Real Fiero Tech

Good to see you back man....

welcome back, do you have any pics of the cooling system mods?

Steven,

could you also post pics of how you boxed in your inner rear suspension mounting points after they began separating from the cradle?

Thanks....

Wow, just became the owner of a 88 Formula and wanted to make it a AutoX CAM car/ Weekend track toy and within 2 sec of googling found this car. Massive inspiration material!!! I will have to dig through this to see if I can replicate any of your success!!!

Welcome to the board... I'm mimic'ing many of Steven's same solutions to a part time track car as well.... poke around and use the search or search the site through google...very little about fiero performance hasn't been covered on this board...

(...highly agree with what Will said below...)

You'll find this forum has a particularly good signal/noise ratio

welcome aboard, start a thread with what you have, we would all like to see it.

Any updates for us?

Been pretty busy with the house and work for the past couple years but I've managed to find some time to install an EHPS pump from an early 2000s Vauxhall Astra (same pump Porsche uses for the GT3 Cup cars) and nearly wrap up the rewiring effort. With work taking up 110% of my time including lots of traveling, it'll probably be awhile since my car sees the track again. Still lots planned for it and I make a little progress every month.

Cool! any more detail on that pump?
I have an MR2 roadster pump and a 2005-09 Mazda 3,5 pump/steering sensor on my shelf. I still need to figure out the Mazda Can stuff (or bypass it) but that's a project for a while down the road.

Progress! Finally have valid tags for the first time since 2016. Slowly making progress on interior and some rewiring. Made a new engine top end harness last weekend, all new connector shells and wrapped in DR25. Circular Deutsch connector instead of the OEM Metripack stuff. Now the only factory engine wires are the ECU pigtails. Still have the factory fuse box in the car but once that is gone all the chassis wiring will be new as well.

DR-25

Were your wires getting brittle? OEM wire? I also hate the stock decklid connector.

How are you dealing with branch points in the harness, between the lengths of heat shrink?

Tape? If so, what kind?

Emc209i wrote: ↑Wed Nov 24, 2021 10:51 am

DR-25

Were your wires getting brittle? OEM wire? I also hate the stock decklid connector.

Brittle in some areas, rubbed through in others from abrasion, soaked through with oil, etc... The new harness is mostly virgin TXL as well as some stuff I cut out of a late-model BMW harness.

pmbrunelle wrote: ↑Wed Nov 24, 2021 6:49 pm How are you dealing with branch points in the harness, between the lengths of heat shrink?

Tape? If so, what kind?

For the transitions I used adhesive lined heat shrink over the DR-25, and zip ties for strain relief. If you look at some of Rywire's engine harnesses, that's about what mine looks like. Full retard would be molded transitions filled with RT-125.

Glad to see this beast is still alive!

I put my car on scales today to get a new baseline and figure out where weight can go as I plan some re-architecting in preparation for the next iteration of this car.

I need to shift weight to move from left to right. Any ideas? What I have on the list so far:
- Move fire extinguisher from left b-pillar to rear firewall between the seats
- Shift battery to the right. It's dead center behind the front subframe crossmember right now. Unfortunately I can't move it much to the right without also moving it upward.
- Shift electric power steering pump a few more inches to the right. Doesn't seem worth the effort but it will make a small difference.
- Relocate oil cooler from in front of transaxle to in front of rear tire. This will require moving the ECU out of this area, perhaps to the firewall behind the passenger seat.
- Relocate battery cable from center console to right door sill

Here is where it's at now:

WITHOUT DRIVER, 3/4 TANK OF FUEL

• Total Weight: 2791 lbs
• Left Front: 598
• Right Front: 584
• Left Rear: 799
• Right Rear: 810
• Rear: 57.7%
• Front: 42.3%
• Cross: 49.6%
• Left: 50.1%
• Right: 49.9%

WITH 143-LB DRIVER, 3/4 TANK OF FUEL

• Total Weight: 2934 lbs
• Left Front: 655
• Right Front: 598
• Left Rear: 850
• Right Rear: 831
• Rear: 57.3%
• Front: 42.7%
• Cross: 49.4%
• Left: 51.3%
• Right: 48.7%

I've started removing the vinyl wrap in places where it has deteriorated. Mainly the roof and hood, as well as places where I over-stretched the wrap during installation. The wrap has been on the car for 8 years, which is 1 year beyond the expected performance life for vertical surfaces. Horizontal is 3 years in the best of conditions, which southern California is not!

I will need to start designing wrap 2.0 soon. It's going to have a similar theme of a geometric pattern in red, black, and gray.

What kind of algorithm will you use to generate the pixels?

Is this similar in design to military camouflage?

The new wrap will be a geometric pattern but it won't be camouflage. Going to design it by hand in Illustrator.

Got a lot done in the last few months:

- rewrapped the roof
- designed and installed bespoke aluminum front knuckles with C8 Corvette hubs (5x120), upgraded ball joints, double shear steering clevis and bump steer adjustable rod end outer link
- rod end inner pivots on adjustable upper control arm (I was running delrin ones before)
- C7 front and rear brakes (12.6" front, 13.3" rear, Brembos 4 piston calipers)
- E90 M3 brake booster and master cyl
- front end alignment
- refilled the gas charge on my front right bilstein --- the Schrader valve had gotten smashed and the charge leaked out. No idea how long it was like that.

I am in the process of finalizing the design of fabricated steel sheet metal rear uprights that use Camaro6 rear hubs with large 33 spline axles.