Stock motor upgrades.

[mckabe]

I have the stock 1.3. I want to make this thing a little bit faster with as little money as possible. I am pretty mechanically wise and am not afraid o take things apart as long as it can be back together within the next morning. I am in high school. And everyone laughs when I role up in my festiva. I can keep up with a Honda prelude until v tech kicks in, anything would help. Not saying I wAnt to beat the prelude, but want it to be a little quicker. Thanks for the help.

[bhazard]

Budget? You cant really do much to a B3 to make it any faster really. Not without spending decent money.

An engine swap will be the easiest way. You can get a B6 for $200-300 and have it in over a weekend.

Of course you could just keep saving your money and get a "real" swap like a BP or B6T and embarrass the crap out of the honda kid.

Or you could just stop street racing.

Whatever you do dont go putting a fart can and cold air intake on your stock festiva, you will only be more embarassed.

[mckabe]

Amen to the fart can and cold air. Let just say I hate rice. Ha. I'm not the typical high school car junky. 1. I have a festiva.
2. I restored a 1964 chevelle for my summer car.
But thanks for the info, I will do more research.
Do the cams from festiva motorsports help at all?

[TominMO]

Free mods:
1. Drill a couple dozen holes in the bottom airbox piece. This will help breathing at higher RPMs, but not affect gas mileage when you are driving normally.
2. Advance the ignition timing; but if you do, use premium gas to prevent detonation.

[bhazard]

Yeah they can, but only if you open the motor up, porting the head, opening the intake/exhaust... by then you have hundreds invested in a 63hp engine that MIGHT be making as much as a stock B6, and giving worse gas mileage.

Capri and Escort GT donor cars can be had for $500-1000 and give you everything you need for a 13-15 second festiva.

[mckabe]

Rhank you so much! Time to start watching craigslist which cars all had a b6t?

[FestYboy]

just the mercury capri XR2 for us in the states, though that is NOT a weekend swap, nore is any other swap except a B6 (8v). you can get BPTs imported with the AWD trans for about 1200, but again, that's a project.

[stdsmt22]

Got me a B8 SOHC swap from a Protege. Go for it...need more B8s around here. There is a pretty good B8 swap guide here.

[mckabe]

How quick is the b8?

[bhazard]

Depends on how much work you wanna do man. Anything more than a B8 swap (B6T/BP) I would strongly suggest swapping to the G-series trans which is a pretty involved swap, making mounts, clearancing frame etc.

B6 and B8 are the "easiest" swaps. They're weak enough to not grenade the stock trans at random but the 100hp B8 is still plenty for a festiva and should get it past that honda.

[mckabe]

High school= bunch of kids who think p.o.s hondas are cool. Does anyone have the link to the b8 swap? Search engine is not working.

[bhazard]

All kinda stuff in the swap section of the forum. I suggest reading thru all the swap threads and figuring out how far you wanna go with it. Im not sure I would suggest a B6T swap as a first. Thats what I did and it was like a month and a half of hell. Mainly because of the trans swap.

[bhazard]

BP and B8 guides are here

http://www.fordfestiva.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=19

G-series trans swap here

http://www.fordfestiva.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7614

B6T swap here

http://www.fordfestiva.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6300

B6 sohc is a very straightforward swap. Like swapping in another stock engine plus replacing the ECU.

[blkfordsedan]

If you want cheap, quick & simple upgrades for the B3, I would suggest the following. Assuming your B3 is in good mechanical condition, this will make sure you get the max HP you still have available:

1) Do a complete tune-up w/quality parts (i.e. plugs, wires, cap, rotor,
fuel filter, throttle body cleaned, advance the timing slightly).
2) Install a K&N filter (they do make them to fit the EFI models).
3) drill holes in the air filter box as TominMO suggested.

Another mod you could do would be a header* (if you can find one), delete the cat and install a good aftermarket muffler. I would suggest staying with stock diameter or 2" max exhaust pipe and a turbo style muffler. I would not "hollow out" the factory cat because the large volume of the empty cat chamber will reduce the exhaust velocity.

An Aspire tranny would also provide a slight boost in acceleration due to the slower gear ratio, but you would lose some MPG. You could do the trans swap in a week end. You could also install a lightened flywheel while the tranny is out. All these parts could also be switched over to a B6 if you ever decided to swap the engine at a later date.

* I have noticed that the stock exhaust manifold on my Gen1 B6 has significantly longer primaries than the factory B3. In theory, the Gen1 B6 manifold should bolt up to a B3. It seems to me that would make a cheap and easy upgrade. It wouldn't provide the scavenging like a long tube design, but it would retain the heat & gas velocity and should provide an improvement over the B3 design. Anyone ever tried it?

[stdsmt22]

Not sure. haven't put it on the road yet. Stock it has 103 HP. We are hoping the porting we did on the head will squeeze out another 10-15HP. Guessing it will top out around 110-115. We'll see though, real soon.