The Festiva Advantage

[Dragonhealer]

The Japanese used great steels, they got it from us!

[ryanprins13]

You guys think the Festiva suspension is good because it's inherent weaknesses are masked by good power to weight and grip to weight ratios. One of my all time favourite sayings: "Lack of power gives the illusion of good handling."



Not much else special lol! The special is in the stuff you can't see. The suspension geometry, the shock valving, the power/torque curve of the engine matched to the close ratio box. The cost to build a front running Civic is somewhere in the $50k-$100k AUD bracket, so about $30k to $60k USD.

Lack of power may give the illusion of good handling but when you beat cars with "good" handling..... I cant find the photo back right now but if someone can beat lotus exiges, honda s2000's, wrx's and the like with a B6 festiva there is more to it than just a good or lucky driver. People in festivas can best others who have a better power to weight ratio, and whats conventionally thought of as a better chassis setup and suspension. Lack of handling gives an illusion of having a fast car.

I worded that wrong, I meant not much else special that I can see from the 3 photos I found. Obviously there is a lot going on with the engine and transmission to make it run like that. The things you mention- suspension geomitry, valving, power curve and trans are nothing close to what the car came with from honda though. It all had to be researched, figured out, experimented with and tuned, just like it would for a festiva. From what I have read about him and that car I cant see it costing that much, maybe it did, but i just cant see someone who spent $100k CAD on a $1k car taking a hole saw to the rear bumper like that.

[ryanprins13]

The only Festivas that don't have an ECU fuel cut at just over 6k are the carb cars... Scrappy (b6 swapped 88L) has seen over 10k before... (That wasn't intentional and I wasn't behind the wheel) but it survived with no issues thankfully.

ok, I had a discussion with someone once about my tachometer possibly being inaccurate but it reads 2750 at 100km/hr which I was told was right. so 3 ways I can find out. I went to the drag strip years ago and once left it in 3rd to cross the line and it was just over 6k rpm on my tachometer iirc. 76mph in third gear, no rev limiter, very bald 145/80R12 tires. as in past the wear bars, zero tread left but 500 miles before the wires poked through. Someone on here is good with the gear rations and figuring out the rpm's at speed. Can you tell me what rpm I would be doing with those tires at that speed and a stock transmission in 3rd? Treads are about 0.26in thick on new 145/80R12 tires so they were missing 0.5in from the diameter of a new tire.

second way is I put the same gauge on a different festiva which i will be driving in a couple months, I could see if i can find the rev limiter in it.

third, is this normal rpm's for these speeds on your speedometer with the stock transmission (e?)

2nd: -70km/hr is 5500rpm (43.5mph)

3rd: -80km/hr is 4000rpm (49.7)
-90km/hr is 4500rpm (56)
-100 is 4900rpm (62)
-110 is 5500rpm (68)

4th: -90 is 3100 (56)
-100km/hr is 3400rpm (62)
-110 is 3700 rpm (68)

5th: -90 is 2500
-100km/hr is 2800? Or 2750?
-110km/hr is 3050rpm

[FestYboy]

I can tell you right now that with the 145 tires, your indicated speed will be faster than actual. You can easily verify this with any GPS.

The next question I have is: how are you determining that there is no Rev limiter? If this is the case, you should easily break 100km/h in second gear... Don't worry, the valve train will survive excursions over 7k, I've done it as have a few other members with their stock B3s.

[Dragonhealer]

GPS ?
"You take all the fun out of life":tongue2:

[FestYboy]

It's just a tool like any other. It's all about how and when you use it...

that's what she said

[Advancedynamix]

My apologies for the length of this post. These are great topics.

Festiva suspension is significantly worse than an EG Civic. Under bump the Festiva loses camber while the Civic gains it, the Festiva sway bar setup is terrible, it's hard to get enough castor and the roll centre is atrocious.

The Festiva gains negative camber with bump. The amount depends on the ride height, because it's a progressive arc. This is also true of the EG chassis Honda.
At first glance, the sway bar setup on a Festiva appears to be a poor, and weak design. However, after 5 years of testing 3 different Festiva chassis with well over 160,000k of test time, I am amazed by how well it works. The sway bar actually acts as a shock absorbing trailing link. It works so well in fact, that this car can hook up incredible amounts of TQ for its light weight. With the engine moved forward 60mm, this setup becomes even more effective. This car can hook up nearly 4 times it's stock TQ figures with a set of cheap Chinese made coilovers and a set of 400+ treadwear Chinese made tires that are only 165mm wide (with less TQ steer than some factory FWD cars have stock!) Mind you, this is not on a lightweight stripped, race prepped tub. These figures are taken from testing a full weight street car with 160k K of abuse before I got the car.
I judge a suspension design by how effectively it can deliver driving TQ to the road surface, and this setup works. This design allows for a more compliant chassis setup, without sacrificing mid turn grip (it does this much better than the EG Honda chassis BTW).
The roll center is high on these cars. It's actually about 5" higher than my Porsche 987 CS. Looking at the two cars, I'd pick the Porsche to be the better of the two for high speed corner stability. Well, that's not the case. It seems that high roll center isn't enough of a problem to affect cornering at 160+kph, because a 140kph curve in my Porsche (fresh Nitto NT01 tires) before breakaway with neutral throttle is a 165kph curve in my street prepped Festiva (185mm Yoko A048.) That Porsche needs more than a fabulous roll center to hang a corner with a Festiva.

