Lightning, My 93 Festiva build

[Tyler77]

So what do you do when you Buy a Ford Festiva that you find out has a externally blown head gasket. blowing fumes and soot in your engine bay
You buy a 94 mazda mx3 with a good solid runnin motor with 186 000 km...that rear ended someone.... from a scrap dealer and you put the engine in your festiva!

Ive wanted to start this thread for a while about my build,,, to share about swapping in the entire mx3 B6D engine with the F series transmission. Also what im doing with the suspension and various other stuff.

Ive already done a few things, Swapped in new seats out of a 05 Kia Rio, fabricated some mounts for them to bolt in.
Did some body work on a big dent on the drivers side rear wheel well. and been busy gathering/ordering parts and getting all the metal I need to fab up custom pieces that are needed.

So the suspension in the front I'm using Koni yellow adjustable struts, mounted in some custom strut tubes Im making, with coilover sleeves and 2.5in ID 150lb black magic springs from southwest speed, and the Ultimate street suspension setup for the rear, which your all familiar with, but using 135lb springs

I have swapped over the entire wiring harness from the mx3 into the festiva and have 85% of it fastened in its place, just have to cut out some of the excess length and solder it back together... for the headlights mainly

I have the engine out of the mx3, and I am currently working on moving forward the front lower motor mount and fabbing up new brackets to weld to the rear mount
I know the mount is crooked, it was just held up to get a rough idea for measurement, still going to move it forward about a 1/4 inch.

The F series transmission is a wide one, with the front motor mount moved forward as far as i can get it, it leaves around an inch of clearance from the steering rack at the back

so thats where im at so far, I'll update as i do more.
Hope ya enjoy
IMG_0487.JPG koni's.JPG IMG_0490.JPG IMG_0495.JPG

[Tyler77]

Ok so today I got both the lower engine/trans mounts finished.
for the front one I had to move it forward About 3 inches.
and for the rear mount i used the stock Festiva one, cut off the brackets and made my own and welded them on the Festiva mount.
still have yet to do the mount for the top passenger side though.
I post pics once I get the passenger mount completed

Something I’ve thought about is the length of the mx3 CV axle’s. They extend out quite a bit further than the original wheel hubs. Leaving me with the option of either cutting and shortening the CV axles or making a custom extended Control arm.

OK well I am making this more difficult by wondering about how I’m going to put the roof on when I haven’t even completed the foundation yet. So I’m just gonna work on my next step, lol.

[Tyler77]

Got the motor in. I had to adjust the front and rear lower motor mounts to make for clearance between the engine and the motor mount crossbeam.
.(edit. I actually Had to make an entirely different rear lower transmission mount. I used the original MX three rear trans mount bracket and front motor mount setup together for the rear mount.) then had some fun painting all the motor mount stuff With bright Yellow rust check paint. Wire wheeled, sanded, and painted. Pretty simple but we’ll see how it holds up. HeresA few pictures
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[Tyler77]

Forgot to show what I did for the mounts.
it required a bit of bending, and welding for the rear mount. And for the front mount I used a piece of square tubing and welded it to the motor mount crossbeam and drilled holes through it for the motor mount to fit it.
I had to raise the front because the motor was touching the crossbeam Underneath. So the square tubing raised it up a little over an inch which gave Around 1 inch clearance between the motor And crossbeam.
and the rear mount I needed to cut off everything to do with the original motor mount and fabricate my own. Reason being is that the rear mount needed to be moved 1 inch towards the driver side. And it was easiest to do with everything I had to use.

Pre-op motor mounts in progress
IMG_0507.JPG IMG_0510.JPG IMG_E0511.JPG

[Rick the Quick]

Looking good!

[Tyler77]

Ok so I’ve got a whole lot more done.

I should be able to post some pictures tomorrow, but for now this is what I’ve done

got a set of wheels... miata 7 spoke

Finished my custom built coilovers (Koni sport adjustable struts) and raised strut mounts installed them and dialed them up to 1.7 neg degree camber.
measuring and calculating the camber then taking off the wheel, Unbolting lower strut mounts then slotting the hole a little. Putting the Wheel back on measuring and calculating again then taking the wheel off and repeating until I had both front wheels spot on to each other
Just don’t know Quite yet what I’m Going to do with the rear stock Festiva wheel spindle and brake drums?
I need to get my 4 x 100 wheels on There, so I’ve gotta get rid of, or change that bolt pattern
well see what happens!

