Icetiva 3 race car build

[PhoenixSHO]

its wierd that all the crazy stuff comes from Canada , my shogun , the KL v6 festy , and now this. I love it.

Was this a generic cage you bought , or it was built from you guys? The good tube bender shops (the real ones) are hard to come by.

this is my crazy project , if you haven't seen it.

[Advancedynamix]

Nice work! I like watching all the ice racing videos. It's easy to see why you guys wreck the cars so often. Do you ever run the car on dirt or asphalt in the summer months?

[TominMO]

It's wierd that all the crazy stuff comes from Canada, my shogun, the KL v6 festy, and now this. I love it.

That's cuz you have such long winters up there, and you gotta fill all that time somehow. I love it too.

[PhoenixSHO]

That's cuz you have such long winters up there, and you gotta fill all that time somehow. I love it too.

hahah thats true

[Icedawg]

its wierd that all the crazy stuff comes from Canada , my shogun , the KL v6 festy , and now this. I love it.

Was this a generic cage you bought , or it was built from you guys? The good tube bender shops (the real ones) are hard to come by.

this is my crazy project , if you haven't seen it.

Wow that is really something special man! Hiroki keeps talking about wanting to build something like that. If I stop wrecking race cars and imposing on his fab skills maybe he will some day.

The cage was built by G&G Racing in Leduc, AB, for my first ice racer (red car on page 1 of this thread). When I salvaged the car after twisting the frame badly I pulled the cage and stored it until this project. I am not sure the tube's were bent as well as they can be, but it is a strong cage.

[Icedawg]

Ice & Road Racing

Nice work! I like watching all the ice racing videos. It's easy to see why you guys wreck the cars so often. Do you ever run the car on dirt or asphalt in the summer months?

Some of us run the ice racer in the summer, Robin S uses his B6T swapped Festi summer and winter. Here he is running in the Edmonton Indy 2011 support race, the NASCC Eurasia Cup.


and getting chased down by me in my red car ice racing Jan 2012.


Some of the Chevette and Neon ice racers run rallycross also. That is easier, as you don't really have to change over suspension, clutch and brake systems to switch from ice to rallycross, but all of that needs a major upgrade for good road racing.
Photos by Terry Maclachlan, found at Skidmark Images
http://www.pbase.com/skidmarkimages

[Icedawg]

Salvage

The rest of weekend 4 went to harvesting needed parts from last year's blue Festiva Ice Racer. Since the white car had no running gear, I needed all the axles, suspension, wheel bearings and brakes that were replaced and installed on the blue car last year. The fuel pump from the red car was an upgrade, with an Eagle Talon High Flow Walbro pump, and the gas tank on the white car was dragged around in the dirt getting it into the shop, maybe OK, maybe not. Oh, and the steering coumn and steering rack were needed as well.

Another shot of the damage on the blue car, with the frame rail folded back into the fire wall - just could not buff that out.

And after a few hours I have pile of race car suspension parts, with cut springs, swaps from Aspire , front to back spring swaps, gas tank, steering rack and more.

I could not remember what spring combo I used, and I did not write it down, so I guess I will have to measure them, just to know what it is. But I do know the front Festi of Aspire springs are now on the back and cut. I just can't remember what went on the front.

[Advancedynamix]

Excellent thread!

[Icedawg]

Yippee - all welded up!

Weekend 5 saw two days of work by Hiroki, welding everything in solid after assembling and tack welding the weekend before. So it does not really look different, but it is a real shell again!

He had to grind the undercoat off underneath to keep it from burning. And use very low current settings with the thin sheet metal of the Festi, plus carefully do a stitch, then swing around to another location to stitch, then back again, all day, to keep the heat from building up and thus preventing burn through. Awesome job on welding very different thickness steel together.

One of the cage feet


One of the rear brace support feet, helping stiffen the rear strut tower.


tie-ins to the a-pillar, one low down, and one up high, with others to the centre of the roof along an extra bar in the top of the cage. Our club recommends one extra bar across the halo front to back to further support the roof, so there are some tie ins on that too. A rollover on snow can pack the roof in. We have a demo roof piece molded down around a drivers helmet, courtesy of a barrel roll 15 or 20 years ago.


