quote Originally posted by Darren's 87 coupe: Man I have to tell you that the wiring will drive you nuts. I'm glad I'm getting close to the end. I have about all of the computer done, and most of the C203. Not much of the C500, but that's only a few wires, so I'm getting close. There are differances between years of caddy's, but mine is a 91 from a deville, and the Fiero is an 87 5 speed base model 4 cyl. I'm also swaping the 5 speed to the automatic 4T60E that came with the caddy. Depending on what year 4.9 you have I should have a lot of answers as you come to the hard parts. There's not many, but a few things get confusing. just let me know how I can help out. After the wiring gets done this weekend, I just have fuel lines, water lines, and trans cooler lines till I can try to turn it over. Won't get it on the road for a while, maybe even spring, but I'm just ready to hear it turn over. Talk at you later, Darren

Nice. I will keep you in mind when I get started wiring. My engine is out of a 93 deville but I am wiring as a 91 seville/eldorado. Car is an 85GT 4 speed so it wont be much for wiring there. At least as the tranny change goes. Not sure how to do the reverse light wiring yet. Open to suggestions here. I have all the wiring diagrams I need and have been studying them when I have some free time. Thanks for the offer Darren, I may have to take you up on that.

A little update while I'm at it.

The starter showed up and looks to be the correct one. One bonus is it came with a lifetime warrenty. They will cover any manufacture defect as long as I own the car. Pretty cool for 55 dollars delivered. I won't know for sure if its the correct one til I get it to the car to check unless someone can confirm for me now.





( I just really cant take pictures. Its either the lighting or me shaking the camera. )

Also, on order is a new set of front ball joints (upper adjustable and lower) from Rodney. Should be here by wednesday according to him. And a set of front poly bushings and new exhaust tips from summit . UPS says monday for the poly and next monday for the tips . Here are the tips I finally decided on. They have a 2" in and dual 2.5 out with dual resonators in each one. 15" overall length should work out great. I measured 14 7/8 from the tip to the inside radius of the first bend on the 85SE so they should be near perfect. I always liked the look of the slant cut tips of the non GT cars better. They were just too small to look right to me. I'm hoping this gives me the look I'm going for. Should be nice and quiet too with the 4 resonators and a muffler. It'll should sound really good without being loud.

http://store.summitracing.c...508+115&autoview=sku
I'll be using a stock muffler that has been modified to use a larger cat to muffler pipe (2.5"). So the exhaust will go like this...

Caddy manifolds with dual 2" pipes to cat. Cat to muffler 2.5". And dual 2" from muffler to tips. The single 2" pipe that crosses over the tranny will be wrapped and shielded to keep the heat down. There will be 5 speed shift cables, a coolant hose and inline filler, oil cooler hoses and the filter housing and filter to deal with to its got to stay cool. The entire catback system is run in the stock fiero way and can be replaced down the road with something from WCF or similar companies. I'm hope to find someone else to get one from but can't think of anyone else that sells them right now. Who makes custom size catback systems for a fiero besides WCF?

And last but definately not least I got the 88-95 corvette 12" front rotors (x4), front hubs (fiero hubs with rotors machined off, new bearing races and studs installed x2), and a 4t60 shift cable bracket (for Dad for christmas to help with his 4 speed auto swap) from Rockcrawl. He has to order the rotors so I don't know how long it will take but they are paid for and in the works. He also has an option for slotting an cross drilling but I opted for the plain ol big brakes. Still need to order up a set of brake lines and pads to go with the rest of the set, but I have some time for that still.

Plan is to go back down next week. I get thanksgiving off and have taken friday off also for a 4 day weekend. I should be able to spend at least 2 days on the car. There is a ton to do. I will be pulling the front crossmember out to replace all of the lines (clutch, coolant tubes, adding auto tranny cooler lines). While the crossmember is out I will also replace the ball joints and install the poly. Should be much easier while it is on the bench then it was for the 84SE on the car. A little side note here. I will be returning the 84SE to stock rubber sometime in the near future and will probably sell of the control arms with the poly in them if anyone is interested.

Oh, and the m16x1.5 taps showed up so I can officially make a my custom shift nob, and, attach it to the car. I am going to test out a couple of ideas and see what you guys think. If you like them I can make more pretty easily. Later.

[This message has been edited by Fieroseverywhere (edited 11-18-2007).]

Ok update time again. I think this is getting repetitive.

First off I thought this was a good pic. Twin black 88GT's (one auto one manual) and a Gold 86SE V6 auto.


And here are those pics of the top of the strut towers that I promised so long ago. It just took forever to get decent pics of them.



Ok now for the actual update.

First off I removed the front crossmember as the begining of the work. In order to do what I had planed there was not other way. I had never done it before and although it wasn't too bad I hope I never have to do it again. I started by puting the car on jackstands and removing the wheels. Next I removed the front spare tub and unbolting all of the brake lines and coolant tubes from the crossmember. I then unbolted the shocks, seperated the brake hoses from the hard lines, and removed the rear lower control arm bolt. Next up I unbolted the braces that go from the crossmember to the lower radiator support. All that was left now was the 10 bolts that actually hold in the crossmember. There are 3 on each side above the upper control arm and 4 under the car just behind the front lower control arm bolt. I positioned a jack under the center of the crossmember so that I could easily lower the crossmember after the bolts were removed. I then realized that I forgot to remove the bolt that connects the steering arm to the steering rack. OOPS. If you ever have to do this make sure you remove this bolt before unbolting the crossmember. What a PITA. After that it dropped right out with no problems.




