A history of Skitimes car (Page 13/72)
skitime FEB 11, 07:52 PM
OK let me continue with my story. Another modification I did was adding lighting to the engine. I know this is not a performance item but Vonnie and I enjoy going to a lot of cruise-ins all summer. (It does create a shadow free engine trouble light) Many cars have lights to show off their car and I wanted to bring more attention to mine. We find these lights are like a candle to a moth in attracting people over to the car. I had learned about cold cathode tubes from another yet unfinished Fiero modification. (Keeping it under my hat for now). I decided to use this lighting system for the engine. The tubes use low 12-volt power draw and were designed for lighting laptops screens and image scanners. I did not want the lights to be intrusive or very visible when not being used. I experimented with placing lights in a lot of different locations. One of the problems was the light could be visible while driving at night and being seen through the rear view window. I finally decided to recess the lights into the trunk lid itself. I had to make all the pieces for the light fixture including the rear reflectors and lens. It was perfect and the lighting effect is awesome. The only way I can describe it was looking at a engine in an aquarium. This effect is nearly impossible to photograph. The flash will kill the effect but no flash fools the camera. So just believe me it is much better than the pictures can show.

[This message has been edited by skitime (edited 02-11-2003).]

skitime FEB 11, 07:53 PM
Yet another modification is adding a Sunbird Turbo tachometer to my car. Since I now have an engine that creates boost, I wanted to be able to watch the amount of boost I have. I really do not like to see a lot of extra gauges that do not appear stock so this mod is a natural. The other thing I liked about it was it closely matched my actual redline for my engine which is 6350rpm. This mod involves modifying the tach electronically from a 4-cylinder tach to a 6-cylinder tach. TooManyFieros did that modification with me helping a little. You also have to modify the instrument cluster housing to get it to fit in the housing.

Ok I think that does cover all the modifications I had prior to the 2002 show season. We were anxiously waiting our second season to show our cars and reacquaint ourselves with all the new friends we got to know.

Let me post this while I work on the next section. Thanks for the comments. I really appreciate them. It still is a amazing ratios of viewer versus posters. Hmmmm

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Red 88 GT T-Top 3800 Supercharged
White 88 GT Stock
Please give me a rating if you appreciate my contribution.

FieroMGDriver FEB 11, 08:42 PM
Its obvious that you devote a huge amount of time to the small details on your car, and everything looks perfect, but what about on the guage where it says "Turbo"? Isn't that bothering you, or are you planning on changing that? I can just imagine you have someone working on a new overlay for that guage!
hallsman FEB 11, 08:48 PM
Well, technically, a supercharger is actually just a belt driven turbocharger. So it's all good.

I'm liking the car, Skitime. It's nice to see how much work actually went into making it into a special car.

skitime FEB 11, 08:54 PM
 
quote
Originally posted by FieroMGDriver:

Its obvious that you devote a huge amount of time to the small details on your car, and everything looks perfect, but what about on the guage where it says "Turbo"? Isn't that bothering you, or are you planning on changing that? I can just imagine you have someone working on a new overlay for that guage!

Yes that bugged the hell out of me. I tried a lot of things to black it out. I could cover it but it messed up the night lighting so I left it alone in the end.

KissMySSFiero FEB 11, 09:11 PM
what shows will you attend this year? Will you be at Fierorama or Auburn?
skitime FEB 11, 09:31 PM
What a difference a year made to Vonnie and I. At the beginning of the first season (2001), we did not know any Fiero people except my online Pennocks acquaintances. I learned so much from them. We were amazed during that first season, how many really great folks we got to know through the Fiero shows. Somehow I was also getting to be known on the forum. We decided to take a short vacation in our motor home to Nova Scotia. Prior to the trip, I announce in a Pennocks thread that “Skitime was traveling through New England and Nova Scotia” and received several very nice invitations. One invite was to stay with Jelly2M8 and his girlfriend Blackie2M8 in Nova Scotia. We spent several days with them and had a great time visiting and even driving their Fieros in Nova Scotia.

Here is a shot of Jelly’s place of business. He runs a Fiero repair shop and sometimes works on common cars too for a living. Few people know as much about Fieros as Jelly.

They let us drive one of their three Fiero to a local car show. They even won several trophies with them. It was cool to be driving in a Fiero convoy in Canada. Here are their three Fieros.

