Does anyone else out there have a Fierro 600?

[dfhtrhjn]

So I finally got the gas heater under the dash, it blows really hot air so it's perfect for winter.



and it's not visible from the passenger seat. I moved those wires and stuff already



I just used strips of aluminum to hold it in place.



And I split its hot air vent for both sides of the windshield

[Darryl Castone]

hey i need to install carpet. i don't wanna pay someone $300 for it though...
did you install that yourself? if you did where could i buy carpet from?
i dunno what exact floor pans i have cause i know the carpet is a shape.. or mold right? or is it stretchy material.
and i think my seats will fit my car, problem is i dunno if i should chuck the seat adjusters (and just bolt them to the floor) on the bottom for more space to recline the seats or not?
btw, when you're driving, does your right leg touch, or almost touch your steering wheel? it seems like my steering assembly is more so to the right than in the middle. it doesn't REALLY bother me but if i can fix i i will.
im only down to installing the carpet so i can put in the seats and i'll put my dash back in once i attach the aluminum faces.

[dfhtrhjn]

For carpet I went to a auto parts store and selected the lightest weight thinnest carpet I could find to save weight. I also picked up a thin moisture barrier layer to put under it which also helps cut down noise. I think I picked the moisture barrier up at a carpet or fabric store. I found it easier to lay the carpet in without any mold; just measure, cut, and fold accordingly. It doesn't take more than a few hours to do the carpet.

My seats came with really low profile seat rails which I kept and they're quite useful; I would keep them if you can.

Yea, my right leg touches the wheel, it's a little irritating when I heel-toe around corners. I've had to add some adjustment stuff to my gas pedal and change the way I heel-toe. At some point I think I'll change the whole assembly out for a Porsche 904 one.

[Darryl Castone]

this slide show of new pics can be paused if you put the mouse over it and a pause button appears to the bottom left.
http://picturetrail.com/sfx/flicks/preview/8442088
i found a website that sells carpet
(http://www.automotiveinteriors.com/carp ... carpet.htm)
and i'll just go to a local fabric store to get the moister barrier.
i figured 2 1/2 YARDS (90" X 72" = 7-1/2' X 6') should be enough without over doing it. or is it not enough or too much? i haven't been able to measure my car floor due to rain lately.

[dfhtrhjn]

Amazing. I took mine apart like that too; I drove it around like this for months.



You really gotta chop and weld that rusty piece you mentioned.

Your seats look great, I think I'm going to stain mine black soon.

You can use rust remover to clean the wheels.

It may make more sense to just run new wires for the stereo and pull the old ones, that's what I ended up doing.

I left my side air intakes without a grill because it's pretty hard to get one tastefully in there.

Could you use hood struts for the engine lid and mount them accordingly? Or go to a junk yard and find some other kind of mechanism?

Are you keeping your dash instruments? I highly recommend classic instruments gauges if you're thinking about replacing your set.
http://www.classicinstruments.com/allseries.aspx
They sell some really cool stuff.

Oh yea, I don't remember how much carpet I used but it was about 1.5 times what I thought I'd have to use just from having to cut strange shapes.

Your car is really coming along, are you gonna get brushed aluminum for your dash?
How much engine noise do you get? my car is deafeningly loud

[Darryl Castone]

your engine is better than mine so i'm sure it is much louder and piercing.
i saw in How VWs magazine there is a long block engine. i want THAT one if it'll fit.
i found this carpet that doesn't need cutting.. it molds around curves apparently and is $25 a yard. im buying 4 yards of it. i feel like i should buy 5 yards of it but.. and maybe i should. that stereo section in the back and its damned curves.
i found the perfect gauges but they cost $586.00... totally will worry about that later. haha

my driver and passenger side dash, center console (and door panels) will be sphere brushed aluminum this this:
http://www.britishamericanengines.co.uk ... e/int2.jpg
http://www.britishamericanengines.co.uk ... e/int3.jpg
(BTW the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe is my favorite car)
i plan on getting a short gear shift too.
i was thinking of diamond aluminum but it'll cause issues with evenly placing my gauges onto the material with the bumpy surface:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v652/ ... edDash.jpg
but now that i realized i found this i suppose its not impossible...
i think the first choice is better anyway though.

i also though about ripping off the leather and just painting it red(not the aluminum just the fiberglass). add with the aluminum inserts and it seems like it would look cool.
http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q19/ ... on2K10.jpg
in the end.. im just too lazy for that, even though it could look badass.

so this sound muffler i am buying is jute padding. its 40 gauge he said so it'll kill damn near all sound.. though that may be too thick. im not sure if i should use the jute in sections or all over, especially where the back speakers are.

