Real Fiero Tech

Well, for those of you who've read my CTS-V thread, I picked this up along with another V to replace my wrecked V. Here are some pictures from when I first got it. 1997 Talon TSi AWD 5 speed.



Mods included: Greddy LICP, UICP, FMIC, BOV, 18" Enkei EVO 5s, VIS CF hood and it was lowered on stock shocks. 97,000 miles. $3600.

Looking forward to the build, but dude that white paint job suckssssss. I can see green misting thru where the fender rolls into the wheel well.

First on the agenda was removing the huge ass sub box that took up the whole rear-seat/hatch area. I think it was built to hold 2 15s and a 13. It had to weigh close to 200 pounds.

In the car:




I needed help to get it out:


My friend Lacey is only 5'2" but it's still a huge subbox. Out of the car:



After:


(The strut tower bar is just sitting there in this picture. Not attached.)


I went ahead and threw some clear sidemarkers I already had on it as well:

The shocks on this car were blown. I've never rode in a bouncier car in my life. It was kind of scary. So I went ahead and bought some Tokico Illuminas (I hope they're real) off of eBay as well as a camber kit. They arrived, I went out into the garage and realized I didn't have a key for the lug nuts. I ended up managing to get one that worked a few days later from a local wheel shop.

I get the car up on jackstands and due to rust, it takes me a couple days of afterwork garage time to finally get the damn shocks off. The rears are completely blown. So I have them off and am looking at the springs on there and decide I should get new ones. Ordered some (hopefully) real Eibach Prolines. Another few days...


All the while, I've been struggling with the damn rust issue trying to get the camber kits installed. I still haven't managed to get the old hardware off of three corners. The passenger side front is the only one thats ready to go.

So anyway, I get the shocks and springs and try to switch over the old hardware. Of course, the upper shock mount is rusted out and breaks. So I ordered new ones for all four corners and am currently waiting for them. Went ahead and ordered poly control arm, shock, and trans bushings too. As rusted as everything in there is, the actual strut towers still look good.

So far its been one thing after another. The car has been down for over a week now because of these issues. I'm not sure how I'm going to get the camber kits installed yet either since I can't manage to get the old stuff off.

CincinnatiFiero wrote:Looking forward to the build, but dude that white paint job suckssssss. I can see green misting thru where the fender rolls into the wheel well.

That is true. The paint job does suck :cussing: but it will do for now.

Since the intent for this car is to mainly be my 'track car', in between working on the shocks issues I started weight reduction.

So far I've removed the hatch area trim (went ahead and gave it a wire tuck too. I figure just because it's stripped doesn't mean it can't still look decent), sound deadening/padding, rear speakers (anybody want some kenwood 6x9s?), washer resevoir, rear wiper/motor, and started on the AC.

The plan is for now to keep it looking decent, so I'm going to cover a piece of foam in fabric as a 'wall' in between the passenger compartment and hatch area.

Along with the rest of the AC system, I plan to remove all EGR stuff, relocate a gelcell battery to the rear, and get rid of the cruise control (already ordered the non-cruise throttle cable).

Oh yeah, on my coffee table currently sits a socketed EPROM ECU with DSMLink. :thumbleft:

So what is the plan for the car? Track slut?

The body work and interior doesn't really matter if that is the purpose. I'd leave the back seat out and cage it. Would make for a pretty fun car.

Keep the pics comming, show us the rust. This can't be an original Ca car with that amount of corosion, can it?

Not having my own camera sucks...

I bought the car out of Georgia and had it shipped here. I can't remember if it spent its whole life there or not.

Yeah, the plan is to have it be mainly used for the track and depending on my next station I might have to drive it occasionaly to work. I want to try to still keep it looking decent but have already begun sacrificing comforts. I plan to cage it, swap in racing seats (when I pulled the stockers to remove the sound deader I definatly bumped that up on the priority list. Heavy!), the rear area is already gutted, but for now I want to keep the dash, center console and some carpeting. I also plan to tint the windows (already pulled the shitty old tint off) fairly dark as to hide the gutted/caged interior.

For now, I plan to just continue the free modding, get it running well, get DSMLink going, and try to pace myself on mods. I mean, the V craves mod money too. Plus once I'm able to I want to get back to work on the Fiero.

3 cars I want to mod (plus the growing urge to do something cool with the Corvair)... I need to win the lottery or something.

Keep the V as reliable daily transportation and don't mod it. It's quick enough already.

The DSM will be a fun auto x or road course car. I don't think they are that well suited for drag racing with their fairly weak driveline.

I also plan to gut my GTR and cage it. First I have to get it back on the road...

Yeah, I don't plan to go overboard on the V. Basically, I just want to put on the parts I already have (headers, hi-flow cats, catback, flywheel, short shifter, steel braided brake lines), maybe a mild cam, get a tune and upgrade all of the interior and exterior lighting to LEDs and HIDs (fogs, hi-beams).

What's good about having the Talon, is no matter what I HAVE to mod a car and this gives me a much cheaper platform to do it to so I can leave the V alone.

get a 5 gallon bucket of tc-11 ( www.tc-11.com ) it disolves rust, lubricates, and prevetns future rust better than any other lube. they use the stuff to protect equipment going over the ocean like seacontainers.

i've had to free up the worse rusted parts.

I'll definatly look into that stuff. Here are a few random pictures...




This is the one that I actually managed to get the camber kit installed on.

Finally picked up one of these as well. No more tools thrown everywhere. :thumbleft:

Unsafe At Any Speed wrote:I'll definatly look into that stuff. Here are a few random pictures...

Dam... sand blast and powder coat time! :thumbleft:

Somewhat of a work in progress, but I figured I may as well try to make my stripped hatch area look best as possible. I didn't get any before pictures, but just imagine the wiring all running along midway up the trunk wall.



[/QUOTE]

Looking good, I never realized those trunks were sooo deep.

Well, two weeks later my parts arrived.

I ordered new upper shock mounts or isolaters (whatever they're called) as well as a poly bushing master kit from Energy Suspension. The kit includes front end control arm bushings, rear end control arm bushings, front and rear shock bushings, and trans bushings.

Also, not pictured, I picked up a non-cruise throttle cable so I can remove all the cruise junk.

Apparently this:

is supposed to look like this:


Couple more pictures:

Managed to get the passenger side front ready to go last night. Hope to have the rest done by the end of the weekend so I can actually drive something next week. I HATE bumming rides, especially when I have two cars in my garage. One advantage is that premium was $4.19 /gallon here today and has gone up every single day this week.

Move out to Cushing, OK. I was there doing some pipeline inspections earlier this week, $3.35/gal for premium. You'd better bet the LS1's tank was full!

I'd like to run e85 in the Talon for the octane but I think the nearest station is LA (2 hours).

Well, the front is ready to go and I finally managed to get the upper rear control arms off. The shocks and springs are mounted. I just need to have these old bushings pressed out and the new ones put in. Then I can put the arms back on and the rear camber kit. I was going to buy a hydralic press at Harbor Frieght tonight but they didn't have the one I wanted in stock. One more day...hopefully...

I drove Alltrbo's Talon with a tank full of E85. It's a high 11 second car when tuned for E85 and it was pretty brutal.

Maybe we should have a thread with e85 conversion info.

As for my Talon... one thing after another! :cussing: I'm having the bushings put in today but no place in town has bolts to replace the ones I had to cut up. So they needed to be ordered and won't be here until Thursday at the earliest. This is getting old...