Both of my OE taillight lenses were cracked and broken. I bought a good replacement unit for the right one at the salvage years ago, but got just the lense for the left one. I've forgotten why I didn't get the whole unit for that side, but whatever the reason it meant I had to disassemble the stock one to replace the lense.



The plastic was brittle, but I got it apart without damaging anything. Of course, once I got it apart I found some of the reflective paint was worn off.



I checked the forum and saw that some folks repaint the reflectors, but others use foil tape because it resists heat.




A couple of notes if you go this route. One, the stuff is very sticky. It took me a few minutes to get the hang of using it. Second, there's no way to avoid wrinkles. At first I was disgusted by them, but then realized they don't matter. The idea is to reflect the light, and wrinkled tape will do that better than smooth plastic that's lost its shiny paint.

I pulled the butyl sealant out of the gap and replaced it with this 3M rope caulk. The stuff was less than $3 and was very easy to work with. I figured 35 feet would be plenty.



I used two strands of it, though thinking back on it now I realize I probably should have smushed the two together.

[This message has been edited by Quad Raider (edited 06-18-2018).]

More progress to report. I'm working on getting all the body panels back on the car. Over the weekend I focused on the front fascia. The reinstallation process in general is taking much longer than I expected, for various reasons. In the case of the front fascia, there were a couple of problems. Years ago I removed the radiator and condenser to straighten and paint the mounting bracket.



I reinstalled the bracket and radiator soon after the work was done, but for some reason I didn't immediately reinstall the condenser and it'd been sitting in the trunk all this time. This weekend I struggled to get it to fit, then realized one of the mounting brackets had been installed backwards. I think the car took a pretty good hit in the front end in its previous life and whoever did the work took some liberties putting it back together.

The other problem I rediscovered was that the flexible air duct material was ripped and the part that attaches to the fascia on the passenger side was missing.



I had some old rubber floor tiles lying around so I cut a piece to fit and used rivets to attach it to the plastic.



This is before I did the final trimming.


I have so much more work to do, but getting the front fascia completely reinstalled was a huge emotional lift. As my brother said, it's starting to look like a car again.



I also got the right quarter panel reinstalled.

Next up:
-left quarter
-finish reinstallation of the rear fascia
-re-do the outer dew wipes
-finish converting doors to power windows/locks
-reinstall door skins
-finish masking the car
-spray the car

[This message has been edited by Quad Raider (edited 06-06-2018).]

quote Originally posted by Quad Raider: I’m a little disappointed that this manual doesn’t have any information about the formula-type body parts. I know I’ve seen pages with that info posted on this forum. Were they from an ‘88 manual?

I'm somewhat confused by this. What type of body parts does the '87 Fiero manual show then... just the GT aero style? Aren't the "formula-type body parts" (from '88) basically just the same as the '87 coupe body parts?

[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 06-04-2018).]

quote Originally posted by Patrick: I'm somewhat confused by this. What type of body parts does the '87 Fiero manual show then... just the GT aero style? Aren't the "formula-type body parts" (from '88) basically just the same as the '87 coupe body parts?

It shows bumper pad and the aero style, not the formula/coupe style. Since posting that, I spent some time digging through the archive and remembered that I'd crossed this bridge before. The formula/coupe body style is covered in a separate manual, the P22, which is available here:

http://www.fieronews.net/fu...Fiero_Parts_Book.pdf

Edit: Yes, to be clear, the formulas and coupes are the same body style.

[This message has been edited by Quad Raider (edited 06-04-2018).]