The Journey Begins | 1985 Fiero 2M4 Revival - Part 1

[Music] before anybody asks in the comments I'll go ahead and address it right away why did I choose a Pontiac Fiero as my project car I understand that the biggest thing mentioned along with the fear name is the engine fires that's what the typical enthusiasts thing said for this car those only happened in the cars from the first few months of production in 1984 due to a lack of quality control but that's what stuck around with the fear name looking past that and with the issue resolved the Fiera is still generally known to be a part spin car with low power and not-so-great handling a v6 option was introduced in 1985 but even with that there still wasn't a lot of power being generated well at least not for what was expected from a sports car it wasn't until 1988 that the fear got a completely redesigned suspension it had more power squit that at the v6 but that was the final year of production the car finally got to a point where it and marble and Pontiac killed it it sounds like an 88 would be the car to get but actually the exact reasons people disliked the earlier models are what drew me to it the low power was because GM used its infamous four-cylinder Iron Duke engine this engine was put into so many vehicles that parts are readily available and really cheap it's possibly you see a car with its engine every day in the Grumman llv the poor handling is great because the front suspension is from a Chevy Chevette in the rear suspension for the fearow is actually the front suspension from Pontiac Phoenix turned 180 degrees around again since multiple vehicles use the same parts they can be found anywhere for very little this is any rod mechanic's dream but aside from monetary reasons the Fiero is objectively interesting it is the only mass-produced mid-engine car ever made in America and probably ever will be made sure there are the low volume cars like the Ford GT or the Falcon f7 but nothing like a typical car production scale the furo is the only one it was also one huge experiment in manufacturing every single body panel that you can can be removed by taking off a few bolts even the roof the car had a space frame design which means that every model had the exact same chassis even the fastback in notchback the car also had perfect panel placement brand new at least I know a lot of them don't now but that was because this was the first time that mounting holes for body panels were seen see drilled out after the frame was welded together typically holes were made in the early stamping process but not for this car the body panels were also crazy with some being cast urethane some injection molded plastic and fiberglass for the hood roof and decklid Pontiac was trying everything with this car they were innovating and that is respectable but it wasn't respect that drew me to the Fiero it was love or at least Stockholm Syndrome what do you want to do I want to go into faith maybe it further why you want going to faith my dad had one when I was a very small child and I have many fun memories in that car most of those memories are me playing race car in the garage because it sat there for years with a blown engine but it was still fun it was eventually sold but much much later I bought a super low Milan 1988 GT model in high school and had that for a brief period ultimately I had to get rid of it since it probably wasn't right for it to be a daily driver getting door dings in the school parking lot but that was five years ago and I've got a fear of shape a void in my heart and needs to be filled you know what that's probably what matters most I love it and it's me who's buying it strangers opinions shouldn't dictate what your car is or how you make it look it's your own choice and what makes you happy will never be wrong but excluding all of that James why is this so cool pop-up frigging headlights but also one huge factor that this car in particular had was that it was a single owner no rest all original 99% completes and was only 100 dollars I could not have wished for anything better the only bad thing was that the car had been sitting for 20 years untouched in the dirt where rubber rotted and mulched not to mention falling tree branches causing cracks and dents but it was perfect I mean it clearly wasn't perfect but it was Bruce the lovely gentleman I bought the car from was originally asking $800 but from what he told me everyone that asked about it either wanted it for a parts or to scrap I was the only one that wanted to do right to it and I guess he liked that because after talking about what my plans would be for it and before I even asked about the price he told me I'd have it for $100 I couldn't have said no the car was rough as I'm sure you can see it was really sad to see in the shape but I get it the car actually belonged to Bruce's wife Suzanne she bought a brand new in 1985 and it was her daily eventually kids happen Bruce went overseas for work so a bigger car had to be purchased for the growing family leaving this car forgotten about it also probably didn't help that the front right brake locked up so it couldn't be driven even if they wanted to so here it said for a very long time until now on one Saturday morning when all of our schedules were clear my dad girlfriend and I drove up to North of Houston to go pick it up it took a lot to get it unstuck from the mud as I'm sure you saw but after a lot of fighting we finally got it out of there and onto the road an electric winch would have been immensely helpful here but we worked what we had and eventually got it up so after exchanging emails numbers money in the title we were on our way home before I go on I want to make it clear that I by no means consider myself very skilled at working on cars at least not at the time of filming this episode on the mechanical side of things I've done typical brake pad changes I did a brake helper rebuild on my old Zr 7s carburetor rebuilds from multiple motorcycles I replaced the power steering pump on my own 3000 GT and putting a complete exhaust system for my dad's mr2 all things that were done in one afternoon I've done lots of little things but definitely not a whole car I felt like I was almost in over my head with this fear project but that's kind of the point of the video series to show what you can expect out of your first project car and also to show