Auto'Biography

[Emc209i]

Welcome to my journal page.

Here I will be keeping a terse record of my automotive history. I'll also tell you a little about myself and why I do what I do. I'm often asked about where to find my documentation. It's annoying linking people to a dozen threads, so by gathering everything together, I'm hoping I'll have one thread to link in the future. I'm going to start at the beginning, and work my way to the present.

Enjoy.

[Emc209i]

I suppose I'll begin with who I am. Hi, I'm Paul. I've been a car buff as long as I can remember. I always loved the idea of being able to own a nice car, clean it, modify it, and show it off in public. I admit I started out in the hobby as more of a "car show" person, but over the years, I've developed a strong taste for technology, engineering/dynamics, and speed. I learned to drive in a 1982 Toyota Corolla SR5 5 speed when I was 12. The first car I helped modify and take care of was a candy red 1997 Chrysler Sebring convertible my Pops bought when I was 14. I owned just about every racing simulator that was out at the time, and I my favorite element of Gran Turismo was filling the garage with highly modified, tastefully painted and 'shoed' cars.

So how on earth did I end up with a Pontiac Fiero? The first Fiero that I ever saw was driven into a parking lot by a good looking blonde. I remember the car was extremely rough around the edges, I believe it was red, but I can't remember anything about the cars shape, model, etc (the blonde had a nice rack). What I do remember, is that it sounded like an old carbed exotic, and smelled like oil and gasoline. Something about that made an impression on me - it seemed like the purest/archaic form of a sports car. Later on, I glanced through the window of a 2m4 in traffic and noticed the Lotus'esque orange needles and layout, without making the connection. So after getting my license, I began thinking about what car I should buy. I knew that I wouldn't be able to afford something nice, so my thoughts went to the little gas and oil smelling clunker the hot blonde had stepped out of. I talked to my Pop about it, and he gave me a list of potential cars it could have been. When I googled Fiero, I understood that the dashboard I had seen and the little clunker the blonde had stepped out of were the same car. The same day, we were picking the family minivan up from the shop when I noticed there was a red all option '86 2M6 4 speed out back. The shop owner let me sit in it. I fell head over heels. In retrospect, that car was the biggest POS, but I think that's what bit me, all of the potential it had. I started searching autotrader to make an impulse buy. This is what happened:

April 2004.

Purchased my first car! I found the car on autotrader.com, called to get the scoop, and then arranged a trip to get it. The entire family came along for the 470 mile trip to Louisville, KY. I was 16.

Here's the autotrader picture from 2004:


The Formula belonged to a young couple. The husband was a Dental Surgeon who was doing a fantastic job of fixing the car up. If I remember correctly they just didn't have enough room(they were in an apartment when I picked the car up), but there may have been a baby on the way, I can't really remember. Steve if you're reading this I bet you're shitting bricks.

My pops drove it most of the way home, being it needed a slave badly, and was almost impossible to shift. Best passenger ride of my life. One fond memory of stopping at a toll booth in Va. without a clutch. I drove the last 100 miles - what an adrenalin rush!

The car in the driveway the following day:




I started with the following:
Purple Macco paint, which was flaking. The car was originally yellow, so yellow spots began to appear.
17" Enkei RSF-II 7.5 (front) 18" Enkei RSF-II 7.5 (rear). All wrapped in Yokohama AVS ES100's.
Poly swaybar bushings.
A homemade side scoop.
Stock 2.8 bolted to an M282 5 speed.
Corbeau Forza II seats in black cloth.
Grant black leather GT wheel.
Black carpet.
Center console and door panels painted in sticky black appliance paint. Door panel carpets spray painted black.
Manual windows.
Rear defrost.
Manual mirrors.
No sunroof. :S

I washed it every weekend. Good times.

[Emc209i]

The very first thing to do was have the slave replaced. I drove the car to a shop that weekend, and picked it up the next week. On the drive home, the ignition module failed. I limped it home after it cooled for a bit on the side of the highway. I think it was at this point that I decided I was going to get my hands dirty on the car before sending it back to the shop. My pops and I rebuilt the dizzy and replaced the module and stator. Of course I needed high performance 8mm red wires as well! I built a set of Accel wires and ordered a WCF dogbone . Picked up some red rattle paint, a stiff wire brush, and some steal wool. I also tried painting the carpet black to match.



