PAGE 2!

This year has been a year designated towards getting all the stuff I need to do the engine swap. I plan on tackling it next year. We will see what happens and what fate has to say about it...

I went to Comicon and commissioned some cool stuff from artists that I adore, for example Andy Price, he is the lead guy that illustrates one of my favorite comic book series.


I commissioned the guy that illustrates the official comic book series to do a sketch of my car, Discord, with Discord. How cool is that!? I would have had it done in full color instead of a quick sketch, but he was swamped with work and so this was what he drew up for me in literally about an hour! I couldn't be happier! By the way, in case you were wondering, I named my car Discord after a character in, from all things, My Little Pony. He is a Draconequus. The lore in the show is that Discord is a being mixed of various animal parts, horse head, lion's paw, dragon's tail, etc. Since I planned on doing an engine swap of an engine from another car (that is not from a Fiero); Cadillac engine in a Pontiac... the name fits nicely!

I also had another work commissioned by Jennifer Hernandez Jennifer is one of the people that are the illustrators for the Sonic The Hedgehog comic book series.
This drawing is going to be a full colored commission with Sonic and Tails next to a Fiero. I'll post that one up when it's finished.

Stay tuned for more updates as they come along!

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"Discord"
Red 1988 GT under restoration!

Let's Go Mets!

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[This message has been edited by Shho13 (edited 10-20-2018).]

My fellow Fiero enthusiasts; I come bearing news!

I completely re-did the suspension!

What I did:

• Polyurethane bushings... Everywhere! Also installed zerk fittings into the poly bushing sleeves through to the center sleeves for EZ-PZ anti-squeek re-greasing in the future
  
• Removed surface rust on all suspension components and painted with POR15.
  
• Installed Rodney's 1 inch lowering ball joints
  
• Completely overhauled steering rack; replaced input shaft bearings, brass sleeve, inner and outer tie rods, and re-packed the unit with Mobil 1 synthetic grease
  
• Wire wheeled frame rails from the fenderwells to remove surface rust
  
• Removed as much of the old undercoating as I could (saved my car from rusting out... So happy!)
  
• POR15 everywhere I could reach
  
• "Stage 4" 3M undercoating
  
• REAL cold air intake install (one of the previous owners installed some wierd setup that always had me... ummm... weirded out... ever since I've bought it

Well, it's time for a massive picture dump! Enjoy!

Before, complete with the classic extremely high 88 front end:













Continued...

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"Discord"
Red 1988 GT under restoration!

Let's Go Mets!

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[This message has been edited by Shho13 (edited 05-06-2018).]

Continued, part two!

During:







(I forgot to take the picture of it after I tack welded the ball joints in, don't worry, it was done)




POR15 time!









Continued...

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"Discord"
Red 1988 GT under restoration!

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[This message has been edited by Shho13 (edited 04-03-2019).]

Continued, part three!

Undercoating!









Everything look all shiny and new now! The only things I didn't replace was the springs, they were in good shape. (I forgot to clean the rear springs up, they still look cruddy and covered in the old undercoating. Oops!)








Final result of the lowering ball joints. I may cut a coil off on the rear in the future... It's higher than I would like...



The car drives SO MUCH BETTER it's almost silly. I love the sporty ride that the poly provides!

I got the wheel alignment done at Firestone. They have a package for lifetime alignments for $150! Great deal, and if I ever decide to change the suspension around again, I can drop it off there and it will be free. I plan on having this car forever, so this was a deal I couldn't pass up!


Oh, might as well show you guys the true cold air intake now.



Next is LED lighting upgrades. Nothing else major planned this year.

------------------
"Discord"
Red 1988 GT under restoration!

Let's Go Mets!

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[This message has been edited by Shho13 (edited 05-06-2018).]

[This message has been edited by Shho13 (edited 05-06-2018).]

💡💡💡 Lighting upgrades ahead, as promised earlier! 💡💡💡

I was reading through the forum a few weeks ago and found a thread by Rsvl-Rider talking up the lights he used to upgrade to LED headlights here. I followed his lead with them, since they claim to be DOT complient and very affordable compaired to other options out there... I'm really happy with the results; here is some pics of the units, as well as the other LEDS installed all around to match after they were installed. The new headlights light up the entire area really well; I'm especially impressed with how wide the beam is compared to conventional headlights! Note: I did need to re-aim my lights so you get the light is in the right spot, as well as not to blind oncoming traffic.

