Festiva #5 (OrneryGarbagebox) gets a major overhaul!

[Afro]

We finally have our 8 Festivas so it's time to fix them up! First on the list is Festiva #5. We got it for free from Edmonton from another festiva enthusiast but it was in pretty rough shape (see a post about it here: http://gumsphere300.com/2012/05/02/f...he-second-try/ ). We're going for a little bit of a high clearance dirt/gravel road daemon on this one because it's not our prettiest festive( most panels have dents and it has a few mismatched panels).

Plans for it:
- BP with EGT trans with XR2 driver axle and Rio passenger axle
- Install engine wiring harness from EGT
- Rio front struts with Aspire KYB rears with festiva front springs
- Aspire front knuckles and brakes and Aspire rear beam
- Change front seats
- Change rear seat bottom for something more comfortable (people have to ride in this for 30 days straight, and did we ever find a solution!)
- New cluster
- New headlights
- Custom fuel pump so we can keep the carbureted gas tank (hard to find gas tanks because the wreckers puncture each and every one).

Sadly this job has to be done quickly and so there will be little time to clean parts or engine bays or paint old parts. So please bear with the dirt in the pictures!

[kellen302]

Why the mixing of axles (Rio AND Capri XR2) As far as I know you can use both Rio axles

[Afro]

Not from my testing. The Rio axle on the driver side is longer than the XR2's, and would be fully compressed when installed when the suspension is hanging. If anyone has managed any other way let me know, but unless I bang on the frame rail to make room to slide the engine over, there is no way I can make it work. And I don't like messing with frame rails

[JPT]

Not from my testing. The Rio axle on the driver side is longer than the XR2's, and would be fully compressed when installed when the suspension is hanging. If anyone has managed any other way let me know, but unless I bang on the frame rail to make room to slide the engine over, there is no way I can make it work. And I don't like messing with frame rails

^ This is good to know.

[Damkid]

I thought the pass. Rio axle was only like 1/8" longer then the Capri int. shaft/axle, that 1/8" difference should still work.... On the passenger side at least

[Afro]

So while I worked on the engine and wiring, my brother attacked our rear seat problem. The stock Festiva seat was cracked, stained, and very uncomfortable, and people will have to be able to ride in this car for 30 days! Solution? Well, we have a couple Escorts lying around, waiting for their BPs to be pulled, and their back seats are pretty nice and comfy, so we tore one out and tried to fit it in the Festiva. No dice: the front mounts on the seat bottom are the same as the Festiva's, but the rear of the seat bottom frame bumps into the plastic and seat belt mounts, and the seat back is way way to wide. We weren't about to give up though, I mean look at how much nicer the Aspire one is!

So we started to peel back the seat from the frame, and found that it should be pretty easy to swap the frames. Clip clip clip go the little snips on the copper rings

And there you go! Here are the two frames, Aspire one at the bottom. They are quite different, but when it comes to strapping a cushion to a frame, it doesn't have to be perfect, just close enough.

Here is the Aspire seat bottom with the festiva frame.

And here it is all buttoned up next to the old dirty Festiva cushion! It was really was quite easy! Just stretch the cushion front to back enough so that everything is tight and lock it in with the copper rings (You can get a special tool for this, mine is from BMW, and I have a ton of extra copper ringlets from BMW too but I'm sure you can get them from other places).

Then all we had to do was bolt the Festiva seat-back back onto the Aspire seat bottom/Festiva frame and fit it back into the car. The edges of the cushions squeeze a little, but not noticeably and the seat is so so so much more comfortable, you wouldn't believe.

[Afro]

Yeah the passenger side Rio axle is ok, but not the driver side. I knew it was longer from the beginning and was planning on trying to use the aspire control arms on both sides (they are a touch longer) which would give the axles more breathing room, but I found that it might be a little too far out for the passenger side axle. It could still be tested on the road some time, but for this build I wanted to play it safe because I have deadlines

[Afro]

While my brother worked on the rear seat, I cleared out the engine bay of derelict wires and got to work on installing the Escort GT engine harness (the car was carbureted so there was no real engine wiring harness to work with). On the Escort GT, the harness passes through the firewall on the lower passenger side, so I found a seal in a similar place in the Festiva, popped it and the pre-cut carpet behind it out. I then began to feed the wires and connectors through the hole.

Problem: the hole in the escort is about 4 times as big as the Festiva's, which means that you'd be hard pressed to pass most of the connectors through the Festiva's hole. Solution: sketch all the connectors and take them appart to shove the wires through individually and reassemble the connectors on the other side. Arduous, but the only other alternative is cutting the hole in the firewall larger, which I always try to refrain from doing unless necessary. This photo is from the passenger footwell where I'm reconnecting the wires to the plug.

All done!

And this is what it looks like from the engine bay. Obviously I will put a rubber bushing in the hole to seal it and probably silicone it too.

[Jfro]

EDIT: the rear seat swap was done with an ASPIRE rear seat, not an Escort seat. We tried to use the Escort seat backs, but they're too wide

[Damkid]

I am seriously impressed by that rear seat swap!! I may end up doing the same thing

[Jfro]

Damkid;

The passenger side totally works with the Rio axle. The driver's side, not so much. . .

[Damkid]

Great news on the pass. rio axle, I plan to use one in my future FWD rotary swap

[kellen302]

This is very good to know, I was under the impression that I could just grab Rio axles instead of hunting down a Capri XR2.

[Afro]

One last post for the day!
I took the festiva rear beam complete with struts, brakes, etc. out without too many problems, but there was a huge problem awaiting in the Aspire beam we pulled from the wreckers a while back. When we pulled the axle, we couldn't get the passenger side shock off, so we just left it on. Today I fought it for over 3 hours. I tried the 14mm with an impact wrench: nothing. Tried with a huge snipe: rounded the bolt (surprised it didn't snap it). Soaked it in Wurth release compound, hammered on it, used an airhammer on it, all to try and loosen the rust, filed down the bolt and hammered on a 13 mm, rounded the bolt once more. By this point I decided I had to go crazy on it. I flipped it over, cut the bottom of the shock eyelet so I could tear the shock off, air hammered the rubber off and was now down to the small sleeve left over from the shock, covering the bolt. It was seized on good. Nothing could make it spin, no air hammer, sniped pipe wrenches, nothing, and I was afraid of hurting the beam. So I grabbed my sawsall and cut the sleeve and bolt in two places. I air hammered the sleeve off the head-side of the bolt, and then air hammered the sleeve couter clockwise on the treaded side of the bolt to extract it from the threads on the beam. SUCCESS! Beer time.

[Afro]

Thanks for the catch bro. Wish I could edit the post!
PLEASE NOTE: SEAT SWAP WAS WITH ASPIRE SEAT BOTTOM not Escort. My mistake.