88 Fireo potential?

NYSpeed Automotive
13

First, http://www.fiero.nl/cgi-bin/fiero/Ultimate.cgi?action=intro is your best friend if you own a Fiero. Such a wealth of information.

Things to look for on a northern car.

  1. The cradle. Get under there and look at the cradle itself as well as the mounting points. I’ve seen the cradles rust so bad they were almost falling out of the car. At the rear mounting point you’ll see that the bolts go into the frame. Inside that frame rail is a little welded piece that it threads into. After all those years you’ll go to remove the cradle bolts, the weld will snap, and the bolt will just spin and spin. At this point two things happen.
    A: The person knows Fieros, takes off the rear bumper, and uses a plumber wrench to grab reaching down the frame rail.
    B: The person doesn’t know Fieros, cuts a hole in the frame, and grabs it with vice grips. Now they’ve weaked it and well as introduced a great place for rust to get worse.

  2. Fuel tank. They’re not a lot of fun to change and tend to rust right around where the gas tank strap holds the tank up.

As for the 4 banger, it’s the iron duke. I personally wouldn’t try building one up but I know people who have. There’s not a lot of aftermarket so you’d be doing everything from scratch. Your real potential is yanking that boat anchor out and dropping in one of many documented swaps. 3.1, 3.4, 3.8, 3.8 supercharged, 4.9 caddy, 4.5 caddy, and of course the good old 350 SBC.

If it’s standard I’m pretty sure the 4 only came with the 5 speed isuzu trans. The real sought after trans is the 5 speed getrag that came in the 86.5 to 88 V6’s. The 5 speed getrag for the Fiero was specific only to the Fiero despite GM having a 5 speed Getrag in lots of V6 cars of that era. You can buy a kit to convert a normal Getrag to a Fiero Getrag and I’ve heard that it’s not a difficult job.

Most parts are interchangable from 84’s to 88’s. The 88 came with a much better rear suspension than the 84-87 but it makes finding parts a bit tougher.

I used to get tons of parts from www.fierostore.com. They ship out of CT so standard ground gets it here in 2-3 days.