Auto'Biography

[Emc209i]

I'm already making more power and torque than that engine does, with only 8 valves and boost.

[Emc209i]

Local:
Installed an F23 behind a SBC powered Fiero. I will append.
The F23 Tutorial

My car:
Installed a 5 speed with the Opel bellhousing. Installed an '88 cradle with rollbar. Installed coil-overs; QA1 #300 springs, KYB Excel-G's, 5" sleeves. Installed an expansion tank. Installed a clutch hydraulic line. Installed clutch pedal and master. Rebuilt the doors, new rollers and pins. Installed '88 headlights and harness.

New:


Old:


The stock Fiero Isuzu slave and cable bracketry is absurdly space intrusive. I needed a much more compact slave setup so I'd have room for my turbo equipment, so I built this bracket, used the Sunbird arm, and a Getrag slave which has a shorter travel.



My intercooler piping wasn't simple enough, so I lopped the legs off and hole sawed the end of the case. The intercooler is being welded now.




This is probably the last Fiero I will ever own or work on. To commemorate, I've ordered some expensive goodies to crown it.

[CincinnatiFiero]

Missed your update.

Got any pics of the whole car painted?

[Emc209i]

These are all I can offer at this time:







Come down here and help me finish this damn thing!

None of the car has been color sanded yet, so all of the imperfections you see in the pictures are on the surface and will disappear after I smooth it all out. The map pockets are out of a Firebird, Pocket was nice enough to find them for me. The shifter is an SLP Hurst shifter. The steering wheel is the leather wheel that was in the Grand Am the engine came out of. The mats are by Lloyde. The quarter scoops are Fierostore's. I installed a period correct remote keyless entry which I really enjoy. The sail panels are of course from Paul McKibben.

[CincinnatiFiero]

I know that feeling. I didn't touch my 88 at all this year after the shift cable broke. The list of crap I have to do is just too long and I wasn't in the mood to work on it. I've been working on other peoples cars which is good because it gives me money for my projects, but by the end of the day working on someone elses cars, you're exhausted with cars and don't want to look at your own. Which is why I've always said I won't work on cars professionally, I don't want my hobby to be my job. I know plenty of technicians who work all day and go home and build awesome stuff, but thats not me. I get these randoms surges of energy and work on stuff, then put it away again. Hopefully the same will happen for you, in a little bit you'll be like fuck it, its time to drive this car.

The paint looks awesome and the Enkeis still look great. I said something along the lines of what you said about why I don't paint my own car. I'm too anally retentive about paint. I know I'd just constantly re-do it and never get it done. So my 3800SC car has sat, motor buttoned up, suspension and brakes where I want them, but the bodywork not done. So its currently on Sunday afternoon warehouse parking lot burn-out duty.

The interior is also awesome. I love how it is all period correct.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I'm scared to walk around it because I might scratch it. Scared to drive it because someone might hit it.

>Manning the fuck up.

THIS.

When I was 19, I bought an automatic original blue '87 GT. It spun a bearing the night I bought it. I replaced the engine and did a stickshift swap with an '88 cradle. Since I was young, stupid, poor and in college, I didn't do the strut top relocation. The car ended up with positive camber on the rear. I didn't know the significance of this at the time and was "practicing" on the highway late one night, just a day after I'd gotten it on the road. I lost control, slid off the road and rolled the car. At that point in my life I had never before put so much effort into a thing, an object. I had been employed, of course, and bought things with money that was the fruit of my labor; I had put blood, sweat and tears into the football field and the dojang, but never invested as much of myself into building something as I did for that car. I had high hopes. I was 19 and I was going to rule the world with it. Learning that it could be destroyed in a few seconds, at my own hand even, was a tough lesson. It probably to this day if fuel for my desire to build things that will last and not put effort into things that don't.

The most impactful lesson I think was to take from that incident was that doing amazing things is far more important than having amazing things. You've done something of significance in developing yourself to the point that you can build a car like this. The value is in yourself, not the car. The car is just a piece of metal and plastic that can go away at any moment. It's evidence of the changes you've made to yourself in order to be able to build it, but itself is an object. Even after that car is gone, you will carry the drive and determination it took to learn how to build the car as value in yourself, and you can take that to any future endeavor your decide to take on.

