ABANDONED Pontiac Fiero Will It Run And Drive After 17 Years? - Vice Grip Garage EP 97

over here sits a 1985 pontiac funeral sport they only made 23 823 of them this one's been sitting here for about 17 years and i know that because it's my car and i'm the one that abandoned it here great today i'm gonna try to get her running again and driving welcome to vice grip garage [Applause] [Music] so jessica and i actually drove this car to high school when we were dating you know way back in the day and we parked it because of a clutch secondary cylinder which i actually picked up this morning for 24. hindsight i guess i should have just borrowed some money or pawned a tool or something but it is what it is so let's walk around it and we'll see how she's well it hasn't held up at all but we'll see what we got anyway so if you've never seen a pontiac fiero they're a little bit odd kind of like a rubber crutch it was the first two-seater pontiac since 1938 and fiero apparently means 27 different things in five different languages like very proud fierce bold cruel severe and italian or you know ferocious and spanish or wild a guy could kind of take his pick i guess how i know this is an 85 sport which i had forgotten is the pm3 and the fp2 they got a chart on the google machines you can kind of look that up and i feel terrible honestly guys because this car was absolutely cherry when we parked it i'll kind of show you this door kind of everything looked like that but along came a really devastating storm i can't remember what year it was but you can see how big the hailstones were they were like tennis ball grapefruit size and just destroyed this car all the glass obviously the paint and unfortunately all the cars around it you can see all the glass is just gone more hail dense than this guy it should run i mean it ran when we brought it here it didn't have first and reverse and that's because of that clutch cylinder in the back here there's actually a master up front and one back here and i think i remember trying to fix on it but couldn't quite get it done so if we could figure out some fuel and it's still a spark throw a battery on her maybe we'll get lucky today my goal would be though try to get that cylinder fixed bleed the clutch system and see if we can just you know drive this thing around a little bit well as you fellers know i always like to start the trunk which in this unit she's up here and she's got the easy reach handle you just come right down through here let's see what we got oh yeah really nothing i know for a fact i never use the spare or the jack or any of this so this is all factory she's never been touched up here and doesn't look like anyone's robbed any parts so here's the master cylinder for the clutch you can see it because it says clutch and then we've got ac and all the fans and stuff is in here looks just fine juice juicing that yet a little bit one's dry we'll leave that off to remind us oh looks like someone's maybe tried to revive my car because that was the original key cylinder and there's a shiny new one in it let's uh let's just get in here oh we might have a hornet's nest here boy she's on the ground oh we got redneck diamonds just everywhere i got a bunch of them so this girl had 117 000 miles on her someone took the shift knob looks like the radio has been nabbed out of her look at this purple confetti kind of shiny stuff that's factory upgrade option she's peeling off down here but that's okay definitely not going to pull on the e-brake she might stick i think these had speakers in the head rest but i can't remember nothing in there something growing out of the floorboard not quite sure what that is so the problem we're gonna have is i don't have the round key and that's gonna be to get into the engine compartment here so i think i'm gonna have to actually drill this out to get this up so we can work on this thing and then we'll do the right thing and just kind of tape it down or bungee cord or something like that the plates are gone i have no idea where the plates went i can't remember if i pulled those off or not tires in the ground this one somehow is still holding air and see that one's all the way in the ground flat same thing here i think it's actually sitting on the frame or the control arms up here she's really down so hopefully those will take some air but let's start with the engine see if we can even get this thing to run so i'll go grab a drill and a drill bit that's probably the wrong size and see if i can get this thing drilled out see i wonder if a guy can just jam a drill bit through here and maybe it'll just open you just don't know until you break it let's go for heist oh i'm seeing stuff though aha now can a guy get something in there to just twist on him oh hey oh oh boy well let's bring this down to about a no dead bodies yet i did find a three-eighths wrench yep it's a back pocket fine she came out of nowhere on a horse anyway let me get you in here well here's what we got the great news is that's a 2.5 liter iron duke probably one of the most reliable indestructible engines ever built plus they get 30 to 50 miles per gallon that's mind bottling the bad news is it has two decades of earth kind of just packed into the fuel electro digital shooter making happener so that's kind of concerning the batteries in it we had to pop off the delorean covers over here and now we can get more access to her absolutely nothing back here i thought maybe i'd find an old pair of cowboy boots mine or a football jersey or at least my wrestling shoes dang it been looking for them for years i just they've eluded me dump these level 12. another one i don't know why this air cleaner lids missing kind of bothers me it's such a random thing to steal oh yeah just a little battery i don't think i got one that little whatever