Does anyone else out there have a Fierro 600?

[Darryl Castone]

by the way, my rims seemed to have 5 bolts when i looked, not 4.

[dfhtrhjn]

great! Are they a Porsche pattern? They'll be 5x130mm if so,

[Darryl Castone]

it's the second pattern with the 5 bolt star figure.
im not sure if it's porshe or not. btw, i uploaded 5 videos total.

[Darryl Castone]

As i read through some of my car papers (history stuff with buying the car) I'm seeing stuff about my column and I'll just list it off randomly.
these are from the fierro 600 parts checklist.
1-GM tilt steering column
2-steering column end (VW) welded to GM
(25 mins later)
OH! i am now reading a copy of a magazine i have that featured the fierro 600 (5 pages) and my GM tilt column is from a Pontiac Grand Prix. Reason why is because that column is one of few available to have two U-joints instead of one. Whatever the hell that means in mechanic language.. (why do i even own such a car)
Joe (Joseph Fierro) says it provides plenty of room for the driver without having to move the steering box.

so yeah...
i went back to the MOMO website and i saw the Pontiac HUB selections.. there's only two choices. the #2401 model hub for the Fiero column & then the Model# 2401 for all pontiac cars from 1969-1995! the problem is it doesn't state if it works for a pontiac tilt steering wheel or not.
i will call a MOMO dealer in the morning, and i sent them an email too, but maybe one of you guys might have an answer as well?

[Darryl Castone]

yeah so i got a store (who assumed i bought my hub from them) to accept my wrong hub in exchange for the pontiac 69-95 HUB!
apparently pontiac used the same column for 26 years before the whole airbag thing in the mid 90s.
by the way these are my seats




BY THE WAY
if you watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWF484q7WyQ&NR=1
you'll notice there was a ticking noise. it was a small red ticking & blinking light at the bottom left of my dashboard. you can hear it in this video, and once the car was turned off, about 10 seconds later it drastically slowed down then stopped. i was revving the engine in neutral.

[dfhtrhjn]

I saw the videos, that's a great looking paint job, I'll have to ask what paint you used since I'll be painting mine next year.

The seats you've got look striking like the ones I have, I bet they'll fit no problem. If they're anything like mine, then they'll be very comfortable. I've driven 150 mile stretches pretty easily in them.

Does that steering hub fit?

So about that ticking... I don't have a red light on the lower left, but I have one in the upper left with a switch next to it (dash pic on previous page); it's the windshield wiper switch on mine. Do your wipers work? The ticking sounds like a relay from the video but it's hard to tell. How much of your interior do you have working? You should snap a couple pictures of your switches, I may be able to help you if you need it. Also, you'll need two different sizes of wiper blades for good coverage on the drivers side.

I've almost got the gas heater working! I'm rebuilding one right now. It's a BN2 VW/Porsche heater, it'll fit under the passenger side dash and feed into the two existing ducts that heat your windows. It'll turn your car into a sauna so you won't have to worry about getting cold.



Also about the seats, if you car is like mine then you'll have to figure out where to mount seat belts... mine had no place for that so I used 4-point harnesses and bolted the two shoulder straps into the crossbeam of the cage behind the seats. I took my car in for a valve adjust so when I get it back I'll show you what I mean.

[Darryl Castone]

Wow, that heater goes inside the dash on the passenger side?
or on the passenger side, on the floor, where their feet would normally rest?
it looks huge, but maybe that's just the picture close up.
i'm pretty sure my seats will fit. i think my nightmare of a mechanic was just being lazy.

where can i get these 3 spoke center cap things for my true spoke wheels?

i want wheels Just like that if not gottis.
i like how it has that center cap, i've seen those on shelby cobras and ferrari's

[dfhtrhjn]

Yea, the heater is pretty small, without the poop hanging off it it's probably 14 inches long and 5 inches wide. I'm putting it up under the dash right up at the top by the front wall. You can't see it or kick it.

As for the wheels, you'll probably have to get a cap for the make of your wheels, I'm not sure any other cap will fit. You could get Ferrari wheels of that era to complete the look of your car, that would be the best. If you're on a budget you could order some caps online and create an adapter ring to fit them into your wheels. It may be worth looking into Dayton wheels because of how they're mounted.

What are the dimensions of your wheels anyway? are they 15 inch? what tires sizes are you using? If you switch to drop spindles in front you'll be able to get 17's to fit all around without the nose of your car being too high. 17's afford you more street tire options as well.

[Darryl Castone]

As for tires, i have 14''x7'' in the front & 14''x8'' in the back.
And i think im using reversed true spoke wheels and i know i have BF goodrich Radial T/A's.
apparently i shouldn't go no wider than 7'' in the front, or any larger than 60 series tires in front(50 series rub).
I've been watching youtube videos of supercharged Beetle engines.
i dunno how it's done but i sure would love to do it to my car. prob' would give me horrible mileage though.

hey man, upload some vids of you driving and the engine revving.

