Don's final push to improve the original IFG body was to hack away at the front quarters. Unfortunately the photo log he sent of the front end modifications was a bit more piece-meal than for the other body sections, so it's not completely clear what all his thought processes were. You'll see that his front end modifications didn't quite give the same results as the rest, which must have pretty discouraging. I'll describe as best as I can, what I think he meant to do and why it turned out the way it did.
It's probably a good time to recall just how badly the IFG front quarters were shaped, and how ill suited they are for the Fiero chassis. One photo says it all:
By carrying his newly-established rear body lines forward, he made a plan for the changes needed in the front fenders. With the same slice-and-dice process he used on the rear quarters and doors, Don cut material out of just the right places to align the beltline, and relocate the front wheel openings:
But even with that, the wheel arches still weren't the right shape, and the gap at the top of the wheel was still too high for an exotic car:
So he hacked off the fender lips, and grafted them back on lower, and reshaped the arches in the front fascia to a fuller, rounder opening. Ultimately, he ended up with fender openings resembling the Ferrari's more than seemed possible given the original shapes. Here's what his final proportions looked like, albeit a bit deceiving since the middle photo doesn't have the rocker panels:
Somehow, something ran amok though. By the time he was done, the vertical wheel gap was still about 3.5" (89 mm). Perhaps he had initially installed the rear quarters tilted too far upwards which of course compounded the problem the closer he got towards the front. Perhaps he had his front and/or rear suspensions set at the wrong static heights when he made decisions about front fender lip height. Either way, when I initially mocked up the front quarters as Don had modified them, I didn't like what I saw:
Don admitted that to get a respectable gap, he had to lower his suspension to the bump stops. Of course that wouldn't work, so something else had to change.
Back in post #56, I mentioned that to get decent wheel to fender gaps in front, in spite of having installed 1.5" drop spindles and adjustable coil overs, I'd have to cut down the fender mounting flanges by 1" to 1.5" in height:
If it were only that simple. Of course you can't lower the front fenders without impacting the alignment of everything else. So working backwards from the fenders, I cut the flanges, mocked up the front quarters to suit the wheel gaps, re-angled the doors to match the fenders, then reset the rear quarters. After readjusting everything several times, I managed to find a workable compromise between the locations of all four major panels, giving a 2-1/4" (57 mm) front wheel gap:
The rest I could fine-tune with the coil overs:
This ends the series of photos showing the work Don Ostergard did to re-make the IFG body panels into straightened, untwisted, re-arched, and sectioned coachwork. There are of course other panels but when I got the body kit from him, he either hadn't modified them significantly (decklid), or bought a part from a better manufacturer (hood), or simply wasn't going to use the part at all (roof). Taken in their entirety, he accomplished an overwhelming amount of work. There's still much to be done, but I'm grateful to be able to stand on his shoulders and take over where he left off.