I drove the car to school and back for a few months and then decided to change the brake pads. Everything went smoothly save for one caliper bolt that rounded while I was trying to break it loose. I dropped the car off at another local shop to have the bolt extracted. All was not well when I came back the next morning. The cars clutch was completely FUBAR. I could only manage to get the car home before it stopped engaging entirely. The shop manager shrugged it off and tried to make it out to be a good thing, because now I had the option to install a "race" clutch. Anyone's guess is that the "test" drive was the bomb after they extracted the bolt. That was the last time I would leave the car with anyone ever again. I ordered 8 Fiero Store hex bolts to replace the torx head's and started my clutch replacement research.

I've lost the clutch album I had from then. It was a long, hard, taxing repair. I had a step by step guide for rebuilding the distributor, but my automotive repair knowledge previous to that pretty much only covered changing air filters. So imagine a 16 year old, with a basic set of craftsman tools, a floor jack, and several 2x4's attempting this. My tool collection grew fast, lots of shit broke, and I had to do it twice because I didn't tighten the pressure plate correctly the first time. The good folks at WCF were kind enough to answer many of my noob questions. And there was much rejoicing when the job was finished!

At this point I was fed up with the black sticky interior and macco paint.





Friend's father painted cars for a living. He had one of the Sherwin Williams paint sample books. I picked out BMW Montreal Blue - Variant II. Dude mixed too much red pearl into the paint, so the car looked somewhat purple in direct sunlight. It looked 100 times better than the macco though, so I didn't complain. I payed $550.00 for a fully prepped and finished basecoat clearcoat. I also replaced the windshield for another $120.00. Results were very pleasing.









I spent an entire evening stripping the thickly applied appliance paint. I replaced it with SEM black vinyl dye. I replaced the painted carpets with soft black shorthair. I bought and installed a power window setup around this time.







Corbeau's weren't as comfortable as I'd have liked, so I jumped on a pair of leather seats from Mike during one of his Christmas specials.





Bought and cracked a trans am stereo, and installed 6x9" infinity reference speakers for the dashboard, and blaupunkt 4x6" 2 ways for B pillers.



Spring of 2005.

Pictures take at the Graylyn Estate

[Emc209i]

2006

Younger brother purchases first car; a loaded white 1986 GT. The car belonged to my recent acquaintance Mike. Mike was the Fiero mechanic Flow Chevrolet in Winston Salem (now GM Direct) from 1984-1989. He had been sent to all of the Fiero schools and tech sessions Pontiac offered, and aside from being considered the regional authority was incredibly knowledgeable. I got to know Mike because he just finished building a 470awhp 2nd gen Mitsu Eclipse for my assistant manager. Mike's first car was a 1969 GTO, so when the new GTO was released in '04, he sold the Fiero to make room for the new model. We had to unplug the NOS bottle he had installed on the 2.8 before my parents would allow my brother to drive it. We were painting the mirrors and engine vents off the car here. The red base coupe I picked up for $100.00 without a title. My parents got unhappy about it sitting in the driveway pretty quickly, and so I pulled everything I wanted off of it and sold the car for scrap.



My steering wheel began to wobble, so I broke the column down to the 4 torx bolts for loc tight and reassembly.





I organized a get together at TangleWood park with several of my friends and family.







My brother and I with our cars. Such a long time ago.



An attempt to dye the seatbelts. Ermmm.... fail. Nylon doesn't hold dye.



Dyed a set of B-pillers with intact speaker grills I had pulled out of the '88 coupe.



Backpack hike in the mountains with some friends and snapped a shot of the Fiero's together.



Driver of the 350Z decided to park in my space while I was at the mall.

[Emc209i]

January of 2007.

I left for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2006, and the car did just fine motoring me around. In late December, my roommate and I were out exploring the south side of Charlotte in the Formula. The water pump failed, and the car overheated twice on the way back. The second overheat was enough to cause one of the lifters to permanently tick. Annoyed, and drawn to the idea of an engine swap, I decided to use this opportunity to sell my parents on upgrading the drivetrain while I was still in school. It worked. I quickly settled on the 3.4 DOHC. It just so happened Mike was now the family mechanic and said he didn't mind showing me how to install the DOHC. Mike towed the car home and work began the next month between my fall and spring semester. Mike taught me in one month more than I had ever known about the Fiero and the vin X engine. He also taught me how to fabricate, build wiring harnesses, and read technical diagrams.



























All bearings were replaced, including intermediate and cam idlers. Gaskets were all replaced, including both head gaskets. Heads were professionally rebuilt. A Spec Stage III clutch was used. New shift and select cables were ordered from http://www.push-pull.com/. A dogbone was built for the left side of the engine, and the right triangle brace was removed. The deck hing was cut 2 inches. A WBO2 was not used on this swap. A base tune from Ryan Gick was used from the get go. The car changed personalities entirely.