that was brittle and broke off all of the sparklator wires are still on there i remember putting these fancy braided units on back in the day doesn't look like mice have really eaten anything i don't want to try the throttle before we get out you know the state of vermont out of the thing here and there is absolutely zero oil in it that's fine what i'm gonna do now is just throw a socket wrench on the tranquilizer down here see if she still spins over a little bit worrisome since there's no oil on the thing i'm not sure why that happened either oh well all right cross your toes she's tight but we got some turnage oh there goes my finger oh now she's she's coming back around there we go wow give me my wrench back battery shopping got my tester with me that was dead dead battery that one's dead this one's going to be good dead battery wow that one's dead oh a guy did the right thing found a marine battery and just put her on the roof rack but before we see if this thing cranks over i got to get all this stuff out of there somehow guys starting to put three and two together this is probably more evidence that someone was trying to fire on this with the new key and air cleaner lid gone they were probably giving her the huffing gas wow they got digital's hooked to the air screen what even are these things i don't know i should know guys should start carrying a can of that keyboard cleaner and just you know hey that worked what did you know your mouth makes wind oh mouse poop right in the mouth keep going it's fine and i don't see anything in the intake thank goodness this still works even i'll be dipped well i'm gonna hook this up and then we'll see if she uh cranks if she does roll over i'm only going to spin on her a couple times since there's no oil in her bring the thunder [Music] well we've got positive turnage i don't think that their battery connection system is going to work though not spinning fast enough to start it i might have to go down and get the right size battery dang it guy's going to snag this out quick you know i almost packed my handy dandy little sight post battery wrench but then i told myself you'll never need that and then i also told myself if you tell yourself you're not going to need it then you are really going to need it and then i also told myself what are the chances of that i need it also i don't see grasshoppers where i'm from very much anymore i've already had three of those in the house additionally working on a black car in the direct sunlight is hot and i'm talking hotter than sierra nightly in a nighttime yeah guy did swing down to larry's battery barn and picked up this group 75 for 28 dipped that's a good deal moses that's hot get out of there come on man i wanted to keep my socket no way i'm going to throw a couple quarts of oil in this thing before we spin on her anymore i got this one for a specific reason it was a really cool track hole on it and also it was the cheapest one there it's a diesel oil so it's actually got all the dinosaurs and vitamins you want for these old engines wow what kind of a seal is this now that'll probably work we'll test on it never again got my lone wolf 6000 trigger hooked up here and not a lot of questions on this and really all it is is just a wire going to the ignition post on the starter relay which is just on when you roll the key forward to start and then one to the positive battery cable on the starter two you can actually just use wire and touch them together or momentary switch or you could man up not be lazy and just hit it with your plier but this is definitely for me spins way better so fresh lightning cube is doing its job now let's move on and see if we got fuel and spark i don't have a plan but what i think i will do is grab this here fuel filter and snip it out and then we'll test on her and see if we're getting any fuel shooting out and what it looks like i think the fuel door is over here yeah so i've got about two and a half gallons of bad gas from the mid 90s we'll dump that in and then see if we're pumping anything and then if we are what she's looking like and now we can move on to the lightning whirler which is down here on this unit guy's got his tools just sprayed out on this beautiful buick special here and they're just so hot i can't even touch them so i'm going to do the right thing and just leave them there and suffer through it i think all right come on yeah kind of just bent it a little bit that's fine you just got to pretend that little stuff doesn't happen i got fuel right now right here so it might already been pumping up some delicious stuff that seal is gone we'll pretend we didn't see that oh yeah that smell i missed you guy was about ready to take a chainsaw out of the gas lid here i was struggling to find the old ejecta later then i remembered you gotta roll the seat forward and there's a clip back here you gotta pull on that she shot right open only gonna put a couple gallons in here this stuff's expensive oh i'm leaking it all over the ground great well as long as 36 of it goes in the car that's just fine well there's definitely enough gas spell to start an amazing fire like these rubber rings so you don't get the old shock or you know snagged up but hit them with the gas and they expand all right keep your eyeball on this guy here we're gonna crank on it for a second see if we get any juice i'm seeing no juice [Music] so fuel pump l not happy on this particular unit here she's got an in-tank pump not fun but i'm going to try the simple thing first which is just a fuse and then it could be a ground or it could be a fuel pump relay or it could actually just be a bad pump but if it's not the fuse i'm going to move on to just seeing if i can get this thing to fire before i worry about dinking with the pump guys gotta get way down in here figured