12 year olds and cars - Kathryn's Fiero (Page 7/175) michhiker28 APR 28, 08:37 AM We found a good deal on a fuel pump for the Fiero today, so a little more babysitting money will leave Kathryn's account, and another part that desperately needs replaced will be finding it's way to our house. The fun and madness continues. -MH Ruffy APR 28, 08:52 AM quote Originally posted by michhiker28: 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 Yes the cooool factor of the duster lol. it is a very nice car and not in bad shape. as for motor it had stock a 225 slant six (its second one because i was a moron). not sure what i want to put into it yet. DONT PICK ON ME but i was thinking of just doing a nice V6 in it or even the 5.7 hemi. remember this will be my daughters car not mine. so no indy hemi for this duster lol. but it will be mostly for looks. i will have to see what the future bring before any swap yet with the gas prices. shes only 7 now and 3 more years she will be out there doing body work. michhiker28 APR 28, 10:08 AM Ruffy, No complaints from me at all. A V6 would be fine....a 5.7 would be a lot for a young driver too, I wouldn't overpower it either. Is she excited to work on it? I'm not a huge body work fan, but I'm sure we will be doing more than a little on this project. So any gratuitous photos of your daughters car for us? -MH michhiker28 MAY 01, 09:50 PM Another weekend filled with all kinds of activities, but we did manage to get just a little bit done on Kathryn's car again, and since this will be a great way for her to remember the build, I thought I would update what we managed to accomplish this weekend. 1. We managed to get a bit more work done on the interior door skins! In fact, they are finished.....but let's not get to far ahead of ourselves. The first thing that we needed to determine was if both doors were mirror images of each other. Using the carpeting that we cut in a previous post we determined that indeed they were the same. This meant that it was time for Kathryn to get to work. So first things first.....we needed to strip the old carpeting. Out came the starting fluid and away she went. CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE Once the old carpet was off, it was time to make sure that we had a new piece cut to take it's place.... CLICK FOR FULL SIZE While waiting for the panels to dry out and be ready to glue, it was time to see if Mom was available to help with the sun visors.... CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE That pretty much took care of that day. By the morning it was time to begin work on test fitting the fixed dash, gauges, and bezels to see how they would look and fit. We had some cracks that needed repaired so needed to make sure that all was well there. These pieces will of course get wrapped up and put in the loft until it is time to completely reassemble the interior. First though it was off to sisters soccer game, and some other family activities. Once we got home it was late afternoon, but there was still time to glue the new carpet on the door panels in place. CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE TA DA! Then on the the dash......... Reattaching the defrost vent in the center went easily CLICK FOR FULL SIZE putting the bezel on the gauges CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE Seeing what it will all look like in place CLICK FOR FULL SIZE Once completed it was time for bed. Sunday meant church and visiting with family, but this also meant going to see Uncle Bob and pulling the C4 out of storage. This also means getting a chance to check in on the car in the barn and selecting some new pieces to begin work on at home...Kathryn elected to pull the doors off the car so that we could remove the outer shells, replace the lock solenoids, check on the power windows, clean up all the contacts and mechanicals in the door, and replace the dew wipes, so off the doors came with some help from Uncle Bob and into the truck for the ride howe. (More to follow on this in a later post). Once we got home there was still a bit of day light so onward with a couple of easy projects for the evening. Since Kathryn was pretty excited for her sail panels and they have been in various stages of paint throughout the week, we decided to see if we could finish those up. Rather than replace the pontiac arrowheads on the sail panel frames, we had talked about either just painting them yellow in accordance with her color scheme, or some other option. Kathryn decided to try to fill in the arrowhead with a yellow/orange reflector. We made a template and cut and sanded one to match to see how this would look. She was pretty satisfied with the result, and it didn't cost anything, which when you are working with a 12 year old's budget is important. Then it was time to test fit her new sail windows from FieroSails.com. These were a Christmas present for her this last year, and I must say they did a wonderful job for her! CLICK FOR FULL SIZE Once you know the test is good, it is time to apply them for real...only one shot here cause that tape is sticky! CLICK FOR FULL SIZE She was happy.....what do you all think? CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE With the time left in the evening, Kathryn decided to work on removing the Fiero logo from the existing map pocket and put onto yellow interior fabric, for recovering....since the inside of the map pocket will soon be yellow. Here she is working on that. CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE and in the meantime she conned Dad into working on sanding rims in preparation for finishing.... CLICK FOR FULL SIZE These need A LOT MORE WORK!!!!! Finally, it was time for bed, but Kathryn had forgotten to open the mail from yesterday......So before bed, she found..... CLICK FOR FULL SIZE CLICK FOR FULL SIZE A new fuel pump! Thank you UPS Guy, or as he is affectionally known at our house, the Brown Santa Truck Driver. More updates coming soon, and again, thanks to all of you for your kind words, support, and advice for Kathryn. She will be viewing the thread for the first time in early June.....we wanted to have something here for her to see first, and after that she will be updating and responding too. Thanks to all of you for helping to make her first car restoration so memorable. --MH BlackThunderGT MAY 01, 10:00 PM This has become one of my favorite build threads. datacop MAY 01, 10:02 PM I'm really impressed with those sail panels.. they came out great!! The yellow reflector arrow thingy was an awesome idea too Her interior is going to be absolutely amazing when it's done We've not even started on Ternunda's Benja MAY 01, 10:20 PM I was thinking about you two pulling the fuel tank, replacing the pump and then re-installing it. Then I thought....nah, it's going to get a great paintjob first! If every part gets this kind of attention (and we're sure it will) it will be worth every ounce of effort. The dash looks awesome! nitroheadz28 MAY 01, 10:27 PM This thread is one of the most inspiring I've ever read on a public forum.. Really, the work is top notch and for a 12 year old to be doing it is astonishing. Makes me want to tear my car apart when I finish finals in 2 weeks and restore it half as well as you guys have. By the way, what did you use to polish the gauge cluster cover? Thanks. michhiker28 MAY 02, 09:06 AM WOW! Thanks all for some wonderful replies. It is really cool to know that people are interested and supportive of what she is trying to accomplish. I am pretty proud of her dedication, and committment to the project as well as what she is learning along the way. Most importantly I am pretty proud of the young woman that she is becoming. I can barely wait to show her this thread in about a month with all of your thoughts and ideas as well as your support for her. Glad it is some of your favorite threads...... Yes, we will definately completely clean and flush the tank while it is out as well as respray it so that it looks good. Thank you all for the kind compliments on the interior, she has picked out how everything would look, at first I was a bit worried that it might come out looking a bit to peicemeal, but now that I can see how it is looking I'm pretty excited.....I have to tell you all that she is already talking about maybe buying a beater car so that this one doesn't get messed up once it is done....like only getting driven on nice days etc...lol! Nitro, we used one of those little headlight polishing kits by turtle wax. It does a good job, but you just need to be really patient. If you aren't careful you can end up with more scratches than you start with. We used some old CD cases to practice with until we got the hang of it. --MH thismanyfieros MAY 02, 01:37 PM wow only twelve.. thats a very impressive job well done so far..keep up the great work guys and gals!! tim