[BAJA-IT]

Wow, that heater goes inside the dash on the passenger side?
or on the passenger side, on the floor, where their feet would normally rest?
it looks huge, but maybe that's just the picture close up.
i'm pretty sure my seats will fit. i think my nightmare of a mechanic was just being lazy.

where can i get these 3 spoke center cap things for my true spoke wheels?

i want wheels Just like that if not gottis.
i like how it has that center cap, i've seen those on shelby cobras and ferrari's

You might try Dayton Wire Wheels for three ear center caps.
http://www.daytonwirewheels.com/accessories.html

[dfhtrhjn]

I took a video of the car's engine but it's on my other camera and I haven't watched it yet. I hope it didn't screw the microphone the way did to my iphone. I'll try and post it tonight if it's watchable.

This is how I ended up mounting the forward facing camera:



And the view from the camera:



And finally that ceiling light I was talking about:



I took some images and offset measurements for the largest wheels you can fit under your fenders without rubbing (they're on the other cam as well, I'll get them tonight). I don't know who told you to not go wider than 7'' in front; having rallied the car, 9-10 wide in front works really well because the car is so light. I had your same wheels in 4 lug and took them off after the first day of hard cornering.

[dfhtrhjn]

The video worked, here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtDvIrXDlWc

[Darryl Castone]

Wow dude, your engine is nuts.
So i have a few Questions.
I need new floor pans. it has some small holes in it and i think i should totally replace them.
could i go to a sheet metal shop and have them cut me a thick ass sheet into a shape i need or else what exact floor pans does it use?

Also, how much would i have to pay you for one of your VW/Porsche heaters? you're using a gas heater, is there one that's strictly electric? what i plan on doing is using the front spare tire space to place the heater and run hoses to the middle of my console and use the passenger dash space to install a modern radio, and a small glove/document compartment.

I'm going to completely remove that damned cockpit ceiling radio and the black piece it's attached to. i want ALL my head space!

And finally, how much did your engine cost you?
mine is so rusty looking. yours is shiny and it looks brand new.
mine sounds powerful but, that's about it.
and how did you get 200+ hp? did you buy it that way or what did you do to modify it.
and what exhaust syst are you using? your engine sounds like a jaguars roar where mine is rough and lion like. lol
my neighbor is saying i should consider sacrificing the back space to install a bigger engine but i think it would require chassis work and I'm not at all doing all that work (esp since bigger engine means less MPG).
i wanna get my engine like yours.

i installed my new steering wheel. it made the car 10x hotter.

[dfhtrhjn]

Thanks, it's the first engine I've built top to bottom.

So you have metal floors? Except for the cage and stuff , my car is fiberglass... I think you have vw beetle floors. If I were you, I'd buy these http://www.vwinnovations.com/bug.html#floor that way you never have to worry about rust.

I paid $235 + shipping for the working gas heater I have and it's scorching hot. I have two others I'm fixing. I have an electric one under the dash, I'll post a pic, they're never hot enough because you can only give them 12v, they suck up a ton of juice, and cost like $200; totally not worth it. Big mistake on my part. Your best bet is to search thesamba and get a working heater like mine, a B2 or a BN2. I haven't put mine in yet, maybe this weekend, but I'll show you how it can fit so you have to do less drilling and stuff in your trunk.

I had that center cockpit light thing out for a while but my cage isn't that great looking so I ended up putting it back.

So the engine was mostly a cb performance 200hp kit with stuff changed out. Here's mostly what I got: http://www.cbperformance.com/catalog.asp?ProductID=1781
It gets more complicated after that, The big ticket items are:

I've got better heads which makes a big difference, I'm using the sidewinder exhaust which is the only merged comp exhaust that'll fit under there.
I ported and polished the intake manifolds to perfectly match the port and polish on the heads which also impacts hp.
I changed the cam out for a fk8 so I could get more low end power; the cam in the kit (87) is pretty wild for where I live. It would have been great for the strip or track but not so great for downtown.
I've also got like 10.5:1 compression so I can just barely get away with premium gas (92 octane in Oregon)
I ended up going with the Kennedy stage 3 clutch, and a custom transmission with a host of things to handle the power. I can get into that later if need be.

I built the engine myself. I'd say it costs about 6-7k in parts for engine, trans, oil cooling, carbs, tin and all. It would cost a lot more if you had someone do it for you. You could just get the cb performance kit out of the box and save some money. Hope that helped

Say, you should show me your new steering wheel.

oh yea, and fitting a bigger engine... well that's a tough one, there are a couple things you could do but all requires a lot of cutting and welding, lemme think.

[dfhtrhjn]

So here's were I've test fitted the heater. It fits even next to that electric defroster you see there, but I'll be pulling that out so there'll be more space. I'll attach it with brackets to the black flat plastic upper area visible.



I remembered that I never got you wheel specs for what you can fit under that body. Here's are the largest I was able to get under there. You can of course get smaller, but maybe this will give you some guidance when looking at wheels online.

Front exterior offset


Rear exterior offset


And the interior offsets for both front and rear are the same.



I was thinking about the larger engine, you won't have space in the back for a Porsche flat 6 because you'll run into the back of the body where the license plate is. It's already pretty hard to work with the pulley.

You could chop the back where the speakers are and go mid engine using a Porsche 914 transmission, then your engine will be right behind your seats. It's a lot of cutting and welding though.