And the tyres are smaller and the track is narrower. You guys think the Festiva suspension is good because it's inherent weaknesses are masked by good power to weight and grip to weight ratios. One of my all time favourite sayings: "Lack of power gives the illusion of good handling."

The tyres are very small, and do tend to overheat when pushed hard, on a street prepped car. This has forced me to focus more on my suspension valving, spring rate and ride height. On a true track car, the fenders can be cut away to fit larger wheels and tyres. This hasn't really proved to improve lap times, but it helps with tyre longevity. Small tyres mean less parasitic loss, and make for a more efficient car.
As far as the illusion of good handling? Lol. My street driven, mildly prepared, 1800lb 110hp Festiva can put down lap times over 4 seconds a lap faster than a tuned sports car that is known around the world to be a great handling car. I'm not sure how that equates to poor handling. I've lapped more than a few AE86 and EG civics with equal prep, more power and better drivers than me. I gather my information from years of driving these cars, as well as other high performance street and race cars on tracks all over North America. I'll be at a private test track this weekend, where will you be?

I hear what you are saying but I don't think you get it.

I'm not sure this is true. What was said in this discussion was that Joe (Shorestiva) is asking me if I'm selling my B6d street car to build a car to compete with cars like this touring class in Australia. I have said I'm not interested in building a car for touring car racing, here or there. Been there, done that, got the jacket.
I have great confidence that the Festiva would be much faster than either of those cars in that video. My confidence comes from my experience with 2 minimally prepped street Festivas, and a few poorly prepped Festiva race cars, on a half dozen different tracks. I come into this s discussion with the knowledge and experience of 2 decades worth of setting up both club level and professional race cars. This is not my first rodeo.

Group 3J Improved Production (the Australian race category I am talking about) is a hell of a lot more advanced than your "track cars". The front running under 2 litre cars have between 290 and 310 flywheel hp, close ratio dog boxes (which generally cost in the range of $8k to $12k AUD), Motec ECUs with logging dash etc.. I asked a well known builder if AP 290x28mm curved vane 2 piece floating front rotors would be big enough for my AE86 with 2 litre engine. He said I should go with at least 30mm! The rulebook is not a free-for-all either. A lot of items are very tightly controlled. 100% standard lower control arms must be used in the front suspension for example. You can read the rule book here if you want to:http://docs.cams.com.au/Manual/Race/...-3J-2017-1.pdf

You may not want to assume someone has little or no knowledge or experience with a topic. It could make you appear very ignorant. Lol.
My dedicated track car will have proper equipment. I've collected a thing or two here and there, and I'm pretty good at making high end parts from scratch. My car won't be built from a list of flashy bits from the back of AutoAction. Keep your Motec, I washed my hands of that system after 1 too many "motec moments" as we called them. I'm using EFI technologies (Italy) Euro4+.

That civic is closer to a street car than a race car. An EG (with minimum weight limit) can run a KA20 in under 2000cc class or a KA24 in 2001-3000cc class.

I only posted the article about Phil's Civic to show that it wasn't a simple showroom stock Civic hatch that got a second + on me. I never claimed that car was a professional level race car, but it is a well prepped club racer with a few seasons under it's tub, and the driver is a damn good driver as well.

Improved Production cars are not slow. What did you have in mind, a World Time Attack Festiva?

I was interested in WTAC, until they started getting more strict about modifications. Now, it looks like I'll need to stay in good 'ol 'Merica for my unlimited classes. I have been doing this too long to put up with class rules. I like innovation, and I like speed. I'm not that great of a driver, but I enjoy myself. Championship trophies and magazine cover shots are cute, but I'd like to focus on pushing limits, not cheating at tech.
Improved production is fast compared to street stock. I'm more of a prototype guy myself.

[Advancedynamix]

My apologies for the length of this post. These are great topics.

Festiva suspension is significantly worse than an EG Civic. Under bump the Festiva loses camber while the Civic gains it, the Festiva sway bar setup is terrible, it's hard to get enough castor and the roll centre is atrocious.

The Festiva gains negative camber with bump. The amount depends on the ride height, because it's a progressive arc.

