Fought the frustration and did a little work this afternoon. One night this week as I had trouble sleeping, I lay there thinking about this project and suddenly started thinking about the wiring harness. I couldn’t remember exactly how the Quad harness is supposed to be mated to the Fiero; does the Fiero harness plug into the Quad ECM or does the Quad harness?

See, I’ve been at this so long, I’ve forgotten many of the lessons I learned very early in the process. So today I dug through my storage areas and pulled out three harnesses. The Fiero harness is closest to the camera, followed by the harness from my GTZ. In the back is a harness from one of my spare Quads.



After comparing harnesses, I realized I have to plug the GTZ harness into the GTZ ECM. As I inspected the harnesses, I noticed the part that plugs into the fuel injectors was missing from the GTZ one. That sent me back into my piles of parts where I found those wires and plugs still attached to the GTZ fuel rail. In the process I noticed two of the injector plugs are broken.

[This message has been edited by Quadfather (edited 03-21-2020).]

I also spent some time looking at the under-dash wiring harness and the salvage yard power window/mirror harness I added. Still trying to work up the courage to mate the added harness to the existing one, so today I just took my time and looked over where the connections will need to be at the fuse block.

Even though it’s an ‘87 base coupe, it was already wired for power locks, so all that’s required there is plugging the door wires into the factory sockets.



What’s confusing for me is the extra plugs on the salvage yard power window/mirror harness. There are three plugs on the salvage yard harness that are already plugged in on my car. Two of them are stuck high on the wall behind the cross member.



I mistakenly thought the power window/mirror harness would be a separate group of wires, but I now understand it’s part of the rest of the under-dash harness. That means I don’t need to worry about those plugs, right?



I can just leave these plugs unattached, because the factory plugs are already in use and serving the same purpose, right?

[This message has been edited by Quadfather (edited 03-21-2020).]

So.... progress has been very slow in recent weeks. I believe my driver's side sail panel is the anti-Christ. After stripping it and sanding it down to bare plastic, I did get paint to stick to it without bubbling up. I switched from Rust-oleum to Dupli-color gloss black, but the final coat has some overspray on it. I glued my homemade Pontiac emblem to it and installed it so that I could install the interior trim panel and the driver's side seat belt. Will probably end up masking off the side of the car and trying to get one more good coat of paint on it.

I posted previously that I planned to use a cupholder out of a LeSabre on the dashboard, but then saw someone post a pic of an aftermarket cupholder for a Corvette that fits to the right of the console. I loved the look and convenience of that, so I'll buy one eventually. That change in plans had me trying to figure out what to do with the glove compartment area of the dashboard, and I spent some time building a plastic tray and even covered it with black vinyl. The realization that it would take me a week or two to get it to look as good as I want changed my mind again. I found an OEM pocket on ebay and it arrived today.

In the meantime, I experimented with painting the dash and I like how it turned out.



I'd never heard of carpet paint until someone mentioned it on the Fiero FB group, so I ordered a can and gave it a shot. It looks great.

Top photo is the before, bottom is the after. I should have ordered two cans.

[This message has been edited by Quadfather (edited 05-10-2020).]

Still making slow progress in reinstalling the interior. I've been re-gluing and painting the console/shifter surround/radio cover. I'm adding GT gauges to my car and I got the matching radio cover when I took them out of a salvage yard car years ago.
That cover had four holes drilled in the side, so I bought a better one off Facebook a couple weeks ago. It was tan so it needed to be painted. Anyway, I underestimated how much time and effort it would take to fix and paint all the interior pieces.

I reinstalled the dash and I think it looks pretty good. At some point I may spring for the replacement cover the Fiero Store sells, but that will have to wait until the car is driveable. You can see the dash pocket I bought off ebay.



Next up will be hooking up all the connections and reinstalling the instrument cluster, skeleton and everything that goes with them.

[This message has been edited by Quadfather (edited 05-20-2020).]

Now that the dash is back in the car, I mounted the hood release lever. For the first time in years, the hood is closed and latched. I also reinstalled the wipers.



The next logical step is installing my rebuilt skeleton, but I hesitated because it will be in the way when I mate the Quad’s wiring harness to the car’s. Decided to go ahead and put it in to make sure everything fits and the power windows/mirror/locks harness is routed properly.

[This message has been edited by Quadfather (edited 05-25-2020).]

Spent a very frustrating couple of hours in the shop tonight. Last week was a crazy week at work, which ended with a very long day yesterday thanks to what was going on in downtown Tulsa. I ain’t no spring chicken anymore, so the long days wear me down.

I wanted to do something, anything, on the car tonight, so when I saw the license tag lights hanging down I figured I’d install the sockets.



I looked everywhere for the sockets, including all of my spare parts bins. After about an hour, I was about to give up when I got down on the floor and looked up and there they were, already installed.



I’m still pretty frustrated with the state of the clear coat. It looked great for a few weeks after I sprayed it, but since then it has deteriorated. The worst spot is behind the driver’s side sail panel. It’s almost like something spilled on it and is reacting with the clear coat.



Pretty much the whole car has orange peel now, but the worst is the wing. It was the last thing I sprayed and was in a hurry to finish.



As frustrating as the paint/clear coat is, it is still a good looking car. It’s also a dust magnet.



I saw two Fieros on the road last week.The first was a white bumper pad on my way to work on Monday. The second was Tuesday evening while driving through Owasso. Always great to see Fieros on the road.

[This message has been edited by Quadfather (edited 06-21-2020).]