Guy Fiero

Mr. Saturn

Guy Fiero

This story starts like many others: Heartbreak.

I mentioned in the Mr. Saturn page that he helped me through a breakup at some point, which is true, however he wasn't the only one.

In times like these, a man may make some changes in his life to get his mind off things. Some will hit the gym, others may steal a decorative blue instrument from a restaurant...

As for me, I decided the best course of action was to buy a really cool, completely impractical car from the 80s.

Now, why a Fiero? Just to address the elephant in the room, yes, of course I watched Ronald Finger's Fiero Restoration, and it was indeed my introduction to the Fiero. However, before you label me a basic bitch & fake Fiero fan, I really do think the Fiero is quite an interesting car.

In many ways, the Fiero is the "Proto-Saturn". It pioneered the same spaceframe construction and plastic body panels that the early Saturns became known for.

It was also a car that shouldn't have existed. They were making some pretty major innovations on a shoestring budget (and it shows in many places).

The Fiero was the only mid-engined car mass-produced in America, until the C8 Corvette came out at least. GM executives fought this car every step of the way (more evidence that GM is conditioned to kill everything good in the world, lest we forget the EV1). Despite everything, the Fiero managed to make it to dealerships, though not without some scars. Just about every shortcoming on this car is thanks to GM's meddling. In a way, you can hardly blame it.

Enough about Fieros in general, what about my Fiero?

After some searching on Facebook Marketplace, I found a car that was in less than perfect condition (typical for Fieros if you know them). However, it was well within my price range, so I decided to go for it anyways.

That guy ghosted me BUT THEN I found an absolutely gorgeous example:

This is a 1984 Fiero SE, with the 2.5L "Iron Duke" I4, paired with the 4-speed manual transmission. Anybody who knows about these cars will recognize how uncommon this is. Just about every Fiero nowadays, especially the red ones, have completely destroyed paint.

Those same people will also recognize this as the original Amazon Fire car, as this was the model that just loved bursting into flames, causing the famous mass-recall that killed the Fiero.

They even gave owners this super-slick sticker to place above the gear shift, just to remind you of the mortal danger you are presently in.

If you're big into GM history, you may even recognize the Iron Duke as the same engine that powered the Grumman LLV, more widely known as the USPS Mail Truck.

Obviously I had to have it. It was quite a bit more money than my first choice, but through the power of some Quick Math I decided that it would probably be cheaper than getting a crappy one repainted.

Not only that, but the guy seemed pretty legit as well. He made a point to mention that he was a professional mechanic, so I was feeling pretty good.

After getting the car, I started taking note of all the issues. The "must-haves" were quite small, so I was still feeling good. As well as noting down all the small issues, there were a couple Fiero Things that I wanted to check on as well. First up, the air vents

Oh God The Air Vents

One of the big Fiero problems is the blower motor for the HVAC. For the lower speeds, there's a resistor in the wind tunnel that glows red hot. Debris likes to collect in here, promptly setting the car on fire.

It's a good thing that I checked this too, as the entire wind tunnel was full of MOUSE NESTS!

Obviously, you never want to find evidence of rodents in your recently-purchased vehicle, especially in the system that fills the cabin with the air that you use for breathing. However, this was the only evidence I could find, so I suited up and dove in.

Obviously the entire dashboard had to come out for this, which is annoying but surprisingly not too bad on the Fiero. Just a couple bolts and the whole thing just lifts right out, which compared to most other cars is quite easy indeed.

Indeed the vents were completely clogged with mouse nests. Not ideal, but at least now I can clean them out and put that whole mess behind us. Right?

WRONG!

As it turns out, the rodents had been on the other side of the firewall as well, and the entire airbox was also full of nests. Not only that, but the heater core was clogged with them as well, so the entire thing had to come out. I sacrificed my sanity, both the heater core hoses, and my perfect "no coolant spilled on the shop floor" record, but at least that entire mess is behind us. What's next?

Oh God The Brakes

The main "must-have" that I knew about getting into this was that the brake lines were just about rotted through. Not a big deal, I replaced all the brake lines on Mr. Saturn, this will be nothing.

