Oh yes, what a fun weekend it has been.
The Fiero died while waiting at a traffic light, and upon inspection by the auto mechanic, several fusible links were in need of being replaced.
All well and good, except that I got a telephone call from the mechanic later saying that while the links were replaced, reconnecting the battery produced black smoke coming from the area of the defroster.
The prognosis? About $500 in labor to remove the entire dashboard to diagnose the problem and then $500 to replace the wiring harness that had no doubt been burned up.
So, I of course had the Fiero towed back to my place and proceeded to disassemble the dash myself on my day off. The car now works fine.
The end cost? Two hours of my time and about $1.50 worth of cable to splice in and replace that burnt when it had become to frayed over the twenty years of use and melted the plastic coating.