BTW, much better sounding video of the car/engine in action.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-aoocGg ... vlZrocs62A

[dfhtrhjn]

Here's some more circle brushed aluminum that may interest you If I ever get the motivation to take my dash apart I'll definitely do something like what's below.

Here are a couple photos that may inspire you when choosing dash components.





I really like the switches they have installed



You car is pretty loud, I think we might be pushing out close to the same decibels.

[Darryl Castone]

That dash design is the same as what im doing. only difference is they have a ton.. a ton of small brushed circles where my brushed circles are twice the size of that.
i've been thinking even more on the possibility of painting my dash red.
what do you think?

[dfhtrhjn]

I think it's a great idea as long as it's exactly the same red as your car since red is the hardest color to match. It also makes sense if you've got other trim and panels that you'd like to paint red. I've got a black dash and I'll be painting some of my rear interior panels the same black.

You could do red vinyl on top with the aluminum face, or black vinyl on top with a high gloss red face. Either one would look pretty awesome.

This is kind of what I envisioned with the glossy red face.



If you have time, try using photoshop with a picture of your dash to test colors. You can use a photo of you car to get a sample of the exact shade of red.

[Darryl Castone]

I decided to keep it black, no painting it red.
i actually took my aluminum sheet metal to a water jet shop today and bought my new radio. Its badass! i gave them all my gauges (the ones im keeping anyways) and the new radio i only had in my possession for no more than a half hour. lol

well at least i think its awesome... i opened it before i bought it to get a better feeling of it. it looks great in person.

very dark and metallic black with a lot of shiny aluminum assets and then when turned on it's got all kinds of cool red lights with little light blue digital stuff. it matches my car so well.
at first i was gonna get this one:
it was $76 (20 cheaper) and for the most part looked similar but.. that first one was The One!
now when i get the materials back next monday or tuesday (the place is only open mon-thursday), i'll brush the circles onto it then paint it over with clear coat so its extra shiny!
now all that's left is the same pattern for the door panels and then the carpet which im doing last. i went and bought a high quality scalpel so i can just buy standard thin black carpet and just say to hell with the special molding type. its carpet. im buying Ferrari floor mats anyways so who cares about the carpet.

[Darryl Castone]

i also am starting to look at heaters since its that time of year.
i found plenty of "VW Gas Heater 12 Volt" on E bay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Volkswag ... ccessories
problem is, they are used and from the item descriptions on E bay it says it may be missing a few parts to them and im just not informed enough on these things to buy a 50% or 90% complete and therefore non-working heater. i cant find one just ready to connect wires and go. plus i dunno what else i would need with it. i see i can expect to spend 130-200 which isnt too bad.

but i also went to this website and found this:
http://www.jcwhitney.com/heater-kits-fo ... id=c2307j1#
i just dunno if this device uses it's own internally stored engine coolant to work or if it needs to be connected to the engine.
Honestly.. with the time and trouble this car has given me & as bad as i wanna finish it, im... kinda.. leaning towards this one!

The only way i can see me using the VW heater is if you have another one lying around i could have you fix up & i could buy it from you?
this town i live in.. there's nothing convenient about it. if there's a place that could fix it up for me i promise you it's an hour & half drive from here.

by the way, i didnt mention that as im redesigning the dash i decided to only keep the RPM/MPH gauges, and the Gas meter and the engine temp. The oil level and amps gauge i thought were useless... unless im wrong? By the way i got some crappy news from the water jet place. because my old dash faces that were wrapped in the foam cushion and leather aren't perfectly flat, they would have to do a good 5 hours of scanning it and programming for the waterjet to do it right. he says if i know anyone who does auto drawings or has the same dashboard who has the dimensions of it then it will cut my $350 price down to $120. So please tell me you have some kinda blueprint or measurement dimensions of your aluminum dash faces?

