Walth's 1991 Festy

[freshtiva]

Those lower strut bolts are ... well Id have to go to the arena to say it. Ive taken a sawzall before and just started making cuts where ever I could and removing little pieces at a time. I spent hours on those #2$%* things.

[skeeters_keeper]

Pull the struts/beam assembly first, then check to see how bad they are. If they slide in and out real easy you can check to see if any of the ones in the pile behind my garage are in better/the same shape... the you won't have to worry about getting those off. I know the ones behind my house are not in good enough shape for me to use, but some of them still have a little pressure left and could be used for the time being (till we can rob some better ones from one of Arties cars or something).

[walth]

so I got the strut top bolts off. I actually got the left side off without an impact and very minimal turning of the rod. I used an adjustable wrench and a ratchet wrench below that and backed them out til I had no grip with the adjusty. What I should have done was just get them loose, then put a wrench on the bottom bolt (which is what I did next to get them off) and back off the first bolt, etc. I had to use adjusty pliers on the rod which worked for getting the second bolt off but I broke them when I was doing the right side. I actually couldn't even get the bolts loose and I was messing up the top of the threads. So then I pulled out the AC again and impact and got the top one off and the bottom one was stuck right at the top. since my adjusty's were broke I had to take some channel locks and try the same concept. came right off thankfully. Was a pain getting the beam out from under the car with the strut being crazy rusted.

here are some pics from today:

a hole in the left quarter:


which I think is somewhere in here:


got the beam out:


seat belt covers (PITA) here's so you can tell which side to start prying off first (the right side when you're looking at them)


keep hitting my hand...never fails


left side of the beam:


right side (oh and that's a brake line I snapped at both ends on the left side since it was rusted to both of the bolts). I sure am glad you left some fresh ones on that beam for me Jay!!


and before I put all the bolts for the beam back in I'm going to roll them over a hard wire wheel on my neighbors bench grinder. shouldn't hurt too much just wont do it as long as I would on a soft wheel. I have to figure out the ebrake too...I guess that's why the right side was undone so it wouldn't lock up.

Well, I'm going to run and get some of Nate's old struts and then pick up some cheap wire brush/pipe cleaners I can run through the new sleeves so they will be hopefully closer to rust free than they may be now.

[walth]

Sooo I got the struts on (put them on wrong tho, I'll fix that monday -- all I did was put the cup on first then the bushing instead of vice-versa inside the hatch). I got the beam on and gooped the mess out of the bolts. NO MORE RUST FTW!! Haha!

right side:


left side:


I also sprayed some flat black on the drums as I got some surface rust from two nights ago, and last night I covered everything with a tarp very dry this morning. Then I found out the right wheel was loose and the bearing is shot. kind of dry too, weird dry. Just a few pics of the right side:




this is the backside of the right drum. I couldn't get the seal out to get to the bearing so idk the condition. I packed the bearings really well tho. too bad the outside bearing has pins falling out. I'm going to replace that monday or tuesday.


well, that's about all I can think of for now. i got the rear brakes bled really nice. I love my one-man bleeder

oh yeah, I hooked up the ebrake cable just on the driver's side as it actually wont reach. The new beam's self-adjusters are locked up for the time being. no biggy. and my buddy didnt have a wire wheel so I just put the bolts in my bench vise and wire brushed them. And gooping the mess out of them helped tremendously when I put the beam on.

[kartracer46]

Looks like you had good progress today. Sorry I gave you a beam with bad wheel bearings. You could use your old ones or they are like 7 or 8 bucks at Advance. Personally I would go with new ones. But for now, you could repack your ones off the old beam and use them if they are ok. I left the brake lines on there intentionally so you had good ones to work with. Kinda like those lower strut bolts I figured that were gonna have welded themselves in there. I would go ahead and throw those pads on the left side too before you bleed the fronts. Keep up the good work, and use plenty of antisieze...lol

[walth]

yeah, I'm kind of laying low on money for now being unemployed. The ones in my beam are in great shape so I'll be set there. And Jay, don't worry about it. it's no biggy, you've done more than enough to help me out with this. At least now I have good bleeders, brakes, no rust and extra parts. And yeah, I'm glad you left me the strut bolts cuz I busted mine quick!!

haha, and yeah, you can count on me using anticease. Nate said he's had his jar for like 5+ years. I'm betting with enough maintenance it won't last a year for me. hahaaa! same size bottle.

[walth]

Walth's 1991 Festy

well, I never took pics the other day when I fixed the struts since I had the top cups in wrong but I fixed that. Bled all the brakes, put the interior panels back and then yesterday loaded the car with the beam.