Pictures from campus.







This is a cell phone picture Jinx took at an HPA meeting one Friday night.

[Atilla the Fun]

A purple Formula. Perfect! I'm inclined co copy it, except for adding the white "FORMULA" stickers to the doors, and wider 5-star rims. Or better yet,'87-'92 Firebird "FORMULA 350" stickers.

[AkursedX]

I thought you had a 3800sc........

Anyways, great looking car and it's awesome seeing progress pics over the years. I wish I would have taken more photos of my GT and all of it's phases.

[Emc209i]

A purple Formula. Perfect! I'm inclined co copy it,

Anyways, great looking car and it's awesome seeing progress pics over the years. I wish I would have taken more photos of my GT and all of it's phases.

Thank you both.


March 2007
The DOHC overheated while driving around with the UNCC HPA crew. Coolant was somehow escaping from the system. I couldn't find the leak hard as I searched, so I drove the car an hour to my parents house, stopping to top off the engine every few exits. Mike put a pressure check on the system and found a pin hole in one of the hoses. I replaced the hose.

April 2007
Jinxmutt offered up a solution to my warped center console. He brought an extra console back from Connecticut. I picked up some clamps and glue from Home Depot, and Jinx had a Popsicle stick from the ice cream bar he had bought at the campus thrift store. We repaired the console he brought back.

A week later the SES light lit up, and the car started acting weird. I borrowed Jinx's autoXray and found the cam signal wasn't being detected. A few days more, and the car wouldn't crank, leaving the car stranded at the local grocery store. I figured something was wrong with the wiring. So I spent a day building a temporary harness in the parking lot. I got the car running and drove it back to Winston to see Mike and get his opinion. We found a section of the harness, which was slightly too long, had come away from the firewall strap and burnt on the header. We patched this section and removed the temporary wiring I had put in.

While I was with Mike, we talked about the engine mounting. The WCF dogbone had stress cracked, and was getting worse. I had used rubber mounts rather than poly with the DOHC, and we both agreed the stock rubber mounts were in need of replacement. In light of this, I ordered a set of poly transmission and engine mounts from WCF, and left the car in Winston for two weeks. Once the poly was in, the engine position shifted, and so a longer dogbone was needed. I ordered another from WCF, but knew it would be a while before it arrived. My pop assured me that he and Mike had chirped the tires with the poly mounts in, and the engine appeared to be fairly stable, and moved less than before, even without the dogbone. I decided to drive the car back to school and have the shipping address changed, so the dogbone would arrive in Charlotte where I could install it. When I got back to Charlotte, I picked up a set of replacement gaskets for the intake. You can hear what the engine sounded like with a vacuum leak here. Jinx was coming with me to replace the gaskets in one of the parking decks, when I stopped at my dorm to get some drinks in case we got thirsty while working. The battery was too weak to crank the engine when I got back to the car. So I decided to jump start the car with the clutch, rolling down a hill. In hindsight, this was a completely foolish thing to do, given I knew about the dogbone. I popped the clutch, and the engine tried to come through the decklid. In the process, the aluminum front cover, which the power stearing bypass pulley was bolted to, snapped away from the cover. Jinx and I pushed the car to a parking space.

My pops urged me to have the car towed home so that Mike could replace the cover. I was at a point in my life where I wanted to be self sustaining, so I convinced them both I would fix the cover on my own in the parking lot. I tried JB welding the aluminum cover back together, but didn't get very far before the weld turned to toothpaste consistency and left me in the parking lot again. So I caught rides to and from the yard, pulled another cover from a Grand Prix, and took the front cover off of the DOHC in the Fiero. I was doing all of this after class each day, and spent maybe a month getting the job finished. Fortunately, my Pops was supportive and made several trips to help and bring specialty tools. Getting the crank pulley bolt out was fun. I destroyed two sockets, and ended up using the starter to work against a 1/2" breaker bar and the ground.





I finished one weekend night around 3am. I decided to drive the car home to see my family and correctly set the cam timing. The new dogbone had come in long ago, and was installed. I got to the interstate. I was waiting at a light when the slave cylinder leaked down. The clutch bit hard and my foot was on the brake. The engine slammed against the closed decklid again, and the new front cover broke exactly as the first had. I was furious and felt as though my committed efforts were falling short. The next morning I called Mike. He came the next weekend with his flatbed. I had Mike deliver the car at the house. Mike said he had the time work on it with me, but to me this was my right of passage. I was determined to fix the problem on my own. I declined.

I bummed rides home during holidays and weekends to work on the car.



