A little more "input" concerning this operation from one of the guys who helped instigate it:
My son (some of you may remember when he used to post here as "Reality") got this 86GT from a co-part lot. It had been wrecked in the rear and obviously totaled by the insurance co..
When he finally got it home, had to beat/straighten out the trunk, put a rear bumper on it (thanks JimmyS ....see that fiberglass rear bumper DID finally get used!

) and a few other little things before it could be driven. Thought he was going to have to buy a set of taillights, but when we finally got the decklid open, there were the lights stuffed in the trunk!
The car had over 225,000 miles on the odometer, but the body, (other than collision damage), looked like it had been taken care of and in fairly decent shape. While looking through the car, a stack of oil filter box tops with mileage written on them was found in the drivers door map pocket, suggesting that the engine had received regular oil changes during it's entire life. Ran good, didn't make any strange noises, so he drove it.
I wasn't with him every minute after we got it on the road, so I really can't say how it was treated, but it was either already on it's way out, or had an oil leak and was let go too long, or it was downright raunched on once too often! Truth is I don't know what happened to cause it to spin the bearing, but that's what it did. After the bearing was toast, the big end of the rod obviously tried to weld itself to the crank and something had to give sooner or later. The picture above clearly shows what it was!

So then the car sat, and sat and sat. He eventually bought another Fiero with a 3.4 installed, but not much else in good condition, with the intention of pulling the 3.4 and moving it over to the GT. So then they BOTH sat, and sat and sat.
After contacting Jim about selling him a couple other cars since he was looking to stockpile some parts, we threw around the idea of him doing the work on the GT. We came to an agreement, and he drove 4hours (one way!) pulling his 38' enclosed trailer to where the cars were and headed back to Painsville with them. He actually made three round trips in all. One to pick up the two cars he bought from me, one to pick up the two from Anthony, one of which was going to have a good engine installed, and one to return the GT after it was completed.
Jim knows his stuff when it comes to engines. He completely rebuilt the spare engine, removed the bad one, installed the fresh one, and delivered the car when finished, all for what it probably would have cost for us to rebuild an engine and pay labor to install it. Granted it took a little longer than any of us had originally anticipated or wanted it to, but it got done, and it wasn't a ridiculous amount of time, just longer than we thought it was going to take. We ALL know that deal about life getting in the way of what we want to do....right?

In the end, he performed "above and beyond the call of duty."
I'm just here to tell you that you can trust Jim. He knows what he is doing, says what he means and means what he says. He's still a Marine.....and a good one!
Anybody close to his location (Cleveland area) should have no quams what-so-ever about having Jim do work for them.
Not sure what all he intends to offer in the way of services, but whatever it ends up being, it will be top-notch, that you can be sure of.
That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!

Seriously, Jim's one of the "good guys".
HAGO!

[This message has been edited by Sage (edited 02-02-2015).]