Aside:
As the car spun and slid off the road, I knew I was not having a good evening. I saw the horizon start to rotate and knew I was about to have a really bad evening. In a nanosecond I added up that the car was about to come down on the glass sunroof that was an inch from the top of my head. I had my hands on the wheel and pulled my head into my lap as hard as I could. I knew I was going to be upside-down and backwards at 50 mph, but I didn't realize that the car was *AIRBORNE*, upside-down and backwards at 50 mph. The impact was pretty brutal, but I came away with only some lacerations on my right shoulder blade from the sunroof glass. A day or two later, after getting the car back to my parents' house and looking it over, I sat in the driver's seat. The top of the roof panel came up to the base of my skull. I would have been decapitated if I hadn't ducked. Even if I hadn't died, I would have been a vegetable, or at best a paraplegic.

Reflection on that incident taught me a lot about risk taking and the value of life and time. No one ever learns anything at the moment knowledge is imparted. The realizations that change who we are only come with reflection after the fact, sometimes well after.

[CincinnatiFiero]

The fiero collection as it sits

[Emc209i]

I know that feeling...

Yeah. I think most of us here at RFT do, we've all been at this for so long. Thanks for the compliments. And YES, being period correct is the coolest part about the car. I wish you luck finding a good painter to do the work for you. I will never paint another car on my own, I'll save however much needed to pay one of the better Indy painters in town.

Advice

Thanks for the encouragement. I agree, its not all about the stuff, it's about us as people. Experience is what counts. But I think you deserve to be driving a nicer car than your drug dealer looking Fiero, even if you don't want to invest a ton of time in it again. And that A-body doesn't do you justice either.

[Emc209i]

The exterior's on hold while I wait for some stuff in the mail.

This is what the interior looked like in the daylight a few days ago.







As you can see, there's a lot to be done. My biggest gripe though was with the charcoal colored pieces. Personally, I've always felt GM made the Fiero look cheap by not coloring the console pieces to match the rest of the interior. It isn't as noticeable with the grey looped carpet, in fact it actually helps by added some color variety, but with the black carpet installed, I needed more uniformity in order to successfully execute a classy two tone grey and black. By painting the console to match, I established black lower and up and over seats, and grey upper. The controls (steering wheel and shifter) were also lighter in shade than the charcoal, and were swallowed by the colors around them.







The dot matrix overlays DEFINITELY have to go now, I need something dark to contrast the grey. I'm thinking about a black marble material overlay. I also have a cool idea for the gauges, but I don't know if it will pan out, so I'll keep quiet about that until I know more. But this is something like I have in mind.

[Fast88Fiero]

Any progress on the intercooler setup?

[Emc209i]

I had it setup, but it's now sitting on a shelf. I plumbed the turbo directly to the throttle body for increased fuel economy via charge temperatures.

W2A Intercooler kit was ordered today along with a 2.5" piping kit.

[The Dark Side of Will]

How much of a mileage difference did you see? Have you tuned the ECM for best performance at those charge temps?

[Fast88Fiero]

I'm interested to see what difference the intercooler setup will make on my 2.0 swap. The new turbo made a huge difference. I plan on getting it tuned once the intercooler is installed.

[Emc209i]

How much of a mileage difference did you see? Have you tuned the ECM for best performance at those charge temps?

I tossed the car back in the garage shortly after, so I don't know mileage, yet. Ryan tuned the PCM from afar, but its basically got the factory values still punched in (under the old stock limited rpm). Which means fuel is about four times what it should be at WOT, but consumption should be better when cruising along, with the hotter air. Someone in pedoland mentioned they mined 44mpg (AVG!) out of their 2.0 in a Fiero. I know they're suffering from dementia, but I want to see how high I can go.

I'm interested to see what difference the intercooler setup will make on my 2.0 swap. The new turbo made a huge difference. I plan on getting it tuned once the intercooler is installed.

None what so ever, without tuning. In fact an intercooler is going to hurt your performance until it's tuned. I linked a very informative thread on page two or three or four or something, in regards to fuel trims and the engine. Of course the new turbo made a difference, the old was leaking. You didn't mention which turbo you bought, but the previous owner also had a T28/T25 3.1 Prix turbo installed. If you used a larger compressor wheel, or even just a healthy wheel, well then of course performance increased. Once the car is tuned, you should be able to pull timing back a little bit into the safe area, and pull a ton of fuel out of the tune, because you won't need the heat protection.

I've been ignoring the car for about six months now.

[Fast88Fiero]

I think it was the guy I got my swap from who was claiming 40mpg. I'm averaging about 20mpg with mine. I have not taken it on a highway trip yet but I don't know how much better it will get. I'm going to have Ryan tune my swap in the spring, going to take the car to him for a live tune. It runs really rich right now.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Good choice.