'91 L 5 Speed Detail/Restoration Project

[theastronaut]

I bought this '91 back in April of '21 from member Jerry Lee in GA. It's a 5 speed with aftermarket A/C and had 153k when I bought it. A local guy had become too old to drive and asked his daughter to drive the car over to Jerry's house to see if Jerry was interested. He didn't know Jerry but had seen a few Festivas in his yard. Jerry bought it and I got to see it when I was over there to check out a shell Jerry was wanting to get rid of. He had driven it a short while while finishing a swap on another of his Festivas so he was thinking of selling it when the swap was done. He had another guy interested, so I said I was interested if the other guy backed out. A month or two later he let me know that the other guy passed on it, so I drove over to check it out more closely and bought it.


How it looked when Jerry got it. The car had been very well maintained mechanically but needed a lot of work cosmetically.




At it's new home in SC with my '89 L and mom's '90 L Plus.




Some of the paperwork that had stayed with the car. There was also a thick folder with all of the receipts of work done to the car since the 90's.




Before pics-

[theastronaut]

I pulled out pretty much all of the interior.




















The carpet was nasty but intact.






I used a pressure washer with Zep carpet shampoo to pre-soak it, scrubbed the worst spots, then used the pressure washer to blast all the grime off.








It came out almost like new.






I soaked the seat belts in a bucket overnight then scrubbed and rinsed them.

[theastronaut]

Spare tire, jack, and handle/pouch cleaned and reinstalled.






Pedals scrubbed.




Jambs cleaned and polished.










I deep cleaned the dash, steering wheel, column, vents, etc then applied 303 Protectant.

[theastronaut]

I had bought GL Sport seats and door panels a few years ago at Madness so I pulled them out of storage to replace the torn original seats.










I used diluted Zep carpet shampoo and a Bissel on the fabric, and scrubbed the vinyl with a Mr Clean magic eraser to remove marks and scuffs. The plastic trim was cleaned, scuffed, and shot with SM Arnold trim dye to restore the color and sheen.










I posted a wanted ad in the facebook group to see if anyone had torn GL Sport door panels that had good cloth inserts, I wanted to replicate the quarter panel inserts that other countries got.




ABS panel molded to match the quarter panel shape.




Tape template, there wasn't much wiggle room to have enough material on all edges.




Installed with 3M double sided tape so they could be removed later on if desired without ruining the original panel.




Going back together.

[chiquito1228]

Interior coming along great. Big different what a lil detail work would do

[drddan]

Wow! All I got to say. That is a fantastic clean up, the car looks like new
Can you come do mine?

[Rick the Quick]

Another job well done by Mr.Glenn.

[theastronaut]

Thanks guy!!


The next step after the interior was to swap in a new windshield and start cleaning up the outside of the car.








The pinchweld was cleaned, primed, and a new foam dam was used to keep the urethane from squeezing out and being visible from the inside.





Yellowed pillar trim has always been an eyesore on efi cars, 88/89 trim stays the original off white without fading. I found a can of SM Arnold that matched my 89's pillar trim and used it to restore the original color.









I buffed the paint around the opening, cleaned/dyed the trim with SEM, and refinished the wiper arms.












The original paint was in pretty good condition, just oxidized. Someone had added a vinyl pinstripe so I used an eraser wheel to remove it, then went over the paint with a clay bar to remove any surface contaminates. I masked out the trim and used Jescar Correcting Compound with a wool pad to take out light scratches and remove the oxidation, then switched to a finishing polish to remove the swirls.
















The wheels needed repainting, so I sandblasted and repainted them along with the lug bolts. I had found a set of caps in good condition on the facebook group.







With new tires it was ready to start driving it. The body still needs some work- the driver side quarter is dented in and needs to be repaired, and there are various dings that I want to have taken out by a paintless dent repair shop. The grill is faded and the driver side fender was repainted the wrong color so I'll repaint those when I fix the quarter panel.

[theastronaut]

The AC was an aftermarket system that didn't work, the condenser had a copper line that had split and the TXV had a line that was broken as well. I pulled the whole system to clean everything and replace the seals.












Cleaned up as much as I could reach under the dash.






New foam in the diverter box.




The evaporator box was plastic welded together so I couldn't take the core out, so I cleaned it as best I could with it in the box. I used a really fine wire brush made for a Dremel and metal polish to clean the tubes and fitting.








Clean, new TXV, ready to go back in the car.




I used a new universal 12x24" parallel flow condenser and made mounts that replicated the mounting points of the old condenser.






I had to remake a couple of hoses, and mounted a new drier.




The engine compartment was filthy so I did a quick scrub to knock the worst of the grime off. If I keep the car the long term plan is to pull the engine for a b6 sohc swap and more detailing.

