I Miss Earl Scheib!!! (who can paint my beater cheap?)

[3MTA3]

Spoke with a Portland Maaco this morning. If I brought them a prepped pickup it would be $1500-1800. Their prep adds $200 per-panel going up from there, the roof counting as two for the long cab and a half. All said and done, it would be closer to $3000.

Unless I find someplace that can do a half decent job for half as much, I'll buy a LP/HV spray gun and shoot it in the driveway next summer (after I tarp my house).

Here is a cool Fiero restoration that goes into painting at the end of the project. This guy fixed as much as he could without replacing stuff, so there is a lot of DIY content. Watch on YT to get the playlist.

 

[teflon6string]

Here is a cool Fiero restoration that goes into painting at the end of the project. This guy fixed as much as he could without replacing stuff, so there is a lot of DIY content.

A military buddy last century got a brand new Fiero GT in the mid-80s, the one with a slightly larger V6 motor. By the "numbers," it was a poor man's Ferrari 308, and it handled like it was on rails.

We traded cars sometimes, and that tiny mid-engine go-cart made my BMX530i (pictured somewhere above here) seem like an ocean liner. Really fun to drive, it had somewhat predictable understeer you could incorporate into an aggressive braking plan approaching the apex in sharp corners on (level ground anyway).

Strange quirk... at 120mph, the analog speedometer needle would whip around clockwise repeatedly. Back below 120, it would behave normally again. I always wondered if that was some oddball thing Pontiac intended, or just unique - perhaps to that particular car.

 

[CamoDeafie]

Strange quirk... at 120mph, the analog speedometer needle would whip around clockwise repeatedly. Back below 120, it would behave normally again. I always wondered if that was some oddball thing Pontiac intended, or just unique - perhaps to that particular car.

Its a quirk of the transmisisons for GM of that era. If I remember correctly, the FWD A-body(Chevy Celebrity, Pontiac 6000, Buick Century, Oldmobile Ciera), X-body(Chevy Citation 2, Olds Omega, Pontiac Phoenix, Buick Skylark?) , U-body (dustbuster shaped vans, Pontiac Trans Sport, Olds Silhouette, Chevy Lumina APV, eventually Pontiac Montana, Chevy Uplander) all share very similar if not identical subframe/K members underneath the engine/trans.. the Pontiac Fiero has it in the rear. The transmissions of that era all the way up to 1996ish I believe... all drive the speedometers with a cable. So its slaved to the RPMs and speedo drive gear in the transmission.