At first glance, the sway bar setup on a Festiva appears to be a poor, and weak design. However, after 5 years of testing 3 different Festiva chassis with well over 160,000km of test time, I am amazed by how well it works. Caster can be adjusted with adjustable sway bar mount plates. The sway bar on the festiva actually acts as a shock absorbing trailing link. It works so well in fact, that this car can hook up incredible amounts of TQ for its light weight. With the engine moved forward 60mm, this setup becomes even more effective. This car can hook up nearly 4 times it's stock TQ figures with a set of cheap Chinese made coilovers and a set of 400+ treadwear Chinese made tires that are only 165mm wide (with less TQ steer than some factory FWD cars have stock!) Mind you, this is not on a lightweight stripped, race prepped tub. These figures are taken from testing a full weight street car with 160k km of abuse before I got the car.
I judge a suspension design by how effectively it can deliver driving TQ to the road surface, and this setup works. This design allows for a more compliant chassis setup, without sacrificing mid turn grip (it does this much better than the EG Honda chassis BTW).
The roll center is not ideal on these cars. My Porsche 987 CS has a much more favorable roll center. Looking at the two cars, I'd pick the Porsche to be the better of the two for high speed corner stability. Well, that's not the case. It seems that "atrocious" roll center isn't enough of a problem to affect cornering at 160+kph, because a 140kph curve in my Porsche (fresh Nitto NT01 tires) before breakaway with neutral throttle is a 165kph curve in my street prepped Festiva (185mm Yoko A048.) That Porsche needs more than a fabulous roll center to hang a corner with a Festiva.

And the tyres are smaller and the track is narrower. You guys think the Festiva suspension is good because it's inherent weaknesses are masked by good power to weight and grip to weight ratios. One of my all time favourite sayings: "Lack of power gives the illusion of good handling."

The tyres are very small, and do tend to overheat when pushed hard, on a street prepped car. This has forced me to focus more on my suspension valving, spring rate and ride height. On a true track car, the fenders can be cut away to fit larger wheels and tires. This hasn't really proved to improve lap times, but it helps with tyre longevity. Small tyres mean less parasitic loss, and make for a more efficient car.

As far as the illusion of good handling? Lol. My street driven, mildly prepared, 1800lb 110hp Festiva can put down lap times over 4 seconds a lap faster than track prepared sports cars that are known around the world to be a great handling cars (Porsche 944, Honda S2000, Mazda Miata, the list goes on.) This is information I've gathered from years of driving these cars, as well as other high performance street and race cars on tracks all over North America. Are you going to tell me my Cayman S is a crappy handling car now too?

I hear what you are saying but I don't think you get it.

I'm not sure this is true. What was said in this discussion was that Joe (Shorestiva) is asking me if I'm selling my B6d street car to build a car to compete with cars like this touring class in Australia. I have said I'm not interested in building a car for touring car racing, here or there. Been there, done that, got the jacket.
I have great confidence that the Festiva would be much faster than either the cars in that video, with equal amounts of preparation and an equal budget. My confidence comes from my experience with 2 minimally prepped street Festivas, and a few poorly prepped Festiva race cars, on a half dozen different tracks (and a wee bit of experience tuning and driving performance cars.) I come into this discussion with the knowledge and experience of 2 decades worth of setting up both club level and professional race vehicles. This is not my first rodeo.

Group 3J Improved Production (the Australian race category I am talking about) is a hell of a lot more advanced than your "track cars". The front running under 2 litre cars have between 290 and 310 flywheel hp, close ratio dog boxes (which generally cost in the range of $8k to $12k AUD), Motec ECUs with logging dash etc.. I asked a well known builder if AP 290x28mm curved vane 2 piece floating front rotors would be big enough for my AE86 with 2 litre engine. He said I should go with at least 30mm! The rulebook is not a free-for-all either. A lot of items are very tightly controlled. 100% standard lower control arms must be used in the front suspension for example. You can read the rule book here if you want to:http://docs.cams.com.au/Manual/Race/...-3J-2017-1.pdf

You may not want to assume someone has little or no knowledge or experience with a topic. That is a sure fire way to appear very ignorant.
My dedicated track car will have the proper equipment to achieve my goals, not to compete in a governed class. I've really got no desire to race in any sanctioned racing series, unless that series has an unlimited open class. Over here, the SCCA is the most popular sanctioning body for amature level road racing. You'd have to pay me to drive in an SCCA class. Any organization who's idea of "fair racing" includes weight limits, HP caps and chassis modifacation rules is not my cup of tea.
For my track build, I've collected a thing or two here and there, and I'm pretty good at making high end parts from scratch. My car won't be built from a list of flashy bits from the back of AutoAction. Keep your Motec, I washed my hands of that system after 1 too many "motec moments" as we called them. I'm using EFI technologies (Italy) Euro4+.

