PFF - Pennock's Fiero Forum, PDA Edition

12 year olds and cars - Kathryn's Fiero (Page 6/175)

michhiker28

APR 25, 09:01 PM

Ruffy,
thanks for the compliments. What is in the Duster. I have seen a few done up really nice. Not a common restoration either, which makes it even cooler in my opinion.

-MH

Philphine

APR 25, 10:55 PM

good luck with. with it being her idea i guess she'll be more enthusiastic about it. i tried that with an '84 i picked up. i got it running, then decided i didn't want another project. tried to give it to a couple of my nephews but neither would bite. i ended up giving it away.

fcsmls

APR 25, 11:50 PM

Great work on those seat rails -- you may want to invest in a can of PB Blaster for challenges like this. Its an essential part of a Fiero toolkit, and worth every penny it costs.

Those Mr Mike's seats will be a great addition -- just follow the video he sends with them. He gives good guidance on how to rebuild your foam if there is any damage.

Keep up the good work Kathryn -- you're going to have a great ride when its done.

[This message has been edited by fcsmls (edited 04-25-2011).]

TONY_C

APR 26, 02:06 PM

quote

Originally posted by michhiker28:

Has anyone ever had and success of removing the material and pocket that is on the dash? If so how have you done it? I know that sometimes individuals start taking off the material on the door panels with starting fluid. Same approach? Suggestions, Ideas, all are welcome. Here is the piece we are talking about.

The map pocket is removable, you have to remove the AC duct work and there are four nuts that hold the dash pocket in.

michhiker28

APR 26, 02:41 PM

Thank you Tony! Sounds great, sounds like the girl has some disassembly to work on tonight :-)

-MH

michhiker28

APR 26, 02:51 PM

So,
Here we go with another update of what was accomplished last night.

Of course we had the gauge cluster out since we are working on going to white face gauges....after all, if you are taking it halfway apart, you might as well continue.

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Getting the gauges themselves out of the housing was a bit tricky. Luckily we didn't force anything but spent a little time, made sure we had all the screws and bolts out and......still jammed, A little creative ingenuity, geeeeeentle pressure and a little help from dad and presto!

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Then the clear face plate needed to come off.....

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and then the clear plastic was ready to be polished to get rid of 25 years of scratches and gunk.
We'll be working on the white faces either tonight or tomorrow evening. Anything else that we should know or do while we are already this far into the cluster?

Once that was done we needed to move on to another project. So we moved back to the drivers side door. We got some free black carpet the other day so this was a good time to think about the lower door panels. Kathryn had previously dyed the tops to match her other yellow components. So now it was time to work on the bottoms.

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Thank you to whomever recommended starting fluid as the way to release the carpet from the lower section....this worked a treat! Spray and peel. We of course still need to work on getting off some of the old glue, but Kathryn was very impressed with how easily these sections came off.

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We of course saved the carpeting that came off to serve as a template for the new carpeting.

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for the final project before bed time, we got the first coat of new paint on the sail panels, so they should be dry tonight and ready for a second coat.

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--MH

michhiker28

APR 27, 09:27 AM

Another day and another update on Kathryn's car.

Last night I had a meeting so we got her started and this is what she managed to get accomplished, this time with a little help from Mom.
After getting the gauges out and disassembled Kathryn was eager to get them cleaned up, white faces installed, and the clear plastic cover polished, and all back together. Having put the white faces on the auxillary gauges earlier, she had a pretty good understanding on how to do this. So off she went. We utilized a simply white face vinyl kit and installed over the top of the existing gauges. It can be kind of tight to get them over the needles. This was especially true for the fuel and temp guages.....but eventually, she managed.

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If you look closely in the following picture you may see a few small wrinkles in the two gauge faces mentioned above, and somehow she has something stuck behind the speedo as well. However, the guages move free, and she did the work on her own. She learned a couple of things in the process and now thinks that there might be a better way to do this. While they might not be perfect, we are definitely accomplishing the goal of an education along the way. Like I told Kathryn, it isn't so much that you get it perfect as it is that you did you best. If you learned that there is a better way to do it as you go then that is even better.

Here she is installing the recently polished gauge lens.

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She cleaned the gauge housing last night, alcoholed and surface prepped it for vinyle dye to that will likely begin happening tonight. Until the housing is dyed and dried, there is nothing further that we can do with the gauge cluster, so on to other endeavors.

