The Festiva Advantage

[Advancedynamix]

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.

What about sleeves?

[sc72]

skeeters-keeper, hey don't wait that long, I don't have that many years left !! Maybe I could fab up charlies suspension on a wheel chair for two.

[FestYboy]

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

Not really a function of tire size here, but more the relation between engine speed and speedo gear output/display to verify tach calibration. Obviously tire size will determine the difference between displayed and actual road speed. But the display speed and tach speed should remain consistent in relation in each gear.

The quandary here is weather or not the tach is out of calibration, giving the illusion of a lack of rev limiter in this particular car.

Ryan, what year is your car? Fuel delivery system?
If it's EFI, I need to know how you circumvented that rev limiter.

[FestYboy]

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.

That's a huge difference!!! There has to be a sleeve block involved (milling out the entire block and press fitting a Siamesed bore block like I've seen done to many b series Honda engines). And yes, those are expensive.

[Dragonhealer]

[ryanprins13]

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

Seriously? I feel like ive been lied to all these years... i thought all small cars from that era were around 2700 rpm at 60mph. This would mean my tach is way off and i already filled the dash of my new festiva with stuff and i dunno if i can find one that would fit in the same spot...

Not really a function of tire size here, but more the relation between engine speed and speedo gear output/display to verify tach calibration. Obviously tire size will determine the difference between displayed and actual road speed. But the display speed and tach speed should remain consistent in relation in each gear.

The quandary here is weather or not the tach is out of calibration, giving the illusion of a lack of rev limiter in this particular car.

Ryan, what year is your car? Fuel delivery system?
If it's EFI, I need to know how you circumvented that rev limiter.

Must be my tach. Mine reads 400rpm higher than what you get at 3000rpm already so im sure its just my tach. Doubling that gives 6800rpm readout when its actually doing 6k, ive seen it hit 7200 but its no stretch to think its just not calibrated anywhere close.
The car is efi but had many electrical fires, lol.
I will start a different thread on this probably tomorrow since its got nothing to do with this thread. Im sure there are others with cheap aftermarket tachometers that want to verify them.

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[ryanprins13]

That's a huge difference!!! There has to be a sleeve block involved (milling out the entire block and press fitting a Siamesed bore block like I've seen done to many b series Honda engines). And yes, those are expensive.

It is a big difference, lol.
But what we really need to do is convince Sapia to put a b6t into the festivas they make. They are still making them right?

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[Dragonhealer]

Ryan, what year is your car? Fuel delivery system?
If it's EFI, I need to know how you circumvented that rev limiter.

The car in question regarding rev limit is GOD's car, back when we had it from new. That car was always a bit strange. A 1990 L in yellow but not normal to all I have heard here. Add a bit of throttle and it would accelerate in stair steps with little hesitations, but roll on throttle where the pedel is in motion and it will accelerate smoothly and briskly. Another weird thing, for the first 10 months at 75mph it got 69 to 72 MPG, and in town got 45MPG. This gradually deteriorated untill we sold it to GOD with 50K on the clock. No tach in the car, but any good tech knows 7K rpm when they hear it, at which point the management cut spark entirely, and didn't resume intill the revs had fallen several seconds, 500rpm at least. Not sure what to make of it....

[Dragonhealer]

It is a big difference, lol.
But what we really need to do is convince Sapia to put a b6t into the festivas they make. They are still making them right?

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Most sanctioning bodies require that the car be in the configuration normally delivered to their country.
IIRC, SAPIA's licence expired in 2007, whether they are still building Festivas or not, I don't know. Currently (at the time we were going to lift trade sanctions) 60% of vehicles registered in Iran are (were) Festivas (SAPIA)

[FestYboy]

The car in question regarding rev limit is GOD's car, back when we had it from new. That car was always a bit strange. A 1990 L in yellow but not normal to all I have heard here. Add a bit of throttle and it would accelerate in stair steps with little hesitations, but roll on throttle where the pedel is in motion and it will accelerate smoothly and briskly. Another weird thing, for the first 10 months at 75mph it got 69 to 72 MPG, and in town got 45MPG. This gradually deteriorated untill we sold it to GOD with 50K on the clock. No tach in the car, but any good tech knows 7K rpm when they hear it, at which point the management cut spark entirely, and didn't resume intill the revs had fallen several seconds, 500rpm at least. Not sure what to make of it....

Ummm, huh????? I'm fairly certain that John (aka, PU241, aka, GOD) never owned a yellow Festiva. Nor have I ever heard of any Festiva breaking 60 MPG at any speed let alone the speeds that you're suggesting.