That civic is closer to a street car than a race car. An EG (with minimum weight limit) can run a KA20 in under 2000cc class or a KA24 in 2001-3000cc class.

I only posted the article about Phil's Civic to show that it wasn't a simple showroom stock Civic hatch that put a second + lead on me. I never claimed that this car was a professional level race car, but it is a well prepped club racer with a few seasons under it's tub, and the driver is a damn good driver as well. Here in AZ, this car could be street driven legally, so yes, I guess it's a street car. We have very lax rules over our street cars here though.

Improved Production cars are not slow. What did you have in mind, a World Time Attack Festiva?

I was interested in WTAC, until they started getting more strict about modifications. Now, it looks like I'll need to stay in good 'ol 'Merica for my unlimited classes. I have been doing this too long to put up with class rules. I like innovation, and I like speed. I'm not that great of a driver, but I enjoy myself. Championship trophies and magazine cover shots are cute, but I'd like to focus on pushing limits, not cheating at tech.
Improved production is fast compared to street stock. I'm more of a prototype guy myself.

Some of my past builds have held track high speed records. This Fabcar Porsche GTP car (GT Prototype chassis) topped 202mph at Road America over a decade ago. This car made around 900hp, had custom valved (by yours truly) Moton suspension, EFI Euro6 engine management and aim DaVid telemetry. This is more my speed. I'm pretty confident I can build a much faster FWD prototype from scratch, using what I've learned tuning the Festiva chassis.

[FestYboy]

ok, I had a discussion with someone once about my tachometer possibly being inaccurate but it reads 2750 at 100km/hr which I was told was right. so 3 ways I can find out. I went to the drag strip years ago and once left it in 3rd to cross the line and it was just over 6k rpm on my tachometer iirc. 76mph in third gear, no rev limiter, very bald 145/80R12 tires. as in past the wear bars, zero tread left but 500 miles before the wires poked through. Someone on here is good with the gear rations and figuring out the rpm's at speed. Can you tell me what rpm I would be doing with those tires at that speed and a stock transmission in 3rd? Treads are about 0.26in thick on new 145/80R12 tires so they were missing 0.5in from the diameter of a new tire.

second way is I put the same gauge on a different festiva which i will be driving in a couple months, I could see if i can find the rev limiter in it.

third, is this normal rpm's for these speeds on your speedometer with the stock transmission (e?)

2nd: -70km/hr is 5500rpm (43.5mph)

3rd: -80km/hr is 4000rpm (49.7)
-90km/hr is 4500rpm (56)
-100 is 4900rpm (62)
-110 is 5500rpm (68)

4th: -90 is 3100 (56)
-100km/hr is 3400rpm (62)
-110 is 3700 rpm (68)

5th: -90 is 2500
-100km/hr is 2800? Or 2750?
-110km/hr is 3050rpm

Here's the numbers I got today:
At 100kmh +/-1
4th gear 3050 +/-10
5th gear 2470 +/-10

[skeeters_keeper]

Some day when i have a lot of free time (most likely 40+ years from now) I'm going to put together a document with all of Charlies posts like that and call it "The festiva chasis Bible according to Advancedynamics".

[TominMO]

Some day when i have a lot of free time (most likely 40+ years from now) I'm going to put together a document with all of Charlies posts like that and call it "The festiva chasis Bible according to Advancedynamics".

40 years would be about right. That's about how long the four canonical Gospels were written after Jesus' death. Recommend you leave out anything related to Charlie's death and resurrection tho; or how he healed Festys by just walking past them.

[Advancedynamix]

40 years would be about right. That's about how long the four canonical Gospels were written after Jesus' death. Recommend you leave out anything related to Charlie's death and resurrection tho; or how he healed Festys by just walking past them.

I have to drive them in order for miracles to happen. Lol. That's in the book of SC72 Karl. Haha. That was totally a fluke BTW.

[Dragonhealer]

Some day when i have a lot of free time (most likely 40+ years from now) I'm going to put together a document with all of Charlies posts like that and call it "The festiva chasis Bible according to Advancedynamics".

Priceless ...............And for everything else, there's Mastercard !

[Dragonhealer]

Here's the numbers I got today:
At 100kmh +/-1
4th gear 3050 +/-10
5th gear 2470 +/-10

I got essentially the same numbers in Ethel on 145/12's
62.5mph
4th = 3025rpm
5th = 2450rpm

[Dragonhealer]

B3 and b6 are identical save for the cylinders in the B6 being siamesed to allow the larger bore. Also, the Festiva GTA uses a de-stroked B6 block with dohc to achieve the 1.3L displacement.... So technically, a B6D is a factory stroked GTA. Would that pass tech?

Rules say it has to be the same casting. I don't know if any of the B3J's went down under, but the biggest I can make a B3E block without stroking, is slightly over 1700cc. It ain't cheap.