I ordered a third front cover, installed it, and built a heat shield for the rear header. I also replaced the rear transmission mount, which looked like an origami folding and was certainly the reason the engine had enough travel over the axle to slap the front cover against the decklid (twice).



Mike's had wanted to detail the engine and bay when we installed the engine, but I had been worried about our time frame, so I told him I'd tackle it later on. I decided I might as well do the job right this time while I was insistent to fly solo.



I shortened the wiring loom so that it would be taught, rather than be fastened out of the way and in risk of coming undone again. I also covered the critical portions with heat deflection tape.

When I replaced the front cover in the parking lot, I apparently didn't get the front cover gasket to seal correctly. My short trip to the highway and back was enough to mix a great deal of coolant with synthetic oil. I had never dealt with this before, and was led to believe that I should flush the system and use clean oil to rid myself of systemic problems. If I had known what I do now, that 2% trace amount of water in oil is enough to cause catastrophic bearing failure, I would have torn the block down completely and gone over every nook and passage. Instead, I flushed the oil twice, and added more clean Mobile 1. This is why things got ugly for me later.



Cleaned the bay up a lot. Removed all insulation, and painting the rear of the car.



You'll notice the rear glass is missing, I shattered it by just nicking it with a grinder while adding clearance to the right hinge. Jinx helped me pull another rear glass out of a car in the yard in Charlotte. It wasn't a fun task, but I'm grateful he was there to help.


I did ask Mike to weld a second front side mount to the cradle to relieve the load on the transmission mount. Series8217 was kind enough to help me draw out an force diagram to aid in my understanding of how the drivetrain rotated about the axle in transverse drive systems.





I purchased another parts car from member Pocket, an 87 GT, it can be seen in the background below.



I decided to try something different, and use the panels from the GT on my formula. At this point in time, I think everyone thought I had lost it entirely. I wanted to try everything...





I was really excited about painting the car Tour De France Blue, but school was eating through my income. I had to make due with what I had from this point onward.

I drove the car like this for about a month. If anything, I was proud to be driving my car around school again. I had tackled the problems, on my own.



July 2008

DOHC spins rod bearing. Several lifters have also developed an obnoxious tick. I also found that the front mount and the dogbone had stress fractured again.

[Atilla the Fun]

You're making me so glad I gave up on the 60 degree V6s.

[Emc209i]

That is not my intent. If there wasn't a frothy milkshake in the oil pan, I'm fairly confident I would have had all of the bugs worked out of the engine. I was going to need to revise the mount footprint to keep the DOHC from moving though. I decided it just wasn't worth the effort.

[Emc209i]

August 2008

While the DOHC did have a great personality, and sounded great, I was sick and tired of working on it. The entire time I had had the DOHC in the car, I had been friends Jinxmutt and had the opportunity to compare his engine with mine day by day. The 3800 had outshined the DOHC in every department from day one. It was small, easy to work on, powerful, reliable, fuel efficient, and cheap. I had two choices; change the mount footprint and buy another DOHC, or change paths.













I also had to do something about the calico car. I didn't have a lot of disposable income, so I was looking for a cheap solution to make my baby all one color again. My Pop had always dreamed about being able to paint from home, and we'd already bought a compressor and gun, but I just didn't have the cash for paint. Painting the car flat black was floating around in my head, but I didn't want to use aerosol cans. I did a lot of chatting with the local paint merchants, and was encouraged to use a gallon of single stage Nason black chassy paint. This costs me all of $40.00 and would be a durable simi gloss finish.











I fell in love with the color black because of this.

February 2009
Turbo6 meeting in Charlotte, NC.

Hnthomps from OE was the only other Fiero there. Here's two dutch angles I snapped.




And of course, Turbo6 meets are generally comprised of Turbo Buicks and GMC's.





My pitiful looking car hiding in the corner. That's Nelson walking over to have a look at it. He really did try to be nice about it, saying "I just needed to tweek a few things to make it look nice". I knew how bad it looked though.



April 2009
Meet at Shane's Rib Shack in Greensboro, NC. A good set of quarter panels would have been so nice to have.





Installing 5.25" component speakers and an Infinity amplifier.



Jinx is helping me with the install here.

[Jinxmutt]

Damn, what a late night on that speaker install! Throwback thread brings up old fiero memories, good and bad, lol.... POP!! What was that? Idk? Me either? Dude, belts on the ground. Uhh, lets push this thing up the hill to the squires turn around!

Opps..

[Emc209i]

Many... many.. memories.

July 2009
I organized a local get together at Vixen Cycle in Charlotte, NC. Everyone brought some food, and I grilled Hotdogs and Hamburgers. There was corn, cakes and pies, baked beans, potato salads, such good food... and great stories all around.

