Colinb17's Little Red Rocket Build: 1988 Fiero

Honestly I doubt I could really tell you anything you don't already know, judging by what I've seen in this thread. That was a looooooooong-ass time ago. Like 20 years ago. I think you're probably well above my tinkering skill level

 

Ben there, done that, now have two new viewing windows in my taco frame. sucks

 

Here's my viewing window.......

background info: the mid section of the Fiero is, for all intents and purpose, a unibody. the front and rear ends of the car are tube frames, similar to a Tacoma, or any other body on frame vehicle. this is actually pretty great, because by loosening the rear two bolts on the rear "cradle", the entire engine, transmission, suspension, etc, pivots down and out from underneath the car, with the front two bolts acting as the pivot points.

The downside however, is that the two rear bolts go into nuts that are contained within the unibody portion of the car, and are boxed in on all 6 sides. so when one of those nuts decides to start spinning, you start contemplating going down to the gun store, and picking up one of those fancy shotguns with a toe trigger.....

the solution to this is easy enough though, if you have a welder. see below.

The nut, while substantial, is only held in place by a thin gauge steel cover. too much torque on the nut (breaking the bolt loose in my case), will deform this thin cover, to the point that the nut spins inside of it. step one of the solution is to cut a window into the unibody, as seen in this picture.


then you have to remove the cover. a pry bar and some tin snips did the trick for me. again, you can now see that this is a pretty serious nut. it has a 3/8'' plate on the bottom, with the threaded portion covering the entire length of the bolt.


It's a pretty tight, dark space, being inside the frame, which is inside the fender well, so I apologize for the photo quality. I was limited by access for the welding gun, but was able to run roughly 2'' of 3/8 fillet weld on the nut, covering two sides of the diamond shaped nut. a little paint to prevent more rust, and it should be stronger than ever. just have to bend the window I cut back down, and weld that back up now.


New Exhaust came in a lot quicker than I though, along with a new serpentine belt. current belt looks ok, but I have no idea how old it is, so for $20, it's a good measure to take.

disassembled


Mocked up to roughly what it will look like installed. hoping to give the whole system a few coats of 1500 degree paint this weekend if rain holds off.

 

Oh ye gods, the memories this thread brings back.

I still being shaking a bit and crying if I contemplate the first time I tried doing my own brake job on those.

 

brakes will be my final item, before the car gets back on the road. the very little amount that I drove it before putting it up on jack stands showed that the calipers worked fine, with no dragging of seizing, however, for good measure, I have new pads and rotors on the work bench, waiting to go on. what was your biggest hassle with the brakes? I know you have to rotate the pistons as you compress them, but from what I've read, that was the big item that most folks don't know about, thus resulting in screwing up calipers.....

 

There's also a special tool you need to use to turn the locking plate above the spring, and it takes about 3 hands to hold it all, turn it just so, and compress, as I recall. Especially on the rear wheels. The fronts were only marginally more annoying than normal. The rears made me think about cutting myself.

 

This tool?

 

I have no idea what the proper tool was supposed to look like. I lived out in the sticks, had the car (my only transportation at the time) up on blocks with the wheels taken apart, and no money to buy more tools even if I'd had another ride. I ended up using about four pairs of vice grips and C-clamps and WD-40 and I think some goats' blood to get them into place correctly. It literally took me all day to finagle just those two sets of brake shoes.

 

fantastic. I have that tool ordered, but I can already see the wrenches and curse words flying.....

 

The worst part was, and this was the last time I had to learn this lesson, I had zero margin for error. That car was my only ride. I had Sunday off too but I had to be to work on Monday and there was no backup. Once I had it apart there was no going back

Not a car for the faint of heart to work on

 

I feel you, and know exactly what you are talking about. the sole purpose for getting this car is so I can work on the Tacoma. everything I've done to it thus far has had to happen between a Friday night and sunday night. if I couldn't do it in those 48 hours, I couldn't do it. granted the Tacoma is a dream to work on, but it was still challenging. I can definitely see the fiero being very difficult in some scenarios as your only vehicle.

 

Now do it all out on a dirt driveway (no roof) in August using $40 worth of harbor freight tools

I never said I was a *smart* kid; I'm still kinda amazed I survived my youth.

 

Between a busy schedule and some other projects, I didn't touch the fiero for a while. spent a few hours on it this past weekend and made some good progress. essentially reach what I'd consider the halfway point in the restorarion/build.

one of the side projects that's taken us some time recently is a late 70s/early 80s lawn tractor I've been fixing up and using.
how I've got it sitting today.



but back to the fiero.... I got frustrated with it, after removing all of the bolts that hold the transaxle housing (aluminum), to the block (steel). there are some steel sleeves protruding from the block, that go into the aluminum housing. my guess is that these serve as a mechanism that take the shear force off of the bolts. I'm sure it works great, but the aluminum and steel had corroded together. after soaking the local area of the issue in some penetrant for the months I didn't work on it, and the purchase of a new hammer, I was able to get the transaxle separated from the engine, and out of the car.

here's a photo of one of the sleeves coming off of the block.


transaxle out, and the pressure plate ready for removal


after closer inspection, it looks like the clutch disk was not actually what failed. or at least, it was not the initial failure. it looks like the throwout bearing seized up, and spun on the teeth of the pressure plate, grinding some down, and completely wearing through others.


transaxle out of the car completely. spun it and shifted it all by hand, and other than the bad bearing, it seems to be working buttery smooth, which is good, because I have no desire to rebuild an entire transaxle right now.


here's the moneyshot of the bad bearing. bad to the point that it shaved some aluminum off of the inside of the housing. pretty amazing the destruction a single bearing can cause. between the bearing eating the pressure plate, and in turn, burning up the clutch disk, look at all of the debris sitting in the bottom of the housing. time to put on the tyvec suit, respirator, and start cleaning. clutch has asbestos in it....

 

pretty much what happened when I saw asbestos mentioned in the 28 year old factory service manual.

 

You'll be fine. I'm pretty sure it takes extended exposure before you run into any health risk. You've done worse to your lungs I'm sure.

 

it does. we've done asbestos mitigation on our construction sites before. takes a good bit of exposure for the bad things to happen, but at least I can look like a mad scientist for a little bit in my suit and darth vader respirator

you're right, the celebratory cigars will take a toll far before a single clutch does. maybe I just celebrate too much?

 

Nonsense!

But go ahead and get dolled up in your gumby suit. The last time I put one of those on I was spraying the bosses office in foam. The respirator came off real quick though. Too damn hot.

 

the good ol' days.

that respirator was probably useless anyway. likely a particulate filter, that wasn't going to stop the vapor from the foam. breathe it in and live it up!

 

Asbestos clutch time



here's is the cause of this entire mess. the dust cover fell off of the TO bearing (left). that allows the grease out and all kinds of crap in. the bearing way dry as a bone, and even with pliers, I couldn't spin it. new one is on the right.



the dead clutch on the left, the new HD clutch on the right. the old clutch actually had enough material left to work well, except for there almost have of it broke off.



part of the clutch pad breaking off resulted in the rivets on the disk digging directly into the flywheel. That's the polished looking rind inn the middle of the wear surface. no resurfacing this one. new flywheel will be here Wednesday, and then it's onto reassembly. we've officially hit the halfway point!!!