As a little treat to myself, I decided to spring for some extremely nice pre-bent brake lines, so they should just bolt right into the car. Now if you know anything about working on cars, then you know that the word "should" means absolutely nothing in this world. As such, the lines most certainly did not just bolt right into the car.

This whole rigmarole did reveal a couple of interesting things about this car, though.

Remember our professional mechanic friend? Turns out one of the lines had already blown out, and he decided that it was acceptable to replace just that one instead of doing all of them. Doesn't seem super professional to me, but okay.

Now this oversight was entirely my fault. The car had two lines running to the back, one on each side. I made the natural assumption that these were for the left and right rear brakes. However, upon replacing them, I learned that both rear brakes share a single brake line, and the other line is actually for the clutch. Somehow, I had gotten lost in all the other weirdness of the Fiero and completely forgotten that this car is, in fact, mid-engined. Including the transmission.

Obviously the brake line kit did not come with replacement clutch lines. I could've bought a replacement for that too, but a quick look at The Fiero Store revealed a $200 price tag for the privilege.

I decided I would practice float shifting instead.

Unfortunately, due to past trauma involving Mr. Saturn and bleeding his brakes, I put off bleeding the Fiero's brakes for quite a while. In fact, between finishing installing the brake lines and actually bleeding them I procrastinated for about 5 months!

After my award-winning procrastination session, the time finally came to bleed the brakes. Generally, brake lines hold fluid better when the fittings are tight, so I went around the car and checked them all to make sure they were. Good thing too, because both of the front calipers were loose!

Generally this is an incredibly easy fix, at least until you're tightening the bolt and it suddenly gets loose.

The threads inside the front left caliper completely stripped out. This is quite bad, and meant I now had to buy new calipers. Great.

One RockAuto shopping spree later and we're finally back at it. I managed to install the new calipers without destroying them this time, and so came the fun part. Bleeding the brakes.

In theory, brake bleeding is quite simple. Hydraulic systems (like the brakes) operate on the principle that fluids cannot be compressed, so any force applied is transferred straight through them. Of course, this only works if there's no air in the brake lines, as air is famously extremely compressible. So we bleed the brake lines to get all the air out, that way the system can operate to its maximum potential.

Doesn't sound too bad right? Wrong. Mr. Saturn famously refused to bleed, causing many nights of trauma. Despite this, I was sure that the Fiero would be different, and so I opted for the lowest-tech bleeding method known to man. I like to call it "Stick A Clear Tube Attached To the Caliper In A Bottle Full Of Brake Fluid and Pump The Brakes Until You Don't See Air Anymore: The Game".

When bleeding brakes, you generally start with the longest brake line. This isn't usually a problem, it just might take a while. However it can become a problem if you don't properly keep an eye on the master cylinder, and run out of brake fluid.

You Do Not want the master cylinder to run out of brake fluid. Not only does this introduce air back into the system, defeating the entire point, but it introduces air into the very start of the system. This essentially erases any progress you've made, since you now have to bleed the entire line again to get all the air out (in addition to bleeding the master cylinder itself).

Needless to say, this was Not Pleasing. However, I soldiered on regardless. I bled both the rear brakes, and moved on to the front left. This one was being a bit stubborn, so I decided to employ the pressure bleeder.

The pressure bleeder, as the name suggests, works by forcing brake fluid (or air) into the master cylinder, pressurizing the system and forcing the fluid (and air) out of the caliper. This actually worked quite well, and within seconds there were no more air bubbles. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the driver's side. There was actually remarkably little flow, so I figured I'd get in the car and pump the brakes a little while running the pressure bleeder.

This definitely did the trick.

In fact, it did the trick so well that it managed to completely empty the master cylinder within a minute. That's right, it happened again.

If I was displeased the first time, then falling victim to the same thing again was downright upsetting. At this point, I decided to call it a night and come back tomorrow.

The next day, I came back and started by bleeding the master cylinder again. This wasn't too painful thankfully, and eventually it stopped producing bubbles. At that point, I could finally move on to bleeding the last line. Of course, it decided to be stubborn again, and after a while I decided to use the pressure bleeder again (being much more careful this time). Strangely enough, it worked similarly to how it did on the passenger side, and within seconds it was bled.