We took the crossmember next door to the real shop so I could get to work on it. Dad worked on pressing out the ball joints and replacing them with new ones from Rodney. Next up we pulled the old rubber bushings our the the control arms so they could be replaced with poly. You can tell from looking at the lower control arms that the previous owner had not raised the bump stops. I'm sure they hated the ride. I know I would have.
Before


While we had everything in the shop we raised the bumpstops. I figured you guys might get a kick out of how we did this...



Gas power chop saw! Gotta love power tools.
Bumpstops cut and about 1 inch of metal removed, now we weld them back together followed by zinc primer (sound familiar?) and paint.





We finished up the poly install and I took the spindles to the glass beader. One thing to note is anytime you glass bead something you must remove the moisture before you paint it. We do this with a propane torche. After paint I was pretty impressed with how they turned out. Almost like new.



That was about it for friday. We took the parts back accross the street to they could be put back into the car.

Saturday morning I got started on reassembling the crossmember. It went back together very well. Its so much easier to do this stuff while the crossmember is out of the car. Just not worth the time to remove it.




With the crossmember ready to go back into the car I started working on replacing the clutch line and adding the auto radiator to tranny cooler lines which I am using as an oil cooler. I removed the clutch line and found that someone had cut about 6 inches off of it and reattached the fitting. Guess thats why it looked so funny in there. I replaced the line with the one I pulled out of the parts car. With that out of the way I took a look under the car to see if I would run into problems installing the auto trans cooler lines. With a little grinding and bending of the little mounting brackets I was able to get them to fit right next to the clutch line. I was even able to re-use the original bolts that hold it all in place. Sorry about the pics, the lighting in this part of the shop is almost non existant.




With that done I also replaced the bent coolant tubes with better ones from the parts car. The pics didn't turn out at all for those though. Then It was time to bolt the crossmember back in. It went in much easier then it came out but again I forgot to attach the bolt from the steering column. Doh! Finally got it back together by taking the steering column loose from the inside of the car. Good thing the interior is not back together yet. Dispite the self inflicted frustration I think everything came out well.





Looks like shite now but soon the new 12" rotors will show up to replace these ugly things.


That was it for this trip. I will be doing a couple things to this car this weekend on top of installing the new tires on my daily driver. Since I had about 4 choices for a 215/60-14 I went with these. Yokohama AVID T4
http://www.tirerack.com/tir...Compare1=yes&place=1

Car is coming together. I'l should be driving her in a couple months.


More to come as time allows.

[This message has been edited by Fieroseverywhere (edited 11-28-2007).]

quote Originally posted by Darren's 87 coupe: Looking good. Glad to see a ton of pics. That's always fun. I have had to put a stop to my progress again to save for the baby coming in Feb and to get more work done on the house, so I won't be updating my build very often. And I was getting so close. Oh well. I reall want to see yours up close when you get done, so I was wondering if you are going to go to the 25th anniversary show up in MI? I already have my reservations made, and will definatly have the car done by then. Probably not much sooner though. Keep up the updates. Let me know how those KYB shocks work. Thats what I have on my front and KYB struts on the back, but have never had them on the road to feel them. Can't wait to get mine finished. Take care, Darren

Hey Darren, good to hear from you again. I took way more pics then I was able to post but most of them did not turn out so in the trash they went. I think I took about 65 but only kept 35.

I was thinking about going to the 25th but just don't think I will be able to pull it off. Its almost 3000 miles from where I am and I just wouldn't feel right about flying in and going fieroless. I'm still trying to work something out but its not looking hopeful. Luckily for me a week later there is a show up in Washington (FieroFest Northwest) that will also be doing some kind of 25th celebration. Should be no reason I can't get to that one at the very least. I understand about other things coming up. I couldn't do anything for a little over a month and am just now getting back to work on it. Should be able to get a few things done this weekend but I only have a few hours since I have to come back to town to go to some Christmas party my work is putting on saturday. The main reason for the trip down is to get new tires installed on my daily driver so I can stop sliding around on my bald rear tires. lol After thats done I should have a few hours to maybe get the starter mounted and replace the broken decklid torsion bar. This car had a ton of problems that I couldn't see at first glance. Repairing everything has really slowed the progress but its making steady progress again and should be on the road in a couple of months.... hopefully.

I'm really curious about the KYB's also. Same situation here, I have not got a chance to feel them yet other then the time I was sitting on the floor boards (no seats) while someone else was pushing the car. I guess that doesn't really count though. I'm just not really liking the mis-matched set that is on the car now and will probably change them out eventually to the Koni along with new springs and possible swaybars. Problem is they just don't make a Gas-A-Just for the rear so I am stuck with the GR2's. Even if they made a GR2 for the front I would be happy, but no, they have to odd about it. We'll find out for sure how they work out when I get her on the road.

Congrats again on the new addition to the family. Talk to you later Darren.

[This message has been edited by Fieroseverywhere (edited 07-08-2010).]