017).]