The wiring is almost all hooked up, just finishing off the splicing in of all the wiring for the rear lights and fuel pump. And splicing in the Festiva instrument gauge panel to the MX3 wiring harness

mx3 hydraulic clutch pedal Install almost done

Bent to fit 3 new brake lines needed to match the different mx3 brake master cylinder

picking up my civic radiator tomorrow with a few things altered..by a local welding shop

[Tyler77]

Miata rims. front is bolted on but the back isnt yet, since that pic I have drilled the brake drums and installed wheel studs IMG_0587.JPG
This is a piece of angle iron I welded to the frame, for extra support because I cut out a chunk of the original frame for the radiator to sit in

IMG_0589.JPG
I was pretty surprised at just how easy it was to swap the mx3 hydraulic clutch pedal over to the festy.
had to cut off all the brackets for the old one and drill a hole in the firewall and bore it out for the clutch master cylinder to fit through to the pedal.
just one more bracket i have to weld in to hold the top iin place
old clutch.JPG no clutch.JPG new clutch.JPG

[Tyler77]

thanks Rick, if that is your name rick the quick, forgot to say thanks I was a little excited to post about what I got done

[Tyler77]

Well I figured out what I would do with the rear brake drums, to fit my miata wheels on there,
The front wheel hub/steering knuckles are from a 94 ford escort and the wheel centre bore is 54.1mm and 4x100bolt pattern just like the miata wheels. but the rear festiva drums centre bore is, i think it was 58.9 or something. so I put the drum on a lathe and took the centre bore width down to 54.1mm, and then slide over top an extra front brake disc and used it as my drill guide, and put in wheel studs.
then the rear wheel was rubbing.. well a bit closer than just rubbing so I spun some of my own half inch wheel spacers out of some aluminum flat bar on the lathe.
IMG_0586.JPG IMG_0600.JPG IMG_0599.JPG

[Tyler77]

some fun I had figuring out what do do with the gutted catalytic converter because that big hollow space wouldnt be good for flow
I made it in such a way that the steel pipe placed inside it sticks out the top just enough to wedge against the inside of the manifold for a good seal
IMG_0657.JPG IMG_0659.JPG IMG_0658.JPG IMG_0660.JPG

[Tyler77]

Ready for start up, again, tomorow, she runs but had a little bump with aftermarket felpro valve seals. leaked after the first 3 startups, blew smoke upon starting. So I replaced with oem.
Odd but a Common problem with Mazda 1.6 engines!

A few things left to do, installing triple pod a-pillar gauge mount. oil pressure, innovate motorsports Afr wideband, and vacuum/boost gauge for turbo prep. Get my radiator back in after repair—pinhole leak in weld
Ignition bypassing, push button

A few things to come

7 psi with
Megasqurt mspnp2————have it
Volvo td04 turbo———have it
upgraded injectors————awaiting
diy manifold materials————awaiting
intercooler——————
water/meth injection——

[BigPapaRoss]

what kind of injectors you getting

[Tyler77]

Well for now I’m just going to pop in some 96 1.8 miata 265cc injectors, works for my budget at the moment.
and they are a direct fit, plug and play,

[Tyler77]

!!!!!Seafoam is an amazing product!!!!!
Another interesting thing came up, I noticed quite a plume of blue Smoke whenever I accelerated ...especially at WOT. We’re talking barely see the traffic behind you!

There was a little bit of hesitation at low to 3500rpm or so, that’s when the smoke cloud emitted.
Inside the cylinder head each exhaust port was coated evenly in oil. I thought my piston rings were toast but Compression was good, also very little blow by, I figured it was stuck oil control rings. I tried acetone and atf piston soak but it didn’t work, then I repeated the procedure with seafoam.

I Bought a bottle of seafoam drained the oil and left the plug out and put a container under the oil drain.
pulled the spark plugs out and poured seafoam in the cylinders. Put the plugs back in and rotated the crank by hand so each piston went through its compression stroke to push the seafoam down around the rings. Basically just to give it a Headstart. Took the plugs back out and topped each cylinder back up, let it soak for two days making sure it was topped up whenever I could. On the third day, I made sure they were topped up and repeated the compression stroke procedure (with the plugs in) one last time. Then I put the drain plug and oil back in added some seafoam to the crankcase. I got a 2 day permit, and took it out for a drive immediately. I drove the crap out of it as many redline WOT shifts I could get in.
i probably pissed off some people with The huge smoke plumes I was leaving behind me lol.
But after about 15 minutes of hard driving in a matter of seconds the smoke completely stopped, **** Ya, it worked the rings popped back out.
No matter what rpm and I stepped on it, the smoke was gone,
I continued my “Italian tuneup “For probably about another 25 minutes or so then drove back home and Thoroughly enjoyed my success

[Tyler77]

I added fuel injector cleaner to the gas tank before driving it around
Also did an oil change after driving around for those two days

At first I was sceptical because I’ve heard so many conflicting opinions about seafoam. It was basically my last stitched attempt in hopes that it was just stuck oil rings that I could free. If it didn’t work the motor was going to have to be taken apart again to hone the cylinders and re-ring the pistons. But it worked and what a relief, woooo!
now I can work on hooking the mspnp2 up