Many owners wonder how they can achieve more performance out of the Pontiac Fiero's stock 2.8 V6. The major concerns appeas to be with ease of installation (bolt on) and safeness of upgrades. 

I have collected some information that may help, and am still in the process of updating this article.

 Do A Tune-Up 

While the Fiero was by no means a power-house, it does have respectable performance for its time. If you are seeing a significant lack of power, do a standard tune-up. Never try to modify an engine that is not running correctly in the first place, you will be simply trying to gain back power that is being lost for a legitimate reason and may end up with more problems.  A good tune-up on a Fiero that has not had one recently, or if you have not performed one while you owned the car, may include:

1. Distributor Cap
2. Distributor Rotor
3. Ignition Wires
4. Spark Plugs
5. Coil
6. O2 Sensors
7. Temp sensors
8. Oil Change
9. Tranny Fluid and Filter (Auto)
   

Only once you have gotten the car performing to at least stock specs should you start to mess with further improving its performance. If you can not get it to run right try asking on a forum or myself via the Contact Me button.

Once you've gotten your engine purring, you can get started on making it roar.

Here is a good text from someone who actually spent serious time investigating performance improvements for the Fiero 2.8 V6

http://www.fiero.org/text/firedup.txt

Changes that improved power:

• The engine used was brought to precise stock specs
• Replacing the muffler and cat with straight pipe yielded 6 hp gains from 4500-5500 rpm
  
• A high-lift cam, with the stock timings yielded 15 hp gain at 5000 rpm, 14 hp at 5500. Alternative would be to install 1.60 rocker arms, can be done with engine in car
• Porting the exhaust manifolds yielded 8 hp at 5000 and 5500 rpm

Changes that made little/no difference:

• Air intakes: The factory intake is well designed, even running the engine without the filter/intake assembly showed no actual improvement in power
• Cam Timing: Changes to the timings of both stock and high-lift cams showed little to no improvement
• Performance Chips: No actual improvement, can in fact result in damage or early failure of engine components

The information provided by the article provides actual dyno results to back up their results.

 Some People Recommend:

In  contrast to the study performed above, many people report some performance gains by using a high-flow air filter and bypassing the factory water separator.  Do not get a kit that locates the filter inside the engine bay! The eBay cold air intakes for Fiero's are actually worse than stock, as they typically draw hot air from within the engine bay.

Intake Options:

• Get a High-Flow filter (e.g. K&N) and bypass the water seperator. Rodney Dickman sells a kit to do this at www.RodneyDickman.com.
• Modify a CRX intake that will place the Air filter in the wheel well. Here's an example on FieroDotCom.com - http://www.fierodotcom.com/viewtopic.php?t=46 About halfway down, look for a post by Phil86SE

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