And the roof too


The steering column/dash support bracket had to be cut to get the dash bar of the roll cage in place, so it had to be welded back on, of course.


Many, many thanks to Hiroki for such a spectacular job!

[Icedawg]

Wheels down

Weekend 5 continued into the New Year week, with me doing some work after all that welding.
Time to put a gas tank and running gear back in the car. The pics aren't much, just solid work.

The tank has a 255 lph ho Walbro pump, for a 90 - 94 Eagle Talon, #341857. I had to swap mounting parts from the stock system to the Walbro, since the parts it came with fit the Talon instead, but it worked fine. There was a cut-and-splice with the wiring to change the plug end as well. For some reason the tank fought harder going into the chasis than other times I have done a tank swap, but it is in. (not much point in a pic though)

Then on go the front and rear running gear, stripped form last year's blue race car.
Rear has rebuilt brake pistons from a few years ago, with Ford studs pressed in for the wheel nuts.
KYB Aspire/Festi struts
Festi front springs, cut down by 1.5 to 2 coils, mounted in the rear. A little bending of the strut spring mount and the top seat, plus tying the rubber top spring mount to the top of the spring made the slightly larger diam front spring fit in the rear. This really reduces the bounce of the back end under race conditions, where the stock springs are so soft the car moves around way too much, even on ice where you want a soft suspension.
There was some paint and grinding in the wheel well for the cage welding, and some rust removal from the frame rails, then a coat of Tremclad rust primer on most surfaces on the bottom rear area, too.


Front suspension on too,
Stock Aspire struts, which seem just a bit stiffer than Festi on bump, and surprisingly, a bit stiffer than KYB's too.
Aspire front springs, with a few coils cut out.
Strut bolt holes were ground out a bit, to allow some camber adjustment, so I can run about 0.5 to 1 degree negative camber.
Brake pads, and wheel bearings were replaced last year. Calipers were also from the blue car, as they have been running, while the ones on the white car sat unused for many years. Ford studs were pressed into the rotors.

[Icedawg]

Tedious Progress

Jan 2 & 3, still in New Year's Week

It feels like a long tedious struggle throughout this update.
First, I re-installed the steering rack, and the brake master cylinder ,both transferred from the blue car, then connected all the brake lines.


After years sitting outside the engine bay was pretty ugly

And it is amazing what a pressure washer can do


Then a brief interlude to get a new rear axle for Hiroki's car, from a trip to Pic N Pull. The current one was bent by a half inch, and had major toe in on one side, out on the other, nasty to race.


By the time we were finished unloading, washing the engine bay, and cleaning up the axle it was nasty outside. those streaks are snow coming down.

[Icedawg]

More paint

Weekend 6
Those welded cage feet needed paint too. That was tedious too, all the taping and masking to get paint only where it belongs. The bottom bar also needed painting where it was cleaned of paint to be welded onto the door sill. As did the tie ins on the A-pillar. So much time for useful, but unexciting steps. I could not get a Ford white paint to match the shell white from Dupli-Color paints, so it looks like I will have to get colour matched spray bombs to paint the outside of the roof.
Then I spent a half day stripping the main Festiva wiring harness of uneeded wires and connectors, to prepare it for re-installation.
Painted feet

Painted bar at sill tie ins

and primer on roof welds, awaiting the right white!

[sasquatch]

awesome build guys, keep up the good work

[kumalaba]

yeah thats awesome!

[Icedawg]

wire

This is about half the wire I took out of the Festi harness. It took a long time, and certainly was not much weight savings, but putting the harness back into the engine bay and cabin again was a lot easier than it would have been with all the extraneous plugs and connectors hanging on.
All of the VAF wiring, the daytime running lights, environmental control connectors, horn, turn and parking lights, wiring came out of the front harness, and everything except fuel pump, fuel send, inertia sensor, brake and tailights came out of the rear harness. Then a lot of fresh electrician tape went back on.