Headlight assemblies look like this. They seem solid and built really well. The lens is made of plastic.


Marker lights.





These are in the PONTIAC tail light lights.


Switchbacks in the front! I was sure to order the same color temperature as the new headlights to match.


Reverse lights and licence plate lights (the licence plate LEDs were a tight fit in the plastic housings), again matched to the same temperature as the headlights; they look good with the LED taillight kit and sequential blinker kit I installed a few years ago now.


Interior lighting was installed, as well all around. I HEAVILY MODIFIED the assembly and surrounded the area where the bulbs mount with some... wait for it... tin foil (the high technology lightweight anti stick kind!) so that all the light output from the LEDs would reflect and point downwards. THIS WAS ALMOST AS HARD AS OVERHAULING THE SUSPENSION!!! 🤣



End result of how the headlights look and light output on the road. Very nice!



EDIT 2020: Over the years, some of the bulbs have been replaced. I have since changed some of the bulbs, new products installed are as follows:

Products I used:
Headlights: Genssi 7x6 Projector headlights 6000K: https://genssi.com/7-6-5-7-...headlight-black-set/
"PONTIAC" tail lights: Brishine T10 300 Lumen LED Bulbs Brilliant Red
Licence plate and floor interior lights: Philips 194WLED Ultinon LED
Reverse lights: Syneticusa 1156 1200 Lumen 6000K LED
Switchback blinker bulbs (front): Syneticusa 1157 Dual Color Switchback 5630 6000K White/Amber LED Turn Signal Light Bulbs
Dome and map lights: Philips 912WLED Ultinon LED
Amber marker lights: Generic T10 Yellow silicone shell Wedge COB LED
Red marker lights: Generic T10 Red silicone shell Wedge COB LED


------------------
"Discord"
Red 1988 GT under restoration!

Let's Go Mets!

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[This message has been edited by Shho13 (edited 11-29-2020).]

After a summer of crazy overtime and general having no time to do anything else but work, I managed to sneak in a few other things this summer on the weekends, all while still enjoying the car whenever I could. Ugh. So busy!

• Replaced crushed coolant pipes. When I was doing the suspension, I noticed that every single corner was crushed. I'm guessing that it didn't overheat because I had a low temp coolant fan switch and thermostat in there
  
• After replacing the pipes, car was running slightly rich because the car wasn't getting up to temp; the gauge was barely moving past even the first line on the gauge! I ordered a 195 degree thermostat and a 200/210 coolant fan switch from Rodney. Temp is perfect now, running solid at just a bit higher than a 1/4 when warmed up, and the car is running amazing
  
• Fuel filter was replaced with an ACDelco GF652
  
• Installed new, larger door latch striker thingies on both doors with the recommended Dorman 38421; modified as outlined in the thread to cut the "plastic sleeve" off. The doors rattle a lot less now than they did before over bumps!
  
• Clutch pedal was starting to feel spongy; like air was getting in the system. I replaced both the clutch master and slave cylinders with super groovy new ones from Rodney.
  
• Rebuilt the driver side headlight motor
  
• Installed Fiero Store door ABS door panels with Focal Integration ISS 165 speakers. The imaging and all around quality of the music sounds so much better now without those outdated and terribly designed 4x10s! Only things I wish I did was buy the interior paint so that I could paint the door panels to match the rest of the interior better... The ABS plastic is SUPER SHINEY and they don't match the rest of the interior too well right out of the box. I'll end up buying some paint and spraying them eventually because I also need to *buy* and install speaker covers... I've installed quite a few stereos throughout my life and I have *never* even heard or thought a set of speakers would not come with speaker covers!

Oh, I also forgot to post this... Awhile ago I mentioned I got a commission from Comicon of my car with Sonic and Tales from Jennifer Hernandez, who is one of the artists for Sonic's comic book series. Well... I got the piece... and it's amazing!!! Check it out!



It came out so well! I grew up playing Sonic games... This means so much to me! I doubt you'll ever see my build thread for my car, but if you do, thanks again for doing this Jennifer!


------------------
"Discord"
Red 1988 GT under restoration!

Let's Go Mets!

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[This message has been edited by Shho13 (edited 10-20-2018).]