Building the ultimate Festiva street suspension...

[bravekozak]

fast, you have to be rich to afford those Advans. I have a similar, solid looking wheel on my car. Except I only paid $25 a rim at the junk yard. Geo Storm wheels.

[mikemounlio]

I had 15's on my car at one point in time. At the time i thought it was fine. Now that i have Some lightweight 14's theres no way i want to daily drive with 15's again. Well not with stock brakes that is. It was a pain to stop. Now i would go 15 with my current brake swap for sure if i didn't want to go low! Swap the brakes and 15's are no big deal. Power wise the b3 has a hard time spinning the 15's. When i went back to the 12's i thought i gained 20hp. My 15's were rather light weight as well. They were just taller.

No way would i try to go to 18's

[greywolf200]

fast, you have to be rich to afford those Advans. I have a similar, solid looking wheel on my car. Except I only paid $25 a rim at the junk yard. Geo Storm wheels.

That's with an Aspire swap isn't it brave?

[Advancedynamix]

If you run 165 45 15 tires on 15" rims then you won't notice much (if any) power loss and the brakes will feel better than with stock wheels and tires (as long as your 15" wheels don't weigh a ton). The 165 45 15 tires have a smaller outside diameter than 12" tires. I have run them on several stock festivas.

[fasteva]

Suggestions on where I could pick up a transmission for the 1.6 L turbo GTX motor?


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[azgtx]

Drive to Mesa Az...I have several.

[fasteva]

I need to buy one from


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[fasteva]

Drive to Mesa Az...I have several.

I would really like to buy on from you , do you have front wheel drive tan for 1.6 L GTX motor ?

[pdx-944]

Sorry I wasn't able to chime in sooner. I was at the track all weekend doing more development work on this exact topic.
Here is the quick break down on the ultimate low dollar street worthy track car.

Mk2 vw coilovers in the front. You can get a pair of the cheap ones that hottuning sells on ebay for under 200 dollars. They work better than the expensive bilstein 40mm ones I built years back. They are worth the money, and they are completely servicable, so (if you ever manage to blow them, which I haven't yet) you can rebuild them for less than 50 bucks.
You will want 120lb 12" front springs (2 9/16 diameter) on a car with stock engine placement. 150lb 12" springs with a forward mounted engine, possibly 175"lb fronts with a bp that's forward mounted.

Get all your springs and coilover sleeves from southwest speed. These guys are great and you can't beat the prices or service.
2002 Kia Rio strut mounts. Use 12mm cone seat lug nuts to center and hold the strut into the strut bearing.
On the rear, use kyb excel g rear shocks for a 1993 vw cabriolet with the small body bilstein coilover sleeves sold by Southwest speed. They are for 1 7/8 dia. Springs. The guys at SW Speed won't know what your trying to do, so just trust me on this. They sell parts for dirt track cars, not Festivas. Lol. The kyb rear shocks may require a bit of sanding to get the small body sleeves on, but they do fit.

Use 105lb 10" rear springs (1 7/8 diameter) for a gutted car that won't be used to carry much cargo. Use 120lbs 10" rear springs for car with interior and used to carry poeple or cargo, use 150lb 10" rear springs if you intend to tow, or your rear passengers are particularly healthy weight folks.
You'll need to slightly modify the rear shocks on the bottom mounts, and you'll need to source or make rear spring tops.

With this exact setup I have comfortably driven across country (the entire continent) and back. I have driven in dirt, mud, and rain. The car holds and rides much much better than stock. On the track my lap times are faster than fully track prepped Miatas on R compound tires, even though the Festiva was on 400 tread wear Chinese tires that only cost 50 bucks a tire shipped! (This was accomplished with a b6d swapped festiva with stock 5 speed in stock location, a b6t or bpt swapped festiva with forward mounted drivetrain will compete with exotic sports cars and full blown big bore race cars) The fesiva is the ultimate street worthy track toy.

This setup is dirt cheap and can turn the car into a corner pounding animal.