you what a novice is capable of and this novice is capable of not making sure their wheels are straight it's just cosmetic so moving on from that little mishap the Fiero is finally here and I can now take a really good look at it clearly the car is really dirty and that's no surprise there is mold everywhere but looking a little closer the paint's definitely fading and even chipping in some spots up at the front the bumper cover is warped in drooping on the driver's side to be clear that is how it was when it was sitting and when we bought it and not because of the mishap that happened on the trailer though that did take out a small chunk on the lower lip but that's nothing a little fiberglass can't fix the sale panel plastic is cracked along with the window rubber to the small spoiler thing and the luggage rack has also been bent in that was from a falling tree branch according to Bruce there's little stuff like Vince being clogged in some hairline cracks in the glass but the absolute worst thing is probably the interior it's filthy I mean really really filthy there's mold all over the door panel the upholstery is falling apart there's filth on the ground the headliner is molding falling down there's god-knows-what on the steering wheel and the passenger side is just as bad at the driver's however on a positive note all of the interior components are here be it dirty but still all accounted for so that's nice the interior will have an episode all for itself it will definitely need it moving on to the back you can see the engine bay is a little messy a squirrel apparently made a home in the battery tray but luckily it looks like no wires were chewed just a lot of leaves a lot if not all rubber pieces are shot like these vacuum lines right here when good things oppressively enough is that there's oil in the engine now whether it's gone to sludge or not I can't really tell but it's better than it being empty and possibly having a rusty bottom end I put the front it was dirty but everything was here all headlights motors even the jack and spare tire this car is overall pretty rough but I think I can get this car cleaned up relatively easily hopefully and running properly I know definitely deserves it the next day I got to work the first thing I need to do is jack up the car but there's an issue since all the tires are either flat or falling off the car is extremely low it also doesn't help that it's on soft ground the jacking points on either side are not accessible and neither is the subframe in the back which is another OM specified jacking location but I ended up having to do was get a jack and block of wood up underneath the end of one of the frame rails that goes up which gave me enough room Dan jack up the subframe from there and after that I was able to add a jack stand on the driver's side then I was able to jack up the frame rail with even larger block of wood it's like a jack up the other side of the car in order to add the last jack stand for the back and then I jacked up from the side jacking point so I could get a place where I could put a jack above the front frame rail in order to added stand up in the front subframe I did the exact same on the other side but you used stacks of wood to hold up the subframe since I couldn't find another jack stand there was so much jackin holy crap you would think this is a middle school boys bedroom but finally the Fiera was up the first thing I wanted to take care of was this nasty mold and dirt covering the entire outside of the car so my brother Coby and I quickly got to work [Music] the reason for jacking the car up and then washing it is because more than likely if we washed it beforehand it would have made the ground too soft in a wet basically mud and then jacking it up it would have been nearly impossible sorry for the water drops on the lens I didn't realize that until I started editing but hey the car looks great well maybe not great but a heck of a lot better there is obviously clear coat fading and it looks like that car had been previously painted also at some parts and now the outer layer is chipping off the trim paint on the back is chipping off to the lower section of the car looks fantastic and almost brand new this is probably because it didn't receive a lot of sunlight because it's curving inward as it goes down the top is looking rough but that's okay I can definitely see the light of end of the tunnel and I couldn't be more excited to work on this the first thing I wanted to tackle after washing that car was cleaning out the engine compartment I already showed you how messy it was so you know what I'm dealing with it was mainly just pulling out all the leaves dirt and twigs by hand and then going over the whole thing with a shopback after that it was a lot better to look at besides the battery and everything was there and nothing looked broken except the battery tray it was completely rusted out and that is due to the moisture trap that was all of those leaves and dirt it also may or may not have been overlooked at a later point in this series and caused problems but either way the back looks okay now I then went to work on the interior I wasn't going to deal with a mold at this point but I did want to clean out some of the dirt and trash so with the same shop vac I did my best to get everything the upholstery was so gone in the seats that it was just falling off and getting sucked up but after a bit of work it was better still really gross but better I left the doors open for a bit to try to get some airflow in there to help with the humidity and after that I didn't work on the car for a whole week it's been about a week since I've done any work on the Fiero and that is because there isn't really much I can do at this point currently the Fiero is on sloping soft ground I don't want to work on actually trying to get it started until it's on the heart of level ground so once I get new tires on it I can go in and roll into my barn and take care of that but one of the issues I've been having over the past week is trying to get the lug nuts off let me show you what the problem is here is the rear driver's side wheel when this car was dirty and covered in mud I thought that these were just regular lug nuts and some of them are but these are just actually plastic caps for the lug nuts so I thought that was no issue but then I came across these right