Also, I am torn between two alternatives.
1- Buy a Dremel tool and get an electric sander and polish my steel rims back to a decent state by hand starting from (what i've been told) a rough grit to a soft grit until they are polished again. problem is what grites shall i buy and use in what order?
2- Have them sand blasted and powder coated silver. (not white/black)
only problem im having is i cant afford to chrome them, and if they are powder coated silver, they don't shine cause its paint.
any suggestions?

[dfhtrhjn]

That second one from jcwhitney says it uses warm engine coolant "Both use warm engine coolant to..." I'd say that's probably not going to work; more than likely it has to be connected to a water cooled engine.

I would check thesamba too. Whatever you order make sure the ad says fully functioning, it's pain to get them working; I still haven't succeeded with my broken one. If I get one in working order I'll sell it to you. The B2 model is good as well. I would also pay with paypal if you can and write in the transfer notes that you're paying for a working unit. That way if they try to mail you a broken one you can get your money back.

You're redesigning your dash? Hmm. In my opinion you need rpm, mph, fuel level, oil/engine temp, oil pressure, and voltage.
Voltage is important because you'll see how much your electronics draw off the battery, if you've got a short somewhere sucking the battery down, and how well your alternator is doing.
Oil pressure is important because it gives away info about your engine. If your oil pressure plummets you'll see it and know to turn the engine off before it overheats, there's also a good range for oil pressure that keeps your engine running well and cool.

I don't have any info on the car actually, what dash measurements are you looking for? I may able to measure some of it for you.

As for your wheels, if you really want to keep them then sand them down proper and save some money for chrome at a later time. They're not worth spending much time/money on because they're heavy steel wheels.
As for how to sand, those wheels have spokes right? Taking them somewhere to have them sand blasted is probably your easiest/most thorough option. It's probably very labor intensive to do that by hand even with a dremel.

hope that helps

[Darryl Castone]

any idea on how exactly our cars are wired?
i cannot for the life of me figure out how to install this new radio. i mean, the two front and two rear speaker wires i got right but the two for constant 12v and then the one that goes to the secondary fuse are.. i don't get it. at all.

i dunno if i can assume they use a 73 or a 74 standard beetle/super beetle diagram setup.

[dfhtrhjn]

haha, oh god. the wiring...
My wiring is definitely not beetle. I have no idea what it could be. Based on the handiwork and wiring styles in my car, I'd say 3 people had there hand at wiring over the course of the cars life. The first did it right, the second two were retarded. I got down with a volt meter, traced everything, and removed a bunch of stupid stuff added by the two retards. It was not easy.

As for the stereo, I removed all of the existing stereo wiring and took the car to a friend who owns a car stereo place where they wired a new fuse, power, speakers/cables and everything for the stereo. You'd never know it wasn't factory. If you can afford the labor, then save yourself the headache. I brought the car down, sat there with the guy to answer any questions about wiring and he had it done in an hour.

On another note, I pulled that gas heater. They can be a little fickle starting up, mine was getting a little too much gas so I have to tinker with it a bit. I put my little boat defroster back, it works pretty well just isn't what you'd call warm.

Oh ya, totally off topic. I really really love doing cookies in the car.

[Darryl Castone]

BAKING COOKIES?
in the car? it's that hot!?
hahahaha
ok so when i go to get a tune up ill see about checking voltage and see where it it's state of voltage is, cause i believe my car spent two weeks at a VW dealership in regards to the wiring and my gauges not working.

today i went to try my luck again by tracing all the wires that was on ym car, i figured there's probably a misunderstanding regards to it all so i gave it a third charming try.

!!!!!! I GOT IT WORKING !!!!!!

Basically i would have had it working ages ago had it not been me not taking my time, doing the work during the day time, and paying full attention. lol
now all that's left is putting the dash back inside and carpet.
Btw i got the dash situation figured out.
im ditching the seat belts. and i'll look into buying harness seat belts.