A History of the Blue Demon (Page 11/17)
Fierochic88 AUG 07, 04:22 PM
Fieros at Carlisle 2016 would be the Blue Demon's re-entry into the Fiero world. It was a special show for me because I went with my Dad. Unfortunately, having unloaded it at his house to do some last-minute cleaning, I misdirected Matt in reloading it on the trailer and did a bit of damage to the nose. It was frustrating but I was overjoyed to have it back out again and to be enjoying it. Little did I know, it would also be my last trip to Carlisle with my dad in the same car. He would go again in 2017, but he drove out separately and left earlier than we did. It was a great day and we had a lot of fun together.



The Demon returned to Carlisle in 2018 after a one-year hiatus in which the Indy made its debut. It was then put on the fastrack to the 35th where weeks of intense cleaning and tune-ups also included a repaint of the front fascia, and rear bumper. The paint has aged well over the past nearly two decades but some little items needed to be addressed and Earl Sessions was once again instrumental in making it happen. They even sent her home with a present!

This images is larger than 153600 bytes. Click to view.
Fierochic88 AUG 07, 04:27 PM
The cleaning and minor upgrades were truly a family project:









[This message has been edited by Fierochic88 (edited 08-07-2021).]

Fierochic88 AUG 07, 05:48 PM
The prep for the 35th Anniversary also brought a new tool into our lives - an Eastwood powdercoating gun! While there was a slight learning curve, Matt's agile nature quickly mastered it and gave my suspension a needed update before we headed out to East Peoria!





[This message has been edited by Fierochic88 (edited 08-07-2021).]

Fierochic88 AUG 07, 07:18 PM
The 35th was a blast. We arrived on site on Wednesday to help with the preliminaries and got the car situated inside the ballroom on Thursday which allowed us to largely focus on helping with the show itself. Thankfully we were able to do this as other than some wiping (and painting a bolt or two), I was barely able to spend any time with the Demon. It ended up capturing first in its class - Heavy Custom, but more meaningfully being named one of John Callies Top 5 Favorite Fieros at the show. For those who don't know John, he was the lead on the Indy Pace Car project. His boss, Ben Schiewe was also a big fan of the Blue Demon and joked that he surrendered the pick of the car to John since he was older lol.
Fierochic88 AUG 07, 07:22 PM
So this post, and these pictures bring us to 2019-20. I loved my car - it had gone above and beyond the expectations I set for it as a college kid back in 2002. It was a car that my dad, Matt and I were proud of and it had really achieved a lot. We never did end up mounting the turbo BUT the 3.4 was peppy and consistent. With nearly 200 ft. pounds of torque it was peppy off the line, and loads of fun to drive (as long as you didn't have to worry about the front end scraping!).











Sooooo now what? Time for that 5.3L Matt had mentioned a decade ago?
Fierochic88 AUG 08, 11:49 AM
Matt has always been pretty forward thinking when it comes to modifications and more than 10 years ago, he started hinting at putting a 5.3L engine in the Blue Demon. At the time, I was thinking 3800SC or an Archie kit and he put forth the suggestion of the 5.3. Of course, life took over with us moving to Virginia and then having Ashleigh so the idea was put on the backburner. Then in 2019, we met Gary and Jestin Pickardt at Carlisle. Matt and I spent quite a bit of time looking over the LS4 conversion that Gary and his sons had put in his son Bryce's 88GT (aka Gary's car since Bryce was in school in California and Gary was driving it). The afternoon following the show, Jestin took me for a ride and I was definitely impressed! Ideas began to swirl but there were no immediate plans to get started as Matt had hoped to finish his SD4 Indy before embarking on any other major projects.

Then in January 2020, my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As he neared the end of his life, Carlisle 2020 was cautiously moving forward. Gary had agreed to donate 2 sets of engine mounts - one for an automatic and one for a manual swap. As being that far from Reading and with Dad coming home from the hospital that day, we decided not to chance attending although Kristina Kahn graciously gave me a tour via Messenger. I also made an appearance in image alone thanks to Carlisle's show manager, Ken Appell.