[Emc209i]

September 2009

Small get together at my parents house in Winston.

[Emc209i]

Late February 2010

Taylor sends number 3 and 4 rod through each side of the block.







I've been contemplating building a turbo setup. I sell him my L67 setup.

Taylor building himself a mount to adapt the '88 engine mount to an '87 cradle.

[Emc209i]

March 2010

Friend Wayne brings me his 1988 GT. He wants the poorly installed aftermarket security system removed. I rebuilt his harness at the C500 and removed all the wire splices and wire nuts. There was a solenoid actuated rod mounted on the decklid that would engage if the alarm was triggered. As if there were ever anything in the trunk of a Fiero worth stealing..







I never took pictures of the finished harness.. I should have.

Wayne came back the next week to have me replace the intake gaskets. He wanted to learn about working on the engine, so I had him work along side me.

[Emc209i]

March 2010

Friend Josh brings his Formula by because of a high idle. I show him his EGR tube is in two pieces. He picks up some gaskets and buys Taylor's old tube. Replacing the tube below.





I sell Josh an extra engraved intake I have on the shelf, and help him detail a bit.

[Emc209i]

February 2010

Korey Isley put together a Fiero and Turbo6 cookout in Trinity. I decided to see how many of the locals I could round up to caravan the 40 miles to his place. Wayne, Josh, my brother, Taylor and I all left on time, although Josh had an issue with something. When merging onto I40, we merge next to Gregg and Sharon also on their way to Trinity. So, five cars caravaned to Greensboro to pick up a friend of Wayne's. We ended up getting split up twice. Gregg and Sharon's car stalled out and disappeared at one point. After finding them, we were all together again and on our way to the meet, albeit an hour late, when Wayne's car stalled on the shoulder. The car wouldn't crank and the tach wouldn't move. Gregg had an extra ignition coil in his car and started replacing it before I had gotten to the car. The ignition module didn't fix the problem. Everyone had given up and wanted to leave the car and get to the cookout so they could eat. Wayne didn't want to leave the car. So I asked him how deep he would allow me to go to fix the problem. He said as deep as I needed to go. I knew that if the known good replacement module hadn't fixed the tach needle, the AC signal wasn't being sent by the reluctor. Context: remember that the first thing that I did to my car back in 2004 was rebuilding the distributor, so I was very comfortable with the situation. I grabbed a screwdriver, popped off the cap, marked the body and noted the orientation of the cap. I spun the distributor hold down tab off by hand, and in the time frame of 1 minute, pulled the entire distributor out of the car. I'll never forgot the look of horror on the faces around me. Long story short, we shuttled up the road to the local parts store, tested the module to be sure it was working and picked up a new stator. I borrowed a hammer and pocketed a nail that was on the store workbench - for punching out the distributor shaft pin. It took me about an hour to rebuild the distributor in the parking lot. The car fired on the first start. This might sound like nothing more than an ego stroke, but I wanted to make this point, because this was a very defining event for me. My understanding was valuable and made the six years of hard work worth the toil. I had surmounted the learning curve, and scored an 'A' on the exam. Wayne's friend exclaimed, "That boy can work on my car any day he wants!". Made me proud.

Wayne took this picture as I was aligning the distributor body before putting the cap back on and cranking the engine.



It was dark when we finally arrived at Korey's. All of the Turbo6's had taken off.



Notice the bad camera date, Wayne was taking these pictures. So after eating, I saw Wayne outside taking pictures with the others, my smartass jumped into the picture as Wayne was taking it. Was worth a few lulz.


March 2010

It returns! Wayne's having transmission problems. He asks me to look into it.

Symptoms: Car is traveling at 55mph. There is a loud "POP". The car comes to a stop and shifting is impossible.











Explains the pop. But I still am unable to cycle through the gears, manually actuating the shifter linkages. Speedometer gear is missing. Few extra billing hours are tacked on.





That looks better! Now about that pesky gear....



There are a million red chunks of plastic at the idler bearings, rapped around the teeth, stuck between the shift forks and the gear assemblies. Above is an AFTER photo. Hunting all of "red gear" down was interesting.



Going back together.



I also suggested a few goodies to pick up while I had everything torn down.

Rodney Dickman idler pulley.


Rodney Dickman aluminum slave.


New shift and select cables from California Push and Pull


The car's shifting felt great afterwards, no more belt squeeks, and an absolute blast to drive.

[Emc209i]

March 2010

Fatality. Black Ice.

[Emc209i]

April 3rd

Treasure discovered.