This is a story of my saturday. A story that begins with a missed breakfast and ends with a hard fought victory. That victory? A surprisingly clean 1985 Pontiac Fiero. It was just my best friend and I doing this little mis-adventure and I finally get to tell the story of it all.
First things first, let’s put a picture to the car I’ve been talking about:
Real beaut, right? A bone-stock 1985 fiero, 4 cylinder 5-speed, with no A/C hookup, no sunroof, and no other options. This is as base as base got for 1985. It does need a new seat, but that’s relatively easy to do all things considered.
Unfortunately, getting her on a trailer was more difficult than we imagined. The car was literally frozen to the ground. The car fired up, but the clutch wouldn’t engage (probably a blown slave cylinder/line) so we couldn’t move it. And then when we finally broke it free, the rear passenger tire wouldn’t spin freely. Why?
This. Motherfucking. Stuck. Caliper. The pad has fused to the disc over the past few years. No hot water, hammer blows, or chiseling, got it undone. I smashed my thumb with a rubber mallet trying to get it unstuck. It took a TORCH to get it done. We ended up putting in a fresh battery to drive it out via the starter motor. This then resulted in us also using the starter to get it on the trailer. Well......after much issue getting a trailer backed into a narrow driveway and us slipping and falling on the ice repeatedly trying to get the traction to push it.
It should be noted that this was several hours behind schedule at this point. I was planning on being home by 10:00 PM. This meant the Fiero would be in my friend’s garage by 8:00 PM so I can drive home and be there by 10. The car was hitched up around 7:00 PM and we had a 4 hour drive just to get to the garage. So yeah......fun.....Oh, and we also hit freezing rain so our 9:30 PM dinner involved much ice
But after so, so many miles, and so much drama, we finally made it home. We played “shuffle the driveway” to make some room for it, and we were able to get it onto the driveway.....but not up the whole ramp.
It took much pushing, and many pulled muscles and pain, but we got it done. She now rests in a garage and will be worked on over the course of spring (that’s it on the other side of the RX-8...it looked clearer at night)
So yeah, there’s the story. Welcome to the beginning of my Fiero journey.
