inspecting the car closer.

Now that I had the car in my garage, I needed to get a closer look at the frame. The upper frame rails are only partially visible from the engine compartment, so I needed to pull the wheel-well liners out to see the other side.

After getting up on stands and pulling the wheels off, I was able to pull the wheel liners out and I could see the real extent of the damage on the frame. On the driver’s side, there wasn’t much to see. There was some surface rust and a little bit of frame rot that needed to be cleaned up, but it wasn’t anything serious. On the passenger side, though, it was slightly more severe. There was a significant amount more surface rust and a few places where the crumple zones were rotted out more than I would’ve liked. Luckily, it wasn’t so bad that the load bearing portion of the upper frame rail was damaged. There wasn’t anything that couldn’t be dealt with—just more than I wanted to find.

At this point, I could start to outline everything that needed to be done with the car. The engine was my top priority, since it needed to be pulled out and given it’s fair share of TLC. In addition, the paint needed to be fixed, badly. My first reason was the color—the car was red with silver trim—the factory paint colors. I don’t like red cars. At all. Aside from the color, though, the paint was in pretty bad shape, so even if it had been a color I could live with, it needed to be repainted.

The last item on my checklist was the suspension. Surprisingly, the engine cradle and rear suspension were in pretty good shape. The passenger rear wheel had a camber issue, but that was a simple adjustment that needed to be made after the strut was replaced. In the front, though, the control arms, steering knuckles, and the tie rods seemed to be original. There wasn’t anything necessarily wrong with them, but they needed a good cleaning and repainting. The suspension wouldn’t be a problem, which was nice.

Once I was able to go through the car and figure out what was going on, I could start working on the parts list and disassembling the car—taking the suspension apart, removing the engine.

I just needed to make sure I had all the tools required to get the job done.

unexpected, but pleasant, surprises.

While I was going through the condition of the car, I ran into some interesting additions to the car.

At some point, someone had put polyurethane bushings on all of the suspension parts, aside from a handful of ball joints. This was some great news, since I was planning on replacing all of the bushings with poly ones anyhow. I was able to check that box before I even started!

Aside from the poly bushings, though, someone had upgraded the front brakes already, as well. At some point, one of the owners of the car had installed vented rotors and upgraded calipers from a 1990/91 Chevrolet Beretta. This was an upgrade that I hadn’t really thought about initially, but was something I’d been thinking about, since the stock rotors for the Fiero were solid, and anything would be better than that. Another win for me!

buying tools to do the job.

Because I hadn’t had much space, or a garage, previously, I needed to invest in some tools to make life easier as well as do some of the work. To start, I’d need an engine hoist, an engine stand, feeler gauges, a piston ring compressor, a breaker bar, a torque wrench, a 90 degree die grinder, and air compressor, an impact gun, and a heavy-duty dolly. At least, that’s what I was able to plan for before I dug into the car.

I just happened to stumble across a sale at the local Harbor Freight, which was welcome find. I was able to get the engine hoist, stand, breaker bar, and torque wrench for a steal. The rest of the tools came as I ran into roadblocks, since I don’t have an infinite supply of disposable income.

tearing the car down.

Since I couldn’t drive the car, there was nothing left to do but start tearing down the car. I just needed to make sure I had a direction for the car, so the work would have some purpose behind it.

In order to make sure I had a plan, I would need to start doing some research. There were some things that would have to wait—like engine parts, I’d need to break the engine down before I would know what I needed—but there were other things, like suspension parts, paint colors, and supplies, that I could go ahead and order or pick out before I got started. I’d also need to figure out what, exactly, I was going to do with the car since that would also dictate some of the parts that I would buy.

After some reading and some research about Fieros and amateur racing, I decided that I would AutoCross and RallyCross the car, as well as some track days and Road Rally events as long as the car proved to be reliable. I also made the decision to stick with the street-level classes—I found that the Fiero was a bit too old to compete in the standard street class for SCCA Solo, but moving up to the “Touring” class allowed me to also make some suspension, intake, and exhaust upgrades to help the car perform better.

This meant that I would need to invest some money in suspension parts. I wasn’t too upset. I’d get to buy larger wheels, better tires, install a rear sway bar, and upgrade to Koni shocks and struts. I was downright excited.

In addition to picking out the suspension parts, I needed to decide what I was going to do with the paint. Luckily, it didn’t take much time for me to make up my mind: I would paint the car flat olive drab green with flat black trim. It didn’t take me much time, since that’s a color scheme that I absolutely love—plus, flat paint just looks awesome.

I also needed to repaint the engine—the intake and valve covers were chipping pretty badly and the block, while black from the factory it needs to be a lighter color so that fluid leaks can be found quickly, I chose a red-orange from Chevrolet to paint the engine and parts. After seeing the color, I decided that the color would also ago extremely well as an accessory color with the green and black color of the body. This led me to buy a few extra cans of red-orange engine enamel to paint the springs, calipers, and anything else that would show from underneath the car.

keeping track of the progress

While I’ve been working on the car, I’ve been keeping track of everything in a notebook, which is something my dad (an engine builder) taught me when I was a younger. The idea is that if I write down everything that I’ve done to the car, I can keep track of where I am in the process and anything that is out of the ordinary throughout the tear down and rebuild process. There’s not much to it, but it’s a step that a lot of people don’t take when working on things, one that I think is important to remember and take care of.

So far, things have gone relatively smoothly, though slowly. Most importantly, though, things have been moving along consistently. A project is going well so long as you continue working on the project. The moment you take time off from the project is the moment that the project stops. As long as I’m moving things forward, in one way or another, the project is still moving along fine. So far, so good.