Patty’s Suspension Day

It is with extremely tired eyes that I write this, so I apologize in advance for the inevitable plethora of spelling mistakes.

At 9:15am I was awakened and informed "some guy in a Fiero is waiting outside for me." Vaguely remembering something about some such thing on some Saturday, I grudgingly climbed out of bed, grabbed a can of caffeine and made a sandwich.

Sure enough, outside was Patrick. Not waiting patiently or any normal activity, but rather popping open the front of my car and looking about. Once we met up, we made off for Colby's house. By my estimation, we made pretty good time, because they were just ready for us when we showed up.

The first order of business was fixing Patty's front suspension (Or lack thereof) by removing some of the bumpstop metal that had been holding the front end aloft ever since Patrick decided chopping twin coils out was a good idea (It isn't). Gary immediately sprang in to action, detailing which areas to cut, and then weld in order to allow for suspension travel, while not allowing the shock to bottom out and get destroyed.

Ripping apart the front end, the floor was given to Gary to cut out the bump stops, which he did. Things slowed down slightly on re-assembly, as the bump stop pieces weren't quite lining up perfectly. Using a little patience and a lot of finesse, he went on to correct the situation, and flawlessly welded them in to place. From here, I went on to rattle bomb the assembly in a protective coat, and Patrick buttoned it all back together. He then went out for a quick test drive to ensure everything was peachy. He also took Colby, which, in retrospect, seems like a poor idea when you're testing to see if you put the suspension back together properly.

Luckily for Colby, Patrick had in fact put it back together properly. While Colby went back to working on his own car, transplanting KYB's in to his sexy new Formula, attention from us shifted to Patty's back end. No no, not that back end. Shame on you. We now looked in to options for mounting a sway-bar on the back of the MIGHTY DUKE. Figuring the best way to see how would be having the car still on it's tires, we went to fetch some steel ramps to back the car on to.

Now, something you need to understand to appreciate what a good story this is, is how amazing Gary's house is. Whatever you think is good - isn't. Heading underneath the damn driveway, Gary and I grabbed a ramp each and headed back up. Once the car was backed on to the ramp, a more definitive idea of what to do was established, and mounting locations finalized... Sort've. Unfortunately, the first attempt to mount the sway-bar to the cradle didn't work, thanks to the horribly inconsiderate engineers at Pontiac, who decided to attatch the control arms where we wanted. While we debated what to do (I said just to weld the damn things, quick and easy), dinner arrived, courtesy of Dominos.

Before we could eat, I had to show Patrick the awesome under-drive-way-room-thing. Well, this instigated Gary in to giving us the full tour. Now, I wont take you on a room by room basis, but suffice to say, their house has a bat-cave. Bruce Wayne exempt, how many other people can lay claim to such unbridled awesomeness?

Anyways, after chowing down and re-stocking our energy, a solution to the mounting location was concieved and made: Using 3/8" steel plate, the sway-bar bracket would attatch to the plate, and the plate to the cradle, effectively "pushing out" the mounting locations. In celebration of our awesome idea-generating, Sumas decided to launch fireworks. Yeah, when was the last time any of you had fireworks launched for your genuis?

With the plates fabbed up, Patrick and I drilled out the holes, I quickly ground down some washers, and then we three began installing the plates. Although slow and laboured, the plates were both bolted in. All that remained was to tighten the last two bolts to the bracket...

...In which this boy ripped out the last bolt that stood between us and completion. Oops. In any case, the plate had to be unbolted and removed, while Gary rewelded the bolt back on to the plate. We slid them back in, and began tightening them again when...

...They worked perfectly. What? Not the answer that you expected? You should, as at this point, it was 11:15pm. Yeah, 14 hours worth of labour, but Patrick is hoping the suspension will help save him from being utterly annihilated on Saturday by Colby's new power.

Anyways, the whole day was an absolute blast, and it really never felt like 14 hours. I want to say thanks to Colby and Gary for having me out, and thanks to Patrick for taking me, as well as lending me some 325ibs/in springs to use.

Oh, I almost forgot one of the awesome parts of the story. Gary, being the amazingly macho individual that he is, managed to light himself on fire, and simply not care. His jacket may be on fire, but to hell with the flames, he had welding to do.

karnak wrote: managed to light himself on fire, and simply not care ...Once you have been on fire a couple of times it is not a big deal anymore... most of my "dinner jackets" bite the big one due to fire (grinder sparks mostly...)

Been an active weekend...need to have you guys over for a BBQ one night soon

A recap of last Saturday...

Gary invited me to come out to his place to perform the same modification that he did to Colby’s Fiero which was necessitated because of cutting the front springs down to lower the car. We started talking about making these mods on This page.

Unknown to me until recently, my ‘84 has been riding on my front suspension bumpstops. Makes for a rough ride and probably has been making my life more difficult at autocross. The procedure that Gary had done to Colby’s Fiero involved cutting the end off the metal bumpstops, shortening the remaining cone about an inch or so, and then welding the end of the metal bumpstop back on. It’s necessary to weld the end back on because it holds the rubber bumper which prevents a jarring metal on metal jolt if the suspension reaches the end of its travel.

It took quite awhile to do all this, as I was being rather particular about how much we could shorten the bumpstops for maximum travel without bottoming out and ruining the shocks. Gary’s a very patient guy and tolerated my fussiness awfully well. It remains to be seen whether I get invited out there again.

But that wasn’t all. Oh no, no, no...

I also wanted to install a rear sway bar. Colby actually had an aftermarket one there I could’ve installed, but I wanted to make use of an extra front Fiero sway bar I had. I told Colby I enjoyed the challenge of making it fit. I hope Gary did as well, because mounting it took us a whole bunch of hours as well. 

To make a long story short we mounted the sway bar with the bow to the front and arms pointing to the back of the car. There are several advantages to doing it this way as opposed to mounting it the other way around (with the arms pointing towards the front). It’s easier to get a jack under the back of the Fiero (because the wide part of the bar is further forward and therefore not in the way), and if the end link bolts ever break, the sway bar arms will simply drag harmlessly on the ground as opposed to digging in and launching the rear end of the car!

I’ll take some pictures soon of what we did. I’m quite pleased with what we accomplished on Saturday. The car feels great. I now have a working front suspension again, and the rear sway bar has certainly changed the way the Fiero feels when taking corners at speed. I won’t know how it ultimately feels for sure until I’m on the track, but I’m confident the difference will be quite positive.

My thanks to Gary for inviting me out to his place and special thanks for all the work he did. Very much appreciated. He's obviously a very handy guy around cars. And yeah, it was fun to have Tristan come along as well. His "youthful enthusiasm" kept us all loose.

lol

OM NOM NOM.