3 Years ago I wrecked my first car, a 2003 Hyundai Tiburon 4-cyl with a 5-speed. It was a good first car, fun to drive, only had 130k miles when I bought it. It had some bad rust in the undercarriage and me and my dad had gone through and replaced all the brake lines and both lower control arms over the car's time with me. The best thing about the car was that it was a manual. I drove that car all through high-school and into my first year of college.
After I wrecked it I figured (because I was young and dumb) I didn't need a daily driver really. I mean I lived on campus, my friends had cars, I had a meal plan, why did I need a car? Well I love cars. If those two previous sentences seem like trouble to you then you're right on the money. I browsed Craigslist kind of haphazardly in between classes for months until I came across a 1971 SAAB Sonett III. It was a basket case, but the more research I did the more I had to have the car. So I went out and bought it and embarked on a (still on-going) restoration project (which you can check out on my other blog for it at SAABSonett3.blogspot.com).
After about a year and half into the SAAB project I decided "I probably need a daily driver to actually drive myself to work". But being a broke college student I had a really tiny budget, so I did the only logical thing someone in my position would do: I bought a 92 Chevy Camaro for $800. It was purple, rusty, had a slow-as-snot automatic, 225,000+ miles on the clock and tiny little tires... but it drove, and it had a V8 (admittedly only a 305 but still). I drove that thing for close to 10 months before the engine blew up, the previous owner hadn't been huge on maintenance... or oil changes. The poor 305 was very dead.
So I sold the Camaro to a guy who wanted the transmission out of it and with that money, as well as a single paycheck, bought my "1985 Pontiac Fiero".
Obviously the car is the "Fastback" body style... which wasn't available until the 1986 model year, spotted a problem yet? When questioned the previous owner explained they had re-bodied an 85 chassis with an 86 GT fastback body. The VIN number said the car was indeed an 85 with a V6 so I shrugged, I like the fastback body way better anyway. I test drove the car and everything mechanically checked out, manual steering was snappy, no rear flotation from collapsed or failing suspension, transmission shifted smoothly, and the engine sounded great, no exhaust leaks. I crawled all around underneath the car looking for rust or leaks and couldn't find any or other large issues.
The car was listed fairly cheap, so I was willing to overlook a few of little flaws: the headlamp motors didn't work, but all my research on Fiero's showed that was a pretty common problem with a pretty simple fix. The paint work was done by the owner and not the best, but it was a hell of a lot better than the paint had been on the Camaro. The emergency/parking brake was missing the front cable to connect the handle to the actual brake cables, so I'd have to get one of those. The headliner was coming off the headliner board, and the tail light lenses were pretty badly delaminated. All of these things were well inside my skill-set, and the car only had an alleged 70,000 miles, which I now suspect is simply the reading on the odometer he tossed in the car. The tachometer didn't read correctly (idling around allegedly 3k on the dial instead of 1k) but that's not a pressing issue, I can shift on engine noise. So I bought the car and drove it an hour home, during which I realized the car would also need an alignment.
On the way home with the car my girlfriend called me from behind on the highway to inform me that my blinkers didn't work. When I got home I inspected to determine she was half right, one blinker worked, but not the other. Puzzling, I figured it was either a blown bulb or a wiring issue, no big deal.
After a few days working on this carI came to realize that I was truly dealing with the "Franken-Fiero". The guy I had bought it from had stitched this car together from the parts he had lying around. He had 5+ Fieros around his property, so I suspect if any component was bad he went out to the yard and pulled a part off one of his other cars to fix it, which is all fine and dandy if all the cars are the same, but they weren't.
I have an intake manifold off an 87-88 car, but the engine as far as I can tell is the original V6 from 85. The 5-speed Muncie Getrag unit he told me the car had wasn't quite true, my 5-speed is a Isuzu unit offered only for the 85 model year. My speedometer and tachometer come from a later model GT car, likely causing the issue with the tachometer reading incorrectly since it's pickup is likely for the Muncie transmission. I also found that the harness for the rear lamps of the car was from an SE car, instead of a GT, which caused some problems.
IT'S ALIVVEEE!
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