out my hornet issue by the way they're just uh coming out of this door like crazy anyway down here on the fuse block should be this first red one wow she's good great well not the easy thing so let's just find something flammable and see if she fires oh you can see how good this gas is well here we go almost two decades let's see if this thing's gonna fire off key is on way too much gas here we go [Music] fired right off uh let's do it again just because really bad valve train let's just keep going you know it's got a build on that oil pressure i'm hearing a relay clicking back here still nothing working in the fuel pumpage situation but the valve train is already starting to sound better so i think she's building just enough pressure i'm gonna find something that i can see if we can run it a little bit longer this will work it's got a skull that says extremely flammable i like that i'm going to try to keep it running long enough where i can reach down here and see if we got any exhaust restrictions sometimes the mice turn the mufflers into motels mice muffler motel anyway here we go there you go it's not even smoking valve train sounds fine she came right out of it uh we just got to figure out some sort of mickey mouse fuel situation maybe try to do a swap rooney on the fuel pump relay doubtful very but that's going to do anything might just have to hook up a clicky clacky and we'll make some sort of explosive gasoline kind of thing back here and then we're on to the clutch dang it forgot about that this might be hard for you to see there feller so scoot in a little bit but i think i pulled the fuel pump relay here and you can see some big corrosion in there and those reside down here they're mounted up in there i just kept bending on it until it came off the firewall but this is really corroded too so i'm gonna do the right thing and just try to clean this one up first before i spend more money and see if that'll work probably not so i cleaned up this relay actually i did both of them just because and that didn't do anything so i came over here to the ecm reset connector cleaned that up and once you know it well that did nothing so the last thing i'm going to try is the aldl connector which is in the center console because the computer i think sits back here or something and i can jump the fuel pump supposedly right from that bad boy and if that doesn't work then i think we're just gonna move right on to the old trusted clicky clack pump so i popped this little thing out here and i saw a computer box machine so i think i'm on the right track pulled out all these screws on here so i think we can just rip this out now okay be careful watch the seats now and uh set that up there what have got what is it engine control computer well that seems serious and here's that gadget we're after apparently you can do a lot of bleep bloops with this thing i just got to figure out the pins now now we got to run some juice right in here kind of looks like a delorean setup liking it well supposedly i could just put 12 volts to this little guy over here and we should hear that fuel pump run or it's going to start a fire either way i'm ready this was holding the grail land on it those will be omega but seems fine we got a dead fuel pump great it's difficult for me to talk about but i'm an honest guy all the way to my hip bone i forgot a fuel pump but if you haven't figured it out yet i'm here at zweifel motors in piedmont south dakota and he's got more cars and parts and tools and everything you could ever imagine so of course he hooked a guy up i got this one here no name on it but it'll probably even work better than my edel broken i usually carry got a battery this is a race operation so this will only feed the fuel pump got some gates fuel line she's high pressure none of that low stuff cheapest hose clamps you could find not sure what that is tape has never opened and when you're playing with electricity you know positive negative make sure you wire everything with the same colored wire it just makes it better so i'm going to get this fuel pump i think what we'll do is put the gas in right next to the battery get it as close as possible wire all this fuel in over the battery and then bring her in here i took the filter off this already and i think i'll just bring it right on in there full pressure and then we'll see what this says well there we go that seems fine this is good some lineage something like yeah sure good enough yeah come on well i gotta sharpen this already here's the final setup i mean it's looking hot just tested it got some fuel out of her little tip for you to keep the fires down at your ranch always switch your negative keep your positives nice and tidy and especially if you're bringing like switches and stuff into the old compartment there i always switch on your negatives and you're not dragging electro tricity everywhere i'm going to leave this hanging like that because this is going to be our on off like that and button this down and then we're ready to fire on it again let's give her another goal fuel pump engaged he is on bring the thunder [Music] she just it ain't squirt light [Music] so i got other digital issues going on that's bottle feeding again i just felt like if i didn't hear it run i just i might be sad now what i don't know this is why most fellers shy away from these tbis which i think stands for terminator ballistics incorporated could be wrong but anyway i'm gonna start treating it like a carburetor and just start beating on it maybe that'll bring it around probably not this doesn't work i'm gonna get a nine volt battery and we'll just test that injector spray [Music] give it a little help running [Music] don't know not sure that was awesome i don't know why she died out on us it's getting fuel [Music] now so oh so i'm thinking