here these are some anti-theft lug nuts but very very strange kind so what I first noticed about these was that they were five spline lug nuts most today that you find our only six spline so I thought that was very weird but the second thing I noticed is that it's really really wide I did buy a set of lug nut extractors to try to pull this out from O'Reilly but the large diameter they had was about three quarters of an inch these are a little bit bigger at about a little over 0.8 inches so that was kind of strange - but then upon further inspection I realized that not only are they five spline but they're also not evenly spaced and that each notch is a different length I don't know if it's easy to tell but it's just a very very strange lug nut after a bit of searching around I found out that this weird lug nut is actually an OEM part so what I ended up doing was buying this right here this is a specialty lug nut extractor made by Irwin this single piece cost me about $20 from Amazon a little more than that actually I have actually already tried this on this lug nut and it did get it off do with the use of a lot of penetrating fluid it was able to come off really easily so now I need to go ahead and take off the other lug nuts at least loosen them up not take them off completely until the tires get here but do this for every single wheel it wasn't until five months after I filmed this that Bruce texted me asking if I wanted the key oh well the rear wheel was taken off to get a better look at the rotors and calipers I didn't have any luck getting them to move and it also started raining so I decided to call it a day the next day was equally as gloomy but the tires arrived and if you look closely these are actually trailer tires and don't worry they are temporary this is the lowest trim of the fear there was and it has the lowest option wheels which are 13 inches in diameter not only is that tiny but the smallest size on modern cars is pretty much fifteen inches in diameter with maybe a few outliers but proper tires for this size wheel are a little pricey and these trailer tires are only $30 a piece not bad but again they are not long term just enough to get the car rolling around on my backyard and maybe you're on my neighbourhood for a few test drives once we got the wheels and tires loaded up we brought them down to our favorite tire shop Apolo tire once they are method we can start the process of bolting them up well almost I haven't really had a chance to take a good look at a suspension component yet they're all ok ish there is surface rust on almost everything but the shocks aren't rotted through or anything like that so that's good the bushings are rotted through however and it's the same story on every corner of the car before I put the wheels on I have to actually make sure that the rotors can spin and I know that they can't already this one is actually the only one that spins freely the passenger side was the one that had these seized caliper so that one is still frozen shut and then the back two wheels are also not wanting to move either so before I can put the wheels on and got to take care of this first after taking off the ebrake return spring I was able to get access to the Torx bolts that hold the caliper in place however due to the fact that these bolts are pretty shallow and I also used an allen drive and I stripped the lower bolt I ended up having to use a big C clamp to compress the piston it's not super free but it probably has to do the fact that it's still or that it is coupled to the transmission so I won't be as smooth as the one up there was freely rotating but it's smooth and that's it probably get to pushing into the barn but with that wheel free the entire left side is spinning freely so I can go ahead and attach the wheels so I did manage to get the other rear wheel free off camera but the tough part was working on the front C's caliper that I mentioned earlier so I did manage to get the bolts on that hold the caliper to the bracket way and I got this slid over a little bit I've been going at it with a hammer so it's half way off and I finally realized after just about half an hour working at it that I think's night on the brake line so I've gotta take this off and it's then hopefully by that point and going get it off and then finally roll it into the barn so I'm gonna do that real quick [Applause] so the camera just died so I'm using my iPhone now but as you can see the caliper is finally off and I'm very happy about that because it finally spins [Music] [Music] so the Pharaoh is finally rolling around and finally here I may have had to move my brother's project out of here but he's is actually running and driving so it's fine the car is rough no doubt about it it's a hell of a lot better than lots of other project cars starting points but I've still got my work cut out for me I am so excited to work on this car and get it back on the road but that is going to take some time for now we're gonna call it a day and close of what will be the fear as well the next few months so until next time I'll see you guys later [Music]

Channel: Ronald Finger

Views: 3,492,025

Rating: 4.8400826 out of 5

Keywords: pontiac, fiero, restoration, resurection, revival, tires, brakes, car, obama, sitting, 20 years, mud, fingerprints workshop, fingerprintsworkshop

Id: fMfqLtfsIj0

Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 14 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/matchboxcody]

I WOULD WALK 500 MILES AND I WOULD WALK 500 MORE

[u/middlefingerboss]

The video is finally out! I posted about this car when I first got it and also a few days ago. I put a lot of work into this video and I really hope you guys enjoy it.

[u/shitfeast]

Thanks for starting a solid quality blog for it. A lot of folks on here try to pass off there "project car videos" where it's just 20 minutes of absolutely nothing and two minutes about how they unboxed new parts. keep it up!

[u/Snowspyd3r]

Subscribed. Looking forward to seeing it unfold

[u/KaOsGypsy]

Subscribed, this will be project car 4, after the Talon, Explorer and Camaro... so in perhaps 30-40 years :(

[u/B_Hoeksema85]

The fact that you can pull a car that’s been sitting in the dirt for 20 years and it isn’t a pile of rust makes me incredibly jealous, my 85 monte sat outside for 4 years and the car was rotten to the core by the time I got it