Pedro the Festiva's build thread.

[Advancedynamix]

Something tells me that's not a very rigid way to mount fog lights

They were pretty solid. There was no plate bracket, they were bolted directly into the bumper support with 6mm bolts, washers and spacers. I took them off, but I like the fact that no extra holes were drilled in the bumper. They did drill 2 small holes in the otherwise perfect early model grill which makes me sad, but that can be fixed easily enough. They also installed a loud horn that I've removed.

[bhazard]

Something tells me that's not a very rigid way to mount fog lights

[TominMO]

P.O. mounted fog lights to the bumper with the license plate holes.

Ah. I couldn't tell if those things that appeared to be on the bumper were not actually just in the background.

[Advancedynamix]

Looks really nice. What's that black thing sticking out of the grill?

P.O. mounted fog lights to the bumper with the license plate holes.

[TominMO]

Looks really nice. What's that black thing sticking out of the grill?

[Advancedynamix]

Today I pulled the Fuel tank and lines off of Virginia to use on Pedro. Virginia is getting a fuel cell mounted in the passenger foot well so she won't be needing them. The tank is mostly rust free, but has a bunch of varnished gas and other crud in it. I'll be washing it out and replacing the pump with a Walbro 255. The 89 auto pump is set up just like an aspire pump, with the rubber hose between the pump and the top plate. This makes mounting a walbro easy peasy. I didn't take any pictures today, nothing really that exciting to see. I did find a picture of pedro, from the day I brought the car home.

[bhazard]

Corrugated plastic sheets. Cover the whole front end. Build a skid plate/belly pan, get a hood blanket/engine cover. Insulate the engine as much as you can.

[moz]

There's always the "cardboard rad block off" mod for real cold weather

[Bert]

Part of the issue with Festivas is that there is practically nothing to keep any heat in the cat. For example, the doors have the thin card then airspace then metal then outside.

It's -26°C here in Canmore this morning as I write this. The Festiva will only get warm enough to take the chill off the inside air as we head up to Banff.

The Echo I'm driving is no different; plastic door card with less insulative value than Kia hardboard but I can darn near melt my boots with the heat on high.

[fastivaca]

Part of the issue with Festivas is that there is practically nothing to keep any heat in the cat. For example, the doors have the thin card then airspace then metal then outside.

It's -26°C here in Canmore this morning as I write this. The Festiva will only get warm enough to take the chill off the inside air as we head up to Banff.

[Advancedynamix]

It gets cold here in AZ, not necessarily in Phoenix, but northern AZ gets some mighty weather. Practically the whole state North of Phoenix got hammered with snow last week. Flagstaff sees temps well below freezing quite often. Stock festy heat sucks below 30 degrees if you ask me. I am going to just try and find solid vent ducting for Pedro though and stick a 192 degree T-stat in this B6D and hope it warms up like the b6t does. This is a factory no AC car, so It's not an ideal summer driver here.

[moz]

You only notice (and then curse a blue streak) seemingly non-existent Festy heat and defrost when it's -20 or colder. The rest of the time they blow 'sort-of warm' air. Neither Mazda nor Kia field-tested these cars in Arctic conditions before building them. They must have listened to lots of complaints over the years because Aspire heaters were designed much better.

Phewww....

The coldest it gets here is 5 deg c in the dead of winter.
And I've removed the ac [emoji37]

[zoom zoom]

As far a heaters goes, has anyone tried installing an Aspire heater in a Festiva? You should get much better heat, plus the center dash ducts could be made to send out heat too.

I'm not gonna say it's not possible, there's some ingenuitive peeps around here, but I did compare most of the festy duct pieces to the aspire duct I had when I swapped dashes in Fiona awhile back and they didn't exactly match up...at all. Who knows, maybe digging deeper and trying to swap heater core shroud and all that junk... Eh...

[Bert]

Hmmm... I didn't just read this...
I've just reassembled my interior after re soldering the heater core

You only notice (and then curse a blue streak) seemingly non-existent Festy heat and defrost when it's -20 or colder. The rest of the time they blow 'sort-of warm' air. Neither Mazda nor Kia field-tested these cars in Arctic conditions before building them. They must have listened to lots of complaints over the years because Aspire heaters were designed much better.

[moz]

Hmmm... I didn't just read this...
I've just reassembled my interior after re soldering the heater core