In the course of working on my fiero I have had to make several tools. I had to make a ball joint seperator tool and a set of blocks for doing the toe part of alignments.
It is a real pain to remove the balljoints on the front of an older fiero, especially if
they have not been removed in a long time. In order to accomplish this needed to make a tool.
I took a small section of metal tube, two hex bolts, and two nuts. I put them together like this:
As you can see from the pictures I put the two bolts into the metal tube with both nuts on the
same bolt. To use the tool, I put each ball joint end into a hex bolt, and turn the nuts apart. I
had to drill out one of the bolt heads to fit the larger lower balljoint. But this tool works very
well.
After doing many different things to my fiero I have needed to do alignments (changing balljoints,
polybushings ). I have done string alignments, but they are difficult to setup and measure. I saw pictures
on the internet of other people's similar block, and thought they would be easier to use, so I decided to make
set.
I setup the string alignment and measured the inset of the front wheels vs the rear wheels. On my car with the GA brakes front and rear, the front had a 1/8 inch inset per side. I made 4 blocks from spare 2x4 I had laying around. As you can see from the pictures they are not very complicated to use. Just bolt them to the wheels and run a string between the nails. Then turn the tierods to adjust until satisfied. Drive and repeat.
As you can see from the picture along the string (far left) I have marks for each 1/8 inch toe setting on the blocks.
Close ups of the blocks.
