Seat Belts, Pontiac Fieros and Fiberglass Fabrication, Oh MY!

That's a little involved for a title but bear with me, it all makes since... Well it does to me... Well we'll just see about that!

Seat Belts

The seat belts on the car are definitely worse for the wear. The look to be a sorta blue green color, dusted with rust and generally an eyesore. The triumph metal sticker is missing on the driver side set and badly faded on the passenger side set. Ideally, these need replacement to be effective at stopping a body in motion.

I just love the old style attachments to the body in such that you can just remove them without any tools. Well, at least you should be able to. These took a little bit of pliers to get them worked off. I plan to clean them of the rust and refinish them by painting them black (maybe) to match the interior (I know what your saying, it screams for more wood, but it just isn't appropriate here.) My dad has some replacement belts and I'm considering having him stitch them up to the body attachment part. If it's good enough for the FAA it should be good enough for me!

Pontiac Fieros



My brother sold his Mustang back to my parents (eventually selling it to me, see previous post) to buy a Silver Pontiac Fiero?!? What was that boy thinking. Well to be frankly honest, the Mustang was nice but it lacked speed, nimbleness, and just needed a lot of TLC to keep her running. The Story goes, we were at his girlfriend's house, don't remember which one, and for some odd reason, we both put our seat belts on. We often went without them on the back roads, and never really though anything about it. We were driving, to make a long story short, over-correction and under-correction led us to sitting in a ditch. We were both hanging there by our seat belts, looking through the front glass at ditch dirt. We looked through the sunroof and still saw dirt. We made it through OK, though the Fiero's nose was tilted up slightly, looking rather snobbish. I don't remember if that's when he sold it or if he had it fixed, but from that day on, I have worn my seat-belt. It's amazing how little damage is visible on the plastic car.


This is the ditch we ended up in, nose in first, right between the two metal posts.



When it snows Down South, you just have to take pictures of your car. It's a natural law.




Fiberglass Fabrication

So how does this get into this post you may ask? Well if you look at the air scoops on the Fiero, those were fabricated out of fiberglass. They looked great and were very functional. It wasn't hard from what I can remember.


I have a long term plan to eather aquire a Hard Top for the Spitfire, or barring that, design and build a hardtop out of metal, glass and fiberglass. Definately in the concept stages, definately a large streach for my abilities, but I just think it'd be spectacular to have the option of running topless, ragtop, or hardtop. Hardtops for MK3 Roundtails are rare and are getting harder to find and if you find one, they are hideously expensive. The major fittings for them and the glass are available. It'll likely never come to realization, there is much to do on the car, but the seed was planted with my brother's Fiero and the air scoups. (Hmm, I wonder if I can sneek some woodwork into the Hardtop fabrication somehow...)

I also remember there being a series of pictures taken during the fabrication of the air scoops. I don't think I had print copies made from the negatives, copies of the prints themselves, nor have it in my early scanning attempts, and I don't think I had my first camera yet. If my brother or dad can dig them up, I'll issue an new post with them. If not, they will forever exist only in our memories.