Today I drove up to Nate's and we worked on my festy and his ninja. He immediately gave me some slack in the throttle cable up over top of the valve cover and that made the difference. It was pretty much maxed out which was holding the butterfly a bit open. so the idle is fixed...it was incredibly annoying at 1800-2000 verses now being around 900-1000

We also drained the "oil filled coolant", pulled the radiator, res, ISC, air muffling box thing, cleaned the TB, flushed the coolant system, cleaned up the ISC, threw it all back together and good to go. I also showed Nate the RATTLING up in the front near the pcv and thought maybe it was a lifter but gladly it turned out to be the pcv. he had the same one in a blown engine so I threw that in there and fixed that horrible rattle.

here are some pics:


the dark oil in this is from a diesel, the brown is mine and yes, there is coolant under that. eek, oh yeah!! Nate got a couple shots when I drained the res, it was NOTHING but oil!!! it's all just from when Jason did the engine work. no biggy.



WD40 always does the trick. Used it in the res and did an excellent job


before we cleaned the TB


been meaning to take a pic of one of my newer mods...did this back in Raleigh and everyone else that didn't already have them IIRC...


air silencer delete, old pcv valve on the vc, blue pipe end cover thing for the hole. etc etc


oh and as far as robbing parts goes on the old beam, yesterday I snapped 6 of the 8 bolts (rounded the other two) and had no luck with getting the snouts off. I drug it up to Nate's today and he took an air hammer to the one with 4 snapped bolts. got absolutely no movement out of that spindle at all! plus I think the right spindle had been ground off about 1/4 way I guess to get the nut off at one time. And the struts weren't really good enough to keep or try getting off the beam either so the whole thing went to the festy graveyard out back. along with it went the old drums. They're close enough out of spec not to trust them. I did keep the bearings as those are in excellent shape and I kept the brake cylinders for spares but may turn them in for core whenever I need more.

[walth]

okay, so yesterday I sanded down the bracket that holds the right corner light and runs under the headlight and painted it. Here's the finished product after I got back today. matches almost perfectly! good color choice skeeter



I'm going to go put it on now

edit>> oh and while that was baking in the sun I helped nate build his 8 foot bench. Looks great!!

[walth]

sooo...I got the old beat up one out but tried putting the new one in and it wouldn't line up right...noticed the bumper is bent. so I'll have to get a new bumper before I can put that body piece on.

[walth]

so just throwing up an update...nothing to update. Haven't done anything lately been pretty busy. Planted some grass, I'm back to working (but not sure on how many hours...) but it's at McD's happy to have a job!!

Pulled all my bikes out of the garage today and cleaned up some...still got a butt load of boxes to get rid of and small boxes from stuff I bought, etc etc. But here is the "family" haha



the left one is my regular (1989), the middle is the 90 and the right one is an ex-race bike (1988). I have a 90 front end for my regular that I've been working on getting together. All I need now is rubber and now that I have a job I'm thinking about getting one in the next couple of weeks. I can push that 90 front end quite a bit harder than my 89. can't wait.



and in case you're wondering, the left and right bikes have "inboard disk brakes"...honda wanted to do something "different" and they won. They stop just as good as the 90 but the 90 has a 17" wheel vs the 88-89 having 16. I think the 90 is 1/2" wider too but idk. whatever. fun little vtr 250

[gestiva]

saw the pic of you hand and made this,(hope you dont mind)

[walth]

BAAAHAHAHAHAH!! that's classic!! I'm putting that on FB...thanks!!

[gestiva]

no problem. sparky showed me how to make them.

[walth]

Yesterday I took off my bumper, swapped valances, put the headlight metal trim piece I painted up on, got the "new" bumper back on and it looks amazing

I think tomorrow when I get home from work I'm going to pull the back wheels, drums, fix/swap the adjusters, put all that back together...then take out the ebrake cable and put the new one in that works. I'm going to try to revive the other one since it's in perfect shape minus that one rusty spot where "THEY ALL RUST" haha

I haven't done any searching yet, but someday I want to look into the front bearings and "service" them, put grease in them. I think they're fine spec wise but I've no experience with them yet. haynes manual here I come I guess.

I'll post pics this week of my work from yesterday. If you're on my FB then you can look at them, if you'd like to be, pm me

[walth]

okay, so tonight I took out the old ebrake cable, got the new one's interior tip installed. then I took off the right side wheel, bearing, drum, brakes, got the self-adjuster working F.I.N.E. fine! Took some pics of the spindle though...don't know what happened here:





tomorrow I'll pull the left wheel and assembly and do the same thing.