A little more progress on the dash swap. I decided to remote-mount the Chrysler cluster PC board on the passenger side above the glove box. I had a couple of extra clusters laying around so I cut down a plastic housing and mounted it to the dash.



The modified Toyota cluster mounted.



I needed to make four patch cords to connect the gauge actuators to the remote PC board which meant creating my own wire connectors. I purchased a copper clad PC board and etching chemical from my local Radio Shack. I then used a hole saw with the centering bit removed to make the discs for my connectors.



With a black Sharpie marker, I drew on the circuit paths and soaked the disc in the etching solution to remove the unwanted copper.



I removed the pins from an extra set of actuators I had and soldered them to the discs, added the wiring, and this is the result.



The pin ends will plug into the PC board. The ends for the gauges are similar. I removed the pin clips from an extra PC board I had.



Laid out for and drilled the holes.



Etched the part.



Installed and soldered the clips in place. The solder job isn't the neatest, I'm having issues with my iron not heating evenly.





After everything is tested and working properly, I will encase the ends in epoxy resin to prevent any chance of a short circuit.

More to come.........

[This message has been edited by seajai (edited 10-02-2023).]

Finished fabricating my connectors and patch cords today. I also had to remove the trip odometer reset switch from the cluster PC board and wire it for a remote location install.



I plugged the cluster into the car wiring and set up my gauges to test the operation and zero out the pointers.



Much to my relief, everything worked, even my remote trip reset button

So this is how it will look wired and mounted:

[This message has been edited by seajai (edited 10-02-2023).]

Got a little more work done on the dash swap this weekend. I had already fit the dash in the car but needed to cut off the old cluster mount to make room for the new cluster.



Then I had to make all the brackets to get it bolted in. The upper brackets are made from bent and welded sheet metal. They attach to the old dash mounting points.





To make the lower brackets, I used 5/16" steel rod and 1/8" plate that I drilled and tapped to accept the factory hardware.

Middle:


Left:


A pic of the left side installed:


The right side is similar to the others.

Here is a couple pics of the dash all bolted in and a few pieces installed:





I went to the LKQ pick and pull today and picked up a steering column from a 2003 Grand Am. I need to adapt the Fiero headlight switch to work with the column mounted Grand Am one. The wiper and turn signal switch wiring will have to be redone as well. Stay tuned.......

[This message has been edited by seajai (edited 10-02-2023).]

Got the steering column installed:





I had to make a couple adapter brackets, the front one is a piece of 3/16" steel with a 90deg bend. For the rear I used the saddle portion of an exhaust pipe clamp welded to the tube with a plate that bolts the original mounting studs.

Front:



Rear:



For the lower steering shaft, I removed the old end and U-joint, bored out the cap holes to 5'8" and installed the Grand Am U-joint and end.



Next up: wiring in the new combination switch

[This message has been edited by seajai (edited 10-02-2023).]

Well it was a productive weekend, I got the Grand Am combo switch and the Toyota hazard switches all wired in and tested. The easiest one to do was the turn signals, it's pretty much just hooking up the same color wires from the Fiero to the Grand Am. The hazard switch was hooked into the turn signal wires through a couple diodes to prevent any power back feeding issues.

The headlights were a little more work. The problem to overcome was the Grand Am didn't have headlight doors and the switch wasn't set up for them. To solve this, I tied the high and low beam wires together through a pair of diodes and used that voltage to feed the "doors open" yellow wire to the headlight module. The white "doors close" wire needed a voltage signal when the headlights are turned off, I accomplished this through the use of a relay. I tapped power from the orange park lights feed wire and ran it to the "30" contact on the relay. The white wire is hooked to the "87a" N/C contact which gives me power on the white wire to run the doors down. The control side of the relay is hooked the headlight power wire. When the headlights are switched on, the relay powers up, opening the 87a contact and killing power on the white wire. When the headlights are shut off, the relay powers down restoring power on the white wire and closing the doors.

The Grand Am was equipped with automatic headlights, this gave me the opportunity to use the Grand Prix automatic headlamp module I picked up a couple years ago. It has separate outputs for headlights and park lights. The headlight output goes to a terminal on the headlight switch, the other taps into the parklight circuit. I need to mount the sensor in the top of the dash yet.
So I'm pretty sure I own the only Fiero with automatic headlights.

Here is a pic of the auto headlamp module and headlight door relay mounted in place:



I added a bypass switch to disable the automatic headlights in case I need to sneak away some night without being spotted. The switch has an LED that lights up when the system is bypass mode. I also needed to add a dash light dimmer wheel as well since the headlight switch is now on the steering column. I found a remote dimmer wheel from a 97 Olds Alero that I liked, it works off a remote dimmer transistor just the Fiero one. I mounted it in a blank panel in the dash trim. Here is a pic of the dimmer wheel and bypass switch:



Now the wiper switch was a tough one. The wiper system on the Grand Am uses an extra wire on the switch for the delay mode, a different resistor value, and different outputs for low and high speed. To make it work on the Fiero, I needed to hook the low speed and the delay wires together, but this caused the resistance to drop to zero in low speed when it should have been 1k OHM. After taking the switch apart and figuring out what contacts connected to what, I was able to modify it to work. First off I needed to swap out the 24k OHM resistor with a 1k OHM one to match the Fiero switch. Secondly I needed to isolate an area of contact by cutting through the plastic and copper and then relocate an end of the 1k resistor to that area. This should have given me the correct resistance in "low", but when I checked it was reading through the delay resistors instead. I figured out I needed to insulate an area of the copper to prevent the sliding contact from touching and giving me the wrong readings. I used JB weld to accomplish this. I reassembled the switch and retested the readings, they were now the same as the original Fiero wiper switch. I hooked everything up and tested the wipers, much to my relief everything works perfectly.

Here is a pic showing the switch modifications. It's a little tough to see everything but ya get the gist of things.



I grabbed a Chrysler trunk release button and mounted it to a lower panel trim cover.



I still need to extend the harness to the remote cluster and hook up the turn signals and illumination to the Toyota cluster but the electrical portion of the adventure is getting close to being finished.

[This message has been edited by seajai (edited 10-02-2023).]