One of which was clearning all of the HVAC vents that go back in the dash. Kathryn was pretty disgusted with everything that had accumulated on them, in them, and behind them over the years. Amazingly, this wasn't actually that dirty of a car as you can see from her oritinal purchase photos, and yet grunge still accumulates in the most obscure and impossible to reach places. When it is the first time a car has been torn down completely it is amazing the stuff you will find.

As a complete aside, when pulling the dash apart we found that the car had been at an Ohio State/Michigan game very early in it's life. The parking stub ticket was fouind behind the venting inside the dash....now how in the heck did it get in there?!?! Her car is an 86 SE and was at the 86 game. So we know that the on November 22, 1986 it was in Columbus OH, We still need to find out where it was originally sold and registered. Perhaps it started in OH and has made its way to Michigan, or it was originally a Michigan car that had a fun road trip to the game with its new owners. Either way, the owner(s) were part of a record crowd of 90,674 that watched Michigan 26 beat Ohio St. 24. We'll keep the ticket stub for the scrap book. But I digress.

Here Kathryn is cleaning up the vents.

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And then on to the project that took the remainder of the evening for her. As you will remember when we last left it, Kathryn had stripped the door carpet from the driverside. So that mean that we were ready to build her template, and cut out her new replacement carpet. Unfortunately, I had to be out at a meeting so we didn't get any photos of the work in process, but we did get what she ended up with.

Since we had been very careful with the old carpet removal, Kathryn was able to carefully lay the old carpet out flat on a large piece of pattern paper. After tracing around the old carpet, (Kathryn's comment this morning was that it was a very sticky, icky mess) she was able to cut out a template of the carpet segment. That done it looked like this.

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She then pinned this pattern to some black carpet that we are using for the door panels and some other interior pieces and then carefullly cut out the carpet. That yeilded this.....

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So we are now ready to spray and staple........

She hwas been working pretty hard and learning a lot. I know it is kinda hard being the Dad, you always see things differently than someone from teh outside looking in. There have been some times where of course you get frustrated thinking, "I wish she woudl work on this or on that" "I wish she woudl finish that part" "I woudn't have done this that way" etc., etc., etc. However, I have to say, even being biasedI am pretty proud of how the kiddo is doing so far! If she keeps at it I think she will have a project that she can be pretty proud of. Aside from the updates here we are also working on keeping a scrap book of hte progress. We thought that if she decideds to take it to a show or anything when it is done, it might be impressive for individuals to see just what a 12-16 year old girl can do.

-MH

KaijuSenso

APR 27, 09:40 AM

I am definitely impressed but wonder how is this project going to last 4 years if she works so fast!

michhiker28

APR 27, 12:09 PM

quote

Originally posted by KaijuSenso:

I am definitely impressed but wonder how is this project going to last 4 years if she works so fast!

She has been working pretty quick....which is a good thing, because not only do we have interior, we have:
Engine
Trans
Aux systems (cooling, air, braking, etc.)
and then Body and Paint.......

She'll be busy! I'm more worried about getting it done by 6/10/14 than getting done to early.....besides, although I'm more of a corvette guy perhaps if we get done early Dad could rebuild one of these for another toy car.....hmmmmm...

-MH

michhiker28

APR 27, 09:46 PM

So tomorrow I will be in meeting all day and then a soccer all evening with the middle daughter, so I thought I should update on Kathryn's progress for the day. Feels like we actually got quite a bit done.

Due to some good advice from you all (Thank you, thank you, thank you). We quickly disassembled the rest of the dash, by taking out the vent work behind the dash and also removed the map pocket, which was in excellent shape. Still not sure what we might do with that and how we will treat it.....hmmm. A few ideas, but nothing concrete as of yet.

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That got us to the point of being ready to dye the dash in gloss black. This stuff works really well, very pleased with the SEM vinyl dye.

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While that was drying it was time to work on reassembly of some of the bezels, including the ashtray and manual shift boot, end vents for the dash, center vents, and the overhead light console.

And yes, I know that we are perpetuating a false rumor, but Kathryn liked the sticker so what can I say....lol!

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With the bezels and vents reassembled we had some time to go back and work on the carpeting for the door. We managed to test fit the carpet and get it to lay smooth after cleaning off all of the old glue.

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and now it is ready to be reglued.

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We also finished the inital coats of paint on the sail panel frames and they are now ready to be wet sanded. Tomorrow we should be ready to complete the reassembly of the main gauges, we need to reglue some of the center console vinyl that has begun to peel back and strip the other door carpet. Progress continues.

-MH