this might not be enough fuel pump for her but i'm going to see if i could at least get it to idle on this for a little bit [Music] tachometer definitely not at 9000 rpm but i like that the nozzle is really dirty it has a really bad spray pattern that can also be lack of pressure there she's starting to idle down a little bit wow how does a guy even how are you supposed to get this off i've just never seen nothing like this okay i think that's full a little bit of blow-by but that's all right gotta let them rings come back in that's cleaning up a little bit now well she runs like a kitten in a bowl of milk these iron dukes are just great engines onto the clutch here and again we got that reservoir up front we looked at earlier and i can't get open again perfect and then back here is the cylinder and when you apply the clutch that pushes this rod out right here and then this rod engages the clutch fork and then your shifter rooney cables [Music] select your gears there i already broke this line off that's good so i just got these two bolts right here to get out we'll get that new one in there not going to work too late tonight though i'm out here in the black hills of south dakota it's beautiful got the salvage davidson with me so i'm just going to get some wind in the eyebrows here pretty soon before the sun goes down but i think i'll at least try to break these other two bolts off first got her out here popped the boot off to see if the seal was leaking at all and it wasn't and then i got to looking closer and remembered what happened was the bleeder screw snapped off i think i started having clutch problems and you know maybe gave her a little too much pepper so that snapped off but it just goes to show you you never know why people park cars if they say i parked it because of a water pump or an all matter it might actually be back then i couldn't afford that part and decided just to park it so i got another one but i think i'm gonna call it it for today sun's just she's getting down on me so i'm gonna go ride and then we'll be back tomorrow good morning day two i'm already at it here basically what i did is i put a can of berryman in the tank here i'm trying to get this injector spray you know to come around and it's getting better it used to kind of just spray wherever i wanted to so i'm hoping that cleans that up a little bit a battery was dead this morning and i finally got this cap off and she's was pretty full so i'm gonna wait and see if we can get the thermostat to crack open let it sit here and idle a little bit here's the new unit guys got to reuse the push rod lever stick clutch mover thingamajigger so i ran that through the cheek poker cleaned her up a little bit bolter on and then we got to try to bleed it and that's really tricky on these fueros about 17 different ways you can do that gravity vacuum reverse pressure fluid injection the old pump method thing is to get any air in these systems you're not going to get first or reverse and if i remember right that was the problem i had although maybe it was just a bad clutch and i snapped this off thinking i just needed to bleed it i can't quite remember but we're about to find out tell you what it was really smart of me to get this radiator hose degrees celsius that way i could just lay my arms on it in here while i work also this plastic air tube thing is about to be thrown into the next county [Applause] okay that is in and you could tell by the oil started bleeding on her i'm going to try to do it this way because great things happen when you cut corners don't want to pump on them and you don't want the old resivore to go low so i'm just jamming a piece of wood into the e-brake that'll probably never release and once it's held down i'll crack it and i'll repeat that procedure a few times what's coming out of here is basically like mud so i'm just gonna keep going until i get stuff that looks like maybe chocolate milk it's an improvement well this actually kind of seems to be working hook your peepers on this rod over here and you'll see that we've got enough pressure now it's actually pushing that rod there it's coming back so that would be engaging and disengaging the old gear selecto plate so i'm just gonna keep going a few more times well i think i'm gonna stop there it seems like i got pedal but that's judging from the clutch bleeder board 400 and the reservoir is looking pretty nice and clean now and uh i think we might be in decent shape just kind of yeah anyway so now what do we do now i guess we got to fire it up and once it's running i'll just try to jam it in first gear if she goes in without you know that sound i think we're good then we're on the tires and well we got to move stuff too it's just there's things in the way great i tore the seat cover off and took all the arts and crafts out at once which that's great but now i've got level 14 black moldage well whatever it's going to climb in fire it up see what we get well get in this thing all right 17 years i'm in gear it went into gear i killed it we're in business that was really easy wish i would have done that a long time ago dang it there's the fan for the first time so that works i guess well she's catching on her wind and cooling down a little bit i'm missing an antenna let's see if these tires air up this one i'm gonna say maybe four percent chance i can reach in here and feel the steel belt but you never know come on no way there it goes let me dig the rocks out of the inside of the tire i'm probably not going to put my hand on it actually this is crazy this is officially the worst conditioned tire that has ever aired up for me i think they call them may pops they're kind of exciting i don't know how much wind to give it i don't think it's going to hold much i think that's probably good if someone wants to explain