Now obviously, before I can call everything good I need to test the brakes. You can only do so much on a lift, so I decided to get the car back on its wheels for the first time in months and take it around the driveway.

For no reason other than ensuring that the brakes were in tip-top shape, I decided that the best testing method would be to dump the clutch, rev it to the moon, then slam on the brakes. For science.

At this moment, it felt like the car had revealed itself to me. Keep in mind that I still have never actually driven the car beyond going around the driveway, meaning up until this point I had never had the opportunity (or excuse) to really give it the beans.

It was glorious. The engine came to life, the wheels lit up, and it screeched to a halt even faster than it got going. Despite being quite possibly the shortest pull in history, I was hooked. This was great motivation to finally take care of the last system preventing this car from being road legal, the cooling system.

Oh God The Cooling System

Remember when I had to pull the heater core? As a result of that, I obviously had to top up the coolant again. Taking off the coolant fill cap, I noticed that it looked a little grimy, so I decided to take a closer look.

Big Mistake.

WHAT IN THE LORD'S NAME IS THAT

As far as I can tell, the most likely story is that our good mechanic buddy decided that instead of running coolant, he would run hydrochloric acid.

Whatever, how do we fix this. Obviously the entire cooling system needs to be flushed, many times. The thermostat housing also needs a complete refurbish, since it's covered in rust.

Naturally, I got right to work.

Alright, I procrastinated for a while then I got right to work. Using a bench grinder with a wire wheel attachment I knocked back the rust on the outside of the thermostat housing, then used a brass brush to give the inside the best chances of survival.

Using a new paper gasket from The Fiero Store, I glued the hell out of both mating surfaces with RTV, stuck them together, then spent the next two hours fighting to get the lower bolt installed. At least it was finally done.

For the coolant flush, I went down to the auto parts store and decided that I would try to improve my chances of success by investing in a dedicated "coolant flush" solution. It's a small bottle that you dump in alongside the water, but for the $13 I paid it had better pack a pretty good punch.

So the day has arrived. I dumped in my entire bottle of coolant flush, filled the system with water until it wouldn't take anymore, and started the engine

Immediately things go south

Coolant is gushing out of the thermostat housing. Coolant spilling isn't necessarily a problem, since I hadn't put the cap back on yet. What is a problem is that putting the cap back on didn't make it stop. I managed about a minute of "flushing" before having to kill the engine.

Casualties included my now shattered "no coolant spilled on the shop floor" record, my sanity, and worst of all, my entire $13 bottle of coolant flush that went into stripping the floor of all oils and contaminants.

This is what broke me. I pulled the thermostat housing back off, reapplied the RTV with no gasket now, threw everything back together, and left it to cure.

Then we proceeded to get hit with the biggest snowstorm of the season, with temperatures in the negatives for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, this kills any coolant flushing plans, as the process heavily depends on the assumption that the water will not freeze.

Months go by, and I do not touch the car. It's much too cold, and I'm much too downtrodden to even think about tinkering with this damn thermostat housing.

But eventually, the weather warms up, and I'm feeling renewed. The RTV I put on several months ago is most likely cured by now, so I decided to take another crack at flushing the cooling system. I bought another $13 bottle of coolant flush since I was quite impressed with what it managed to do with just a minute of flushing (though smartly, I did not dump it into the cooling system just yet). I topped the cooling system back up with water, and started the engine.

At the very least, it wasn't gushing coolant anymore, but it was still dripping. Dammit.

At this point, I decided to formulate a new angle of attack. Clearly, there's something wrong with the thermostat housing for it to keep leaking. On the Fiero, the surface where the thermostat housing mates to the engine is notorious for warping, causing a bad seal.

The idea is to apply JB weld to the sealing surface to add some material back, then sand it completely flat. This should create a new sealing surface that's much stronger than RTV just trying its best.

Now I haven't exactly done this yet, so as of writing the Fiero still has a crappy cooling system. Oops.

On top of all these mechanically important things, there is also one major issue that needs to be resolved.

Oh God The Radio.

The Fiero came with its original Delco GM radio, featuring AM/FM and a bare-bones tape deck that doesn't even feature auto-reverse. How glamorous.