Knowing that a 5.3L swap was in the future and the quality of Pickardt Performance mounts was outstanding, Matt arranged with Gary to be a "phone bidder" during the live auction. No one on site knew it was Matt but he ended up being the winning bid on the manual mounts and Project Blue Demon 2.0 officially had it's first part towards the swap. I showed my hand on Facebook but apparently no one paid attention ;-)

[This message has been edited by Fierochic88 (edited 08-08-2021).]

Fierochic88 AUG 08, 04:12 PM
Although the mounts were purchases, there were still many decisions to be made, including timing. Dad passed less than a month later on July 21 - but he knew what the future held and thought it was pretty exciting. I promised hi the 3.4L would live on, just in another car, when the time came. A week and a half after he passed, Gary & Jenn Pickardt came up to PA to retrieve what at that time was the last Fiero at the Funny Farm, a gold 87SE that had potential for restoration but was more than we wanted to tackle at that time.

As we sat around the kitchen table at my parents, getting to know Gary and Jenn, the topic of the swap process came up. Matt and Gary already knew they thought largely along the same lines and with my 40th birthday approaching and my hoped-for trip to Prague off-the-table for the foreseeable future, an idea began to take shape. Later that night, we locked in with some texts and a few weeks later we had our first official planning call.

With Gary's schedule, and ours, the Fall brought forth the beginning of the parts acquisition process while Gary worked through some pending projects. We also tackled his daughter, Payten's car and jointly orchestrated the "Colin Build Project" which Gary christened the First Annual Jim Gilbert Memorial Build. (You can read more about it at bit.ly/ccsfiero



By winter, things were beginning to lock in and we rang in the New Year together with a project in sight!
Fierochic88 AUG 09, 07:53 PM
By January 1, we had a time table, a color scheme and some basic ideas figured out. Matt and I would tackle the entire preparation on the car's compartment, as well as the brake and suspension upgrades. We knew we'd need more whoa with the go! Gary and Jestin would prep the engine and cradle but in the meantime, we would do a test fit to ensure that the compartment was ready to go before we tackled paint. The time to order parts for the engine was approaching but first, I got a really cool Christmas present - unfortunately, it showed up on the joint account we share so I knew it was coming ;-)



This is the set from Fieroguru that can be found on his page at this link.

We went with the 300 lb spring rate and 12" kit.

The kicker was, with the project moving forward in secret I couldn't post about it online!!
GPickardt AUG 09, 10:25 PM

quote
Originally posted by Fierochic88:

Although the mounts were purchases, there were still many decisions to be made, including timing. Dad passed less than a month later on July 21 - but he knew what the future held and thought it was pretty exciting. I promised hi the 3.4L would live on, just in another car, when the time came. A week and a half after he passed, Gary & Jenn Pickardt came up to PA to retrieve what at that time was the last Fiero at the Funny Farm, a gold 87SE that had potential for restoration but was more than we wanted to tackle at that time.

As we sat around the kitchen table at my parents, getting to know Gary and Jenn, the topic of the swap process came up. Matt and Gary already knew they thought largely along the same lines and with my 40th birthday approaching and my hoped-for trip to Prague off-the-table for the foreseeable future, an idea began to take shape. Later that night, we locked in with some texts and a few weeks later we had our first official planning call.

With Gary's schedule, and ours, the Fall brought forth the beginning of the parts acquisition process while Gary worked through some pending projects. We also tackled his daughter, Payten's car and jointly orchestrated the "Colin Build Project" which Gary christened the First Annual Jim Gilbert Memorial Build. (You can read more about it at bit.ly/ccsfiero



By winter, things were beginning to lock in and we rang in the New Year together with a project in sight!



Wish I would have gotten the chance to meet your dad, it would have been great to talk "shop" with him. Good thing we have Matt to keep us up to geek speed though!

Not every car is as nice as yours, but this is a great example of how it brings people together to share their passion in building these cars together. I look forward to many more opportunities to share your dads memories with the community.

[This message has been edited by GPickardt (edited 08-09-2021).]

Trinten AUG 09, 11:49 PM
Really awesome to see you documenting the history of your car and family adventures this way.

Also pretty awesome how much all of you managed to get done yourself - and done so well!

Thanks for taking the time to type all this up and dig up accompanying pictures, spanning decades!! Not many people could do that.