to me how this is holding air go on ahead and do that for me over here is where i could reach my hand in and feel the belt and similar over here some stuff got blown up inside of it but you can clearly see it was sitting all the way to the rim who knows how many years of the 17 that's been sitting here it was flat that's pretty crazy the other side is similar so let's go over there and see if we can get some air in those same story here the belt is actually exposed we'll see uh if this one will hold any air i'm kind of hoping they'll do because well i don't have any more of these tires or wheels here we go unbelievable what is going on i don't have this good luck with my good tires two for two place your bets you can pause it comment below will this one also air up and then you can come back around and comment if you were right come on now this is i've never i've never had this happen i don't hear leaks or nothing that's about all i'm willing to do just you know good tire this one's still holding this one had air in it when we showed up that one's doing fine and this one is still doing fine oh that's just the hose leaking i guess the real test on the old tires is gonna be once we get them rolling that's when they're gonna explode on us so i gotta make sure i spin out right away since i'm having such good luck let's try this one too no shoot i was hoping it'd have a tube in it all right try the other side all right this one might go yeah there goes the old co-op supers so in order to get the fiero out this diamond t's got to move this is a cool truck 1940 diamond tee and he's actually even got the title of this thing really cool truck uh let me show you the frame on this really quick i always thought this was pretty neat they did this look at that so i'm going to snag on to it the skid steer here and i think i'll drag it over there kind of clean stuff up pushed everything over smoothed out a path and hoping i could lift the rear up a little bit and we got some air in the front so i should be able to kind of wobble it over there maybe [Music] well hey that worked pretty good i should have checked i didn't realize these rears weren't all the way bolted on so there towards the end i just scooped her up and i think we'll set her down here there's plenty enough room to get cars in and out of here still so now i'll clean up a little bit see if i get this thing fired back up and well we gotta go in reverse for about 87 miles that's fine then you know we'll get up here on the hillside and just test on her apparently i grew a little bit okay well let's see if it'll drive itself out of here pedals are so dainty oh doesn't like to run well come on now wow power steering oh i got a mirror over here and it works well what's the issue now a computer box do something well this poor starter get some abandon ship so i'm thinking the bruce lee clicky clack isn't providing enough fuel pressure for that injector to properly fire runs fine if i break cleaner and open her up so i'm going to run down to the hardware store and pick up a different clicky clack that maybe has i think these take up to 13 psi before i start sending it back to the tank so i'm gonna go see if i can find one a little bit bigger bigger pump and spray pattern looks better [Music] actually get a little rev out of the girl now so we will try this glass got me we're gonna try to you know get her out of here again i think we can do it this time i gotta figure out how to get in this thing it's gotta be a process okay there we go reverse oh yeah oh she's logging out on me again come on wow i can't believe it oh again well all of a sudden i find myself at the top of the hill i just took the bobcat and put a chain on her and drug her up here after two days i'm driving this thing and if that means coasting down a hill with the engine idling i'll take it little victories there's probably no brakes so basically i've just got to try to hook this corner here and if i just end up down on them trees somewhere i don't want to hit that cadillac though so i got to come back this way but that's pretty much what we're gonna do fire it up dump it first i gotta hurry four clips ouch first gear oh yeah grab second hey it's actually driving yeah there's no brakes way too fast [Music] hey we're actually driving right now [Music] sure these tigers this is pretty good that was a big one oh well that was it but it was just enough you know she runs pretty good not gonna brag or anything is this a cigarette leader well there you have it 17 years and she's running just like i remember it really uncomfortable and gutless i'm actually not going to drive this one home because in a future episode i'm going to pick one of you viewers and i'm going to give this to you she just needs a fuel pump and a little bit of glass and it's fine thank you guys for watching hope you enjoyed the episode we'll see you next time just this way [Music] you

Channel: Vice Grip Garage

Views: 1,918,049

Keywords: motortrend, roadkill, vice grip garage, vise grip garage, vgg, pontiac, fiero, se, gt, 2.5, iron duke, abandoned, forgotten, will, it, run, drive, barn, farm, find, first, sport, abandoned for 17 years, pontiac fiero v8, v8 conversion, pontiac fiero restoration, pontiac fiero, fiero 3800 supercharged, fiero gt, fiero 600, fiero ls swap, fiero build, fiero swap, fiero kit car

Id: vb7pDuO5c3o

Length: 52min 28sec (3148 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Alpha-Breeze]

A rim, some paint, a 30-weight ball bearing and your ready to rock!

[u/ctesla01]

my 2 88s were 'abandoned' while i was in the frickin middle east for 10yrs.. needed battery and some StaBil in some premium; and alot of pedal pumping-VROOM, VROOM!

idle self regulated after about 7-10minutes.. and then needed to change all fluids, and add some air before road testing.