We’re following the revival of Ronnie Finger’s 1985 Pontiac Fiero 2M4 not because it’s an exciting or rare car, but because this is proof that even a straight-up novice can get the job done if they do it right. From the get-go, Ronnie has been very up-front about his lack of automotive knowledge, but he has enough mechanical ability to learn quickly. When he dragged this Fiero from it’s resting spot, the car was pretty much a write-off with a CDC-zoned interior. Over the last few months, we’ve seen him tackle everything from the basics of getting the car running to small tasks like rebuilding the hidden headlight motors. The last time we got an update, the interior got the scrubbing of a lifetime and turned out thousands of times better than it looked before the anti-fungal cleaners were used.
So the Fiero runs, drives, stops, and is livable…what’s next on the table? Gutting the entire rear subframe assembly, powertrain and all, out for a work-over. Just because the Iron Duke and five-speed were functional didn’t mean that they didn’t need attention. The four-banger was bleeding fluids out and if there was every a way to go through the engine in quick order, yanking it out of the car was the proper method to get it all done in one go. Once again, we’ll get fantastic details about the how-tos that Ronnie performs as he takes a greasy lump that most of us would rather have left alone and cleans it up, does the maintenance that many people never bothered to do, and puts it back together…maybe with an occasional F-bomb when he makes a mis-step, but transparency is always a good thing and not everything will go to plan.