Other notes:
These cars love negative camber. I run 3.5 degrees negative all the way around,with zero toe. It improves stability, and reduces rolling resistance. It also drastically improves wet traction and corner control.
Try to keep as much weight forward as possible. The old 50/50 rule is not the hot setup on a light FWD car. Moving the engine forward is like waiving a magic wand. These cars are stable and comfortable up to 160mph with the right suspension setup and the engine moved forward. I routinely turn into corners at tripple digit speeds on the track in a festiva. Corner entry speeds are consistently faster than anything on the track.

we went with this setup. a few things....

first, check your shocks.. theyre probably all just about bottomed out 24/7. at a very appropriate ride height, not slammed (on stock tire size) theyre basically bottomed out on the bump stop. both front and rear. rear we used the vw bug bumpstop, with the largest part cut off. front we used the shorter ones that came with the coilovers.
also, you have the spring sizes backwards. now the fronts are maxed out at the lowest setting, to match the rears maxed out at highest setting. if the length was 10 front 12 rear theyd be dead center. wish wed known all that!
gonna have to get bigger tire diameter to be able to lift the suspension a bit, and order another set of springs it looks like.

on another note, the rates feel pretty dead on, and the handling is much better until they bottom out!
the other option would be to do something else for the top mounts than the rio ones - something flat, which would move the upper mounting surface of the front spring upward, giving more travel.
unfortunately we cant lift it any more because the rear is already maxed out pretty much stuck where its at until springs are replaced. other than that... good work

[Advancedynamix]

I've got 12" 120lb springs on 4 different Festivas here and they have lots of adjustment before bottoming out. I like to run the springs compressed to about 9.5" in the front and the backs are about 1/4" from the top of the adjustment on the sleeves. The ride height is a few inches lower than stock, with plenty of travel before bottoming. 12" rear springs would be nice, but aren't as easy to find as the 10" springs in the 1 7/8 diameter that I use. Since I don't need to raise the car any more than this setup provides, I haven't found a need for longer rear springs. If I did need more ride height, I'd use 120lb rears instead of the 105lb that are on my car.
The 12" 120lb front springs give a wide range of adjustment. They barely fit on the coilovers. At full extension, the car will sit on the bump stops, at full compression (with preload adjust nuts) they lift the shocks to full extension on a Festiva with a standard engine location.
This is the case with the Southwest speed springs that I've been using. If other springs were used, I can't predict what will happen.

Note: These cars can't really be "slammed" like some cars. A slammed festiva is still almost 4" off the ground with stock tire diameter. If you've bottomed the VW coilovers out, your out of the workable range of all the other steering and suspension components. lift it up a bit and your car will handle much much better.
If your rear ride height is too low, get the next stiffer spring rate.

[pdx-944]

everything was ordered from sw speed exactly as you had posted... I don't get the discrepancy unless something changed on the shock body.

this is what we ordered, after emailing hottuning about getting just the fronts for the mk3 kit, and they replied that I needed to just get this, which is for the front of a mk2 caddy, they said it was the same. were the wrong? I can complain if so:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/162130042542

[Advancedynamix]

This is where I like to set them up in the front. This is a stock Festiva. The 120lb 12" front springs are preloaded to about 9.5" installed height.


We ended up turning the rears up a couple of turns from here. 12" springs would allow more adjustment, but wide tires don't allow the adjuster to be in the middle of the range, so this wouldn't work. My 185/60-13 Yokohama Advans lightly rub the sleeves under very aggressive driving conditions as it is.


This is how a bone stock Festiva sits with the 120/105 combo above. The wheels on this car are 14" and the O.D. on the tires is about an inch larger than the stock 12" tires.
This car is owned by Brianliska and he drives it regularly and he hasn't complained about it bottoming out on him. When we put the shocks on this car I went out and thrashed it a bit and even got it a bit airborn to test the setup on a stock festiva without any problems. The car rides great and soaks up whatever I could toss it over or around.

[Advancedynamix]

everything was ordered from sw speed exactly as you had posted... I don't get the discrepancy unless something changed on the shock body.

this is what we ordered, after emailing hottuning about getting just the fronts for the mk3 kit, and they replied that I needed to just get this, which is for the front of a mk2 caddy, they said it was the same. were the wrong? I can complain if so:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/162130042542

Those are for a mk2 caddy (VW pickup truck). They aren't the same as a MK2/3 Golf/Jetta.
I have not tried the Caddy shocks. I should have been more specific. We didn't get the MK2 Caddy in this country, only a MK1, so I'm unfamiliar with that model of VW.

[Advancedynamix]

The front coilovers I use look like this.

There is another style with adjustable lower sections (for independent ride height). The removable portion looks like this.

And it threads onto the shock body.

[Advancedynamix]

Click Here for an example of the correct shocks