[Rick the Quick]

Nice job John! A B6 will make for a nice driver and they are pretty much plug and play. I got lucky when I needed an engine for my '91. A local salvage yard sold me a Kia B6ME for $250. It was very clean physically and when I got it home I found numbers on the block written in the yellow markers the salvage yards use. The numbers were 54,525, the mileage I presume. Going on 4 years and 40k miles later she still runs sweet. B6ME is a 1.6, B series, single over head cam 16 valve. It was fairly simple swap that almost doubled the horsepower.
just thought I'd throw this out there. It should be a lot easier than the B6D swap but a few more ponies than the B6 single cam 8 valve. I'm sure you will do it right any way you go, keep us posted.
Rick

[theastronaut]

I'm thinking b6 sohc just because it would be a direct swap, looks stock, and I like the low rpm torque of b3/b6 engines. I would lightly port the head and intake, get a better valve job done, have a cam ground with more lift, and I've already swapped to 2" exhaust for better flow. Nothing crazy, don't want to move the torque curve up since it's limited to 6200 rpm, just something with a little more power all through the rpm range. I have a couple of b6d blocks and a b3 rotating assembly that I could use, just get new pistons and I found NOS b6 cylinder heads at a reasonable price. I'd only have to find intake and exhaust manifolds. I already have a b6 vaf, oddly enough the car had it installed when I bought it but I've since swapped it out for the correct b3 vaf.

[theastronaut]

The stock L seats were trashed when I got the car, but I had a full GL Sport interior so I cleaned up those seats to swap in. The passenger seat cleaned up pretty much like new, but driver side seat cover has some holes and wear so I've been on the lookout for a better cover.










After-












That catches the posts up to May of '21. When I bought it I drove it straight to the shop and started detailing it, but had never put any miles on it. Jerry had driven it about 1,000 miles while he owned it so I was pretty confident that it was reliable. I put about 50 miles on it that week around town, enough to figure out that it had really terrible brake pads that barely stopped the car, so I swapped to Centric PQ Pro pads which solved that issue. With that fixed, I packed it up and took off to Ohiostiva for it's first road trip, just shy of 1,000 miles round trip.




On the way up I stopped at a CFA for lunch and it started hailing while I was stuck in the drive through, with no way to get out and find a bank drive through or gas station to park under. Luckily it never got over dime sized so there was no body damage.






Since then it's been to Madness in '21 and Mudness in '22, Harvestiva in '22, Run to the Sun in Myrtle Beach in '22, and driven daily since getting back from Ohiostiva in '21.












I've replaced the steering rack, tie rod ends, and control arms in the last couple of months to fix the worn out stock rack. I've put 25k miles on it with no issues other than a slow leak in the AC system, I'm guessing it's seals inside the compressor since everything else has been renewed. It uses no oil, but it's starting to leak a bit. I checked the trans fluid today and it's barely down from the full mark and looks as clean as new after 25K. It's time for another round of detailing, front hub/brake rebuild, front strut mounts, and finally fixing the dented quarter panel. I've nearly got my white '89 back together so once it's running this one will be pulled off the road to finish the resto/detailing work. After that I plan on only driving it occasionally to preserve it.

Future plans are to finish building a set of widened 6" stock wheels, modify the stock suspension into an "Advanced Jr" setup- shortened stock rear shock shafts for less droop, trimmed springs to drop it 1" front/2" rear, New Beetle progressive bump stops for less body roll, and -2.5 camber front, -2 rear alignment. This, along with the widened wheels should go a long way to improve handling, increase grip, and improve steering response without giving up any of the stock ride quality. After dailying the white '89 with full Advanced suspension it's hard to go back to stock suspension, but the stock ride quality is really needed with how bad the road are in SC.

This was a test wheel using a 4" donor and a 1.5" strip. I have a full set of 4.5" wheels that will get a 1.5" strip, I've already cut them apart and have made bands but need to find a shop with a rotary table to get consistent weld beads to hold them together.

[Rick the Quick]

Nice job on the wheels. What size tires do you plan on using! I went with 14", 5 spoke alloys thar came on my XR2 donor car. I bought a set of Federal SS595s in
185 x 55 x 14. I wore the fronts out in 10k miles and come to find out they are discontinued in 14". I was able to find only one in the entire country. 14's are almost as hard to find as the 12's. I'm thinking 15's might be the way to go or maybe 12's or 13's. What are you running on your white car?

[theastronaut]

I'm going to stick with the usual 155/80-12 since I have a new set waiting to go on, but I might switch to 165/70-12 once those are worn out.

I have 165/55-14 on the white '89 and they're the perfect size for a 14" wheel- same diameter as stock and skinny enough that they don't hydroplane easily, yet even cheap ones will pull a bit over 1g in near freezing weather with the Advanced suspension. I've had 15's but they're heavy and 165/50-15 tires are super hard to find right now.

155/80-12 and 165/65-13 tire availability are the best right now, there are tons of them on ebay. 165/55-14 pop up occasionally on ebay. I don't like wider or taller, the extra weight and taller gearing effect really kills acceleration and mileage. I've gone down to super short 175/50-13 for autocross and the added acceleration from the really short overall height makes it way more fun to drive- third and fourth pull really good even with a stock b3. Once you get used to lightweight wheel and original or smaller OD tires it's hard to go back to oversize/heavier setups.

[loudrango]

great work!i'll post mine when it's worthy of being on the forums