We invited them to come and visit us. They decided to visit us during the next Carlisle Fiero show. Another person I knew through the forum was AusFiero. He mentioned in the Fiero Chat room that he was planning to come to the US and be at the Carlisle Fiero show. I invited him to come and stay with us for the 2002 Carlisle show. So Vonnie and I were very busy trying to get two cars ready for the Carlisle show and were now expecting 3 houseguests. We were very excited with this news.

The days leading up to the show were hectic detailing the cars and getting them ready. Our Canadian guests arrived early and we had a great day preparing our two GTs and Blackie2M8’s Notchback. Here is Blackie’s sweet Fiero.

As I mentioned earlier in this tread, I have a good painter but seems to always put me in a risky position of not getting done in time. My first year at Carlisle I received the last body piece two days prior to the show. The second season leading up to Carlisle the painter repeated the situation of only getting done when pressured. My whole engine swap and new body mods were planned to be done in plenty of time for Carlisle. The engine was done and I was again waiting for the body panels. I received the body parts days prior to the show again. The day before the show I decided my new body panels were not aligned right so Jelly and I started removing them all including my rocker panels. With his help we were able to improve the fit. While we were finishing up, AusFiero arrived via another Pennocks friend of mine, Kemp, who drove him from DC to PA and had to turn around and drive home after dropping Aus off.

[This message has been edited by skitime (edited 02-12-2003).]

skitime FEB 11, 09:32 PM
Friday morning we loaded up our motorhome and loaded the GT on the trailer. (No it is not a trailer queen, we needed a place to stay while being at Carlisle. Here is left to right Aus, Jelly and myself ready to depart.

Our guests, Vonnie and I arrived a Carlisle on Friday and immediately went about preparing for the show the next day. Saturday morning was a cold cloudy day and was threatening rain at any moment. We proceeded to start prepping our cars despite frozen hands. I tend not to clean a car well enough so thankfully Vonnie assisted me getting the car detailed Saturday morning as well as her own 88 GT.

I was now in new territory since the previous year I had shown in Custom GT classes and now I was going to be in the Modified GT class because of the engine swap. I was really worried. Remember the previous year I was unable to place at the Carlisle show. I also had some awesome cars in my class, which had won the class in previous years. These were cars that I was in awe over. I had even used pictures of these cars to study to see the how high a standard I had to attain. Well as the morning wore on I was very pleased by all the attention my car was getting.

skitime FEB 11, 09:33 PM
I could hardly walk away because of all the questions I was being bombarded with. A path was actually getting worn into the grass around my car. Now if you know me there is nothing I like better than to talk about my car so I was having a great time. Before I knew it was approaching the awards ceremony. Vonnie had to pull me away and drag me over to the tent where awards are given.

As awards were given out we were thrilled when Vonnie’s 88 GT won first place in the large “Stock 88 GT” class. Then Blackie2M6 and Jelly2M8 won first place for the “High Mileage Notchback” class as well as the “Long Distance” award I believe. With knots in my stomach they finally got to my class. Third place was announced, then second place and the suspense was killing me. Finally first placed was announce and I was floored to receive the first place trophy. If those that were there looked close, they would have easily seen tears in my eyes. I just could not believe it was actually true. After the class awards were given out they had additional trophies for different categories. I was then given the “Best Engine Conversion” trophy and then a trophy that was probably dearest for me, the “Best Engineered” Trophy. Wow, what a day! Good friends and great cars.

Btw everybody got a picture of Vonnies car on their trophies. An extra bonus.

The next day the Gilberts had a graduation/Fiero party at their house for Jennifer (Fierochic88). We had a great time and took some great pictures of some awesome cars. We had many of the Carlisle show winners there. Here is a pic of some of the winners cars that were there. They were all first place winners.

Well it is getting late so I must stop. Thanks everyone for you nice comments. I will continue as time allows.

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Red 88 GT T-Top 3800 Supercharged
White 88 GT Stock
Please give me a rating if you appreciate my contribution.

[This message has been edited by skitime (edited 02-11-2003).]

DanFiero FEB 11, 11:03 PM
All I can say Ski is that I'm in awe!!!!! Being a newbie myself and am currently planning(dreaming more like it) many mods to make I can only hope to even come close the the job you've done.

Congrats and I look forward to someday meeting you and seeing the car in person!!

Dan

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