Please elaborate. Or at least explain the odd post.

[Dragonhealer]

Sorry, in this context, "GOD's car" ,Jim Anderson, owns the Meet Rack bar and grill in Tucson.
Honestly, I've kept mileage on every car I've ever owned, but as I had no comparison with any other Festiva at the time, I never thought twice about it, other than I thought it must be wearing out.
today it gets 44 freeway, 38 in town, perfectly normal.

[FestYboy]

Just came across this: http://www.magnumtuning.com/en/detai...x/ford/festiva
Not sure what to think, but snake oil is the first thing to come to mind.

[Advancedynamix]

Ummm, huh????? I'm fairly certain that John (aka, PU241, aka, GOD) never owned a yellow Festiva. Nor have I ever heard of any Festiva breaking 60 MPG at any speed let alone the speeds that you're suggesting.

Please elaborate. Or at least explain the odd post.

The man Ryal is talking about actually changed his name to God. His license plate is GOD on his festiva. Thousands of people know him as God. He even brands his face on other people who want 50 cent drinks at his bar. He's an awesome guy, and worth the drive to Tucson to meet. I've spent more than one Sunday listening to God's wonderful stories about boxing and meeting presidents and being in movies.

[Wedge]

My comments in red.

My apologies for the length of this post. These are great topics.
The Festiva gains negative camber with bump. The amount depends on the ride height, because it's a progressive arc.


Is your sketch made from real world measurements? If so how about a camber vs bump plot? As you increase tyre diameter and lower ride height the camber curve gets worse, to the point where it will reverse and go positive at some point in wheel bump travel. No matter how much you fiddle with a mcpherson strut, the camber gain with bump will be inferior to what you can easily achieve with a double wishbone setup.

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.

Going by your sketch above, the Festiva roll centre is lower than the front cross member. Roll centre on mac strut cars always ends up lower than where it left the factory, as people tend to fit larger diameter wheels/tyres and lower the ride height. This can sometimes be (partly) corrected by installing a spacer between the strut/knuckle and the balljoint.


The tyres are very small, and do tend to overheat when pushed hard, on a street prepped car.

As I said this is one reason a Festiva would be uncompetitive in IPRA.

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?

Your comparisons to other track hacks is all good and well, but I entered this conversation by stating that a Festiva would be NOWHERE in IPRA. Now you keep telling me how you are faster than this and that and the Festiva is the greatest handling car in the world? I'm not sure what you are trying to convince me of?

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, BIGGEST CALL EVER! 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.

Your admit your experience comes from two minimally prepped street cars which are a world away from an IPRA car in performance, yet you are claiming you can build a world beater! Please explain how a Festiva would be faster, when it has less power, almost the same weight, smaller tyre and inferior suspension design. FYI the under two litre IPRA national championships have been won for the last 5 years consecutively by cars with double wishbone front susension. If you have any experience in motorsport you must know the difference between first place and tenth place is about 1%.


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+.

You should tell the LeMans GT teams that use MOTEC to get something better. I only mentioned MOTEC to give an indication of the budget and level of equipment used.


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.

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.

Here's a couple more of my favourite sayings:

"An untested life is worthless."
"You can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter."

Some people call the Festiva a turd (I don't). But it was designed as the cheapest possible grocery getter. Yes, you can make it a lot faster, faster than a lot of other cars. But at the end of the day it is still a turd and there are limits to what you can do with it.

[mikemounlio]

Wedge im not trying to be a jerk here but what is your purpose here? Do you plan to mod a Festiva? Do you drive a Festiva? I do not know your story at all so im just asking about it.

Advancedynamix has has done a huge amount of work on these cars. The main goal from what i can tell is race car on a budget! He has done just that. The car ended up being very very good. Its hard for others to believe him because he talks so highly on the little old car. I for one always liked the idea of building a fast festiva so i put all my cards in his hand and did what he says. Once i got the first taste of the kool-aid i was hooked. Now i have a couple built Festivas. I would even say i have one of the fastest ones around. Not only are mine built with the motors but i have the suspension on them as well. I have it all on there. I have not raced it yet but i can say that just by driving it im a believer! Advancedynamix is not wrong. These cars are amazing. I dont know the race class you guys are talking about so i cant compare. I do know that for a street car its better then anything else i have ever drove or even rode in. Now as far as cars that meet a full on race spec i have no clue. I have never been in one.