For authenticity (and love of VFDs), I wanted to keep this radio around. Unfortunately, it had a few major problems.

First of all, it did not keep time. You could set the clock, come back 10 minutes later, and it would already be behind a couple minutes.

Second, the radio did not tune. Or rather, it didn't tune to 99% of the radio spectrum. Somehow, it can only flip between the same two stations.

Thirdly, the tape deck does not work. This is the most normal issue, as rubber generally does not enjoy sitting in a hot car for 40 years.

Finally, it sounded a bit distorted. Almost like blown out speakers, but different enough to make the radio itself suspect.

So obviously I've got my work cut out for me, but I figured with some new belts and a recap it would be just fine. Now I've never exactly done a recap job or fully refurbished a tape deck, but I'm sure it'll be fine.

Obviously, the best place to start is by tearing the radio apart. This was a horrible mistake. As it turns out, the psychopaths at Delco decided that this radio and its whopping 5 PCBs needed to be mounted every which way and secured with nothing more than ribbon cables, a thin metal cage, and hope.

The hope quickly disappeared, followed shortly by the thin metal cage, leaving just ribbon cables holding this mess of PCBs together.

Oh My Goodness Gracious.

So that was a bit trickier than I was hoping, and I'm not entirely sure how I'll be getting it back together, but that is a future problem. Right now, I need to deal with these capacitors.

I've never put together a capacitor kit before, but I knew that the voltage needed to be equal or higher, the capacitance needed to be the same, and they needed to physically fit. So armed with this knowledge, I went through the entire radio and noted down each capacitor with its voltage, capacitance, and dimensions. This took quite a while, but afterwards I had a full list of what I'd need to replace every single 40 year old cap in this radio. Followed by an evening browsing Mouser, I had a box full of capacitors on the way.

In the meantime, I figured I'd tackle the tape deck. I had even less of an idea what I was doing here, so for the main belt I found a measurement online that seemed about right. For the tires I just measured the inner diameter, outer diameter, and thickness, then ordered the closest matches I could find. Finally, I went through the mechanism and dropped a touch of lithium grease on anything that moved, which seemed to help with tape loading and ejecting.

After a few days, my Mouser order came in. I decided to start with the amplifier board, as it's relatively small and usually a problem on these radios. This went off without a hitch, so I moved onto the other boards in the radio.

These did not go off without a hitch.

I did most of my ordering correctly, but as it turns out I missed one cap on the main board, and one on the radio board. This is highly disappointing, I guess I won't be testing the radio today.

While waiting for my second Mouser order to come in, my tape deck parts arrived. The belt and one of the tires fit perfectly, but the rest were too big. Turns out eyeballing it isn't a great strategy.

Before I could figure out what to do with the tape deck, my Mouser order came in. I soldered in the two caps and put the radio back together, which was a disaster in its own right. Given the psychotic construction of this radio, I considered only having three screws leftover on my bench a win.

I was sure that, assuming the radio didn't explode from a mistake on my part, my efforts would at least fix something. What I wasn't expecting was no change whatsoever. That's right, it still didn't keep time, it still didn't tune to stations, and it still didn't sound great.

At this point, I was at a loss. I had no idea what was wrong with this radio, and I had begun to look into replacement options. This is when a glorious opportunity presented itself to me.

Dad's 1991 Chevrolet Caprice Classic.

Dad had owned this car since he was a young hooligan, and so it had many young hooligan modifications. Being a young hooligan myself, I was very interested in these, not the least of which being the aftermarket Sony CDX-GT400 CD head unit.

Now I was very hesitant about harvesting parts from my dad's pride and joy, but as it turns out, my dad had grown into a purist and already wanted to reinstall the original head unit anyways, so he had no problem letting me have the Sony for my rustbucket.

This was very exciting, I've been eyeing that Sony radio since I was a kid. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, so it's very cool to finally have my turn with it.

Or at least, it will be cool. One very important factor is that it's still stranded in the Caprice. For it to come out, a good chunk of the dashboard has to come out with it, and so it isn't exactly free just yet. It should be real soon, because I'll be damned if I'm driving a car with no radio.

So yes, even as I'm writing this the Fiero is still not on the road. Maybe one day.