'89 Festiva build...

[Zman86]

I blasted the bases of the spindles today, going to clean the spindle up best I can, but I don't have access to a lathe to polish them in.

Thanks for the kind words!


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[ryanprins13]

I blasted the bases of the spindles today, going to clean the spindle up best I can, but I don't have access to a lathe to polish them in.

Thanks for the kind words!


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Ok! What are you painting/coating them with?
If you google or look on youtube for homemade lathe i bet youll have a plan real quick. I presume you have a drill press at least- without looking up homemade lathes my first thought would be to take a plate of something, drill a hole through it the size of the hole through the spindle. Make or buy a plastic washer with an id about that size. Put a rod into the hole in the spindle, put some grease on the plastic washer and slide it on, then stick the rod through the plate. Stick the plate on the drill press, find something like what i used to put in the chuck of the drill press. Tighten it up real good, clamp the plate down and spin the spindle at a slow speed.

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[Zman86]

Getting powdercoated. I just realize I may have access to a lathe in a couple weeks, a friend up north has one. I'll take them with me for polishing then. Thanks!


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[ryanprins13]

Getting powdercoated. I just realize I may have access to a lathe in a couple weeks, a friend up north has one. I'll take them with me for polishing then. Thanks!


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Sweet! Obviously dont take much off where the inner race runs, but if you look on the spindle you can likely see a groove from where the inner race was spinning and wore down the spindle. I just smoothed that out a little. pick up a nail file and some fine sandpaper and some polish they will look great. This is the spindle on my daily, its not worth trying to save but its easy to see where the grooves are worn by the inner race spinning.


This is the polish i used. Worked suprisingly well on the spindle and its cheap

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[Zman86]

I have the same polish at home for doing the wheels on the wife's showcar. I'll put up some pics after I get them polished on the lathe. Thanks for the advice Ryan!


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[Zman86]

Work was a bit slow today due to numerous cancellations because of the weather, so my boss and I decided to figure out and build the front knuckles.

New races



This tool took months of searching and required me shipping it in from Portland, Or from a man who was nice enough to lend it to me. The black pieces simulate the installed axle shaft, the dark grey piece in the middle is one of 21 different sized machined shims that installs between the inner races and sets the preload in the bearings.



Tool installed



As per Shopkey, we torqued up the tool in four increments, spinning the bearings each time to seat them.



Measuring the drag with a 1/4" drive beam style torque wrench. Manual stated that 2-16 in/lb drag is the spec, managed to get both between 8-10 in/lb.




Pressing the whole mess together after installing the seals and packing the bearings.





All done. All in all I believe this is a poor design. The bearings are not serviceable, and getting the hub apart means destroying them.







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[shorestiva]

If you're going to be tracking it. You want the preload to be 5in/lbs.

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[Zman86]

'89 Festiva build...

If you're going to be tracking it. You want the preload to be 5in/lbs.

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Could not get it any lower than 8-10 with the spacers I had available to me. If they happen to fail or get noisy, I'll have some larger shims cut and rebuild them, but for now this is as good as it gets.


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[Zman86]

Got a couple small things coated tonight while doing a batch of black for our VW bus.

Rear camber/toe adjusters



Rear spindles



Not much left to do for the suspension really, have to decide if I'm going to do the Miata master/booster combo and Aspire steering rack when I do the suspension swap or hold off till later when the engine gets swapped.


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[Zman86]

Not much going on with my car lately, but there's a couple things to talk about. We recently did a 7500km round trip in our '72 VW bus to Alberta and back. On our way back, a mint Festiva passed us on the trans Canada in Saskatchewan.



A couple days later, about 200km outside Sault St. Marie, a familiar red shape appeared again.



We spotted it again the next day just outside of Sudbury. Had a chance to stop and talk to the owner. It was a family of 10 moving from the west coast to the east coast, and he had purchased the car for his daughter, a new driver, for $700. Car was mint.





A week later, we had a small get together in Niagra Falls with some other forum members. The blue car is in the middle is 18,000km into a massive road trip around Canada. The red car is an Ontario car and the green one came up from the states for a visit. Great people who were a pleasure to talk to!





As for my car, I've not touched anything for months. Im considering a career change that's going to reduce my income, so project cars might not be getting love for a while. I'm nearly ready to start the suspension swap, just waiting for the machine shop to finish up the drum I screwed up. Have to strip the car of its suspension hardware so I can get it plated, and get a Ford aspire steering rack as well as a booster and a master from a Miata.


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[Zman86]

Camber plates arrived today. They look awesome!




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[Zman86]

Back at the Festiva. We are closing the shop for a week and a half over the holidays, and my boss agreed to let me use it over that timeframe to do my suspension swap. I had originally planned to keep it at work over the winter and do both the suspension and engine, however plans changed as they always seem to do.

Picked up the drums from the machine shop this morning. They cut out reliefs for the heads of the ARP studs and drilled the holes to the appropriate size for the studs to bite into.



Pressed in the studs





Just need to clean and paint them now, then I have everything to assemble the rear beam done. Look forward to regular updates and hopefully some completion of this project near the end of the month!


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[ryanprins13]

Nice to see your working on it again!

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[Zman86]

Got the car to the shop on the weekend, its home for the next few weeks.



My new tires from Amazon arrived today. We exhausted every resource we could trying to find 13" tires locally with no luck. They are a bit bigger than I would have preferred to go, but low-pro 13's are basically non existent unless you want Nankangs, which are junk in my experience. Went with 185/60R13 Federal 595's.





Mounted and balanced them after work, good to finally see rubber on them.



Couldn't resist rolling them up beside for a preview. With the added track width from the Aspire swap and rear camber adjusters, I believe these are going to require some fender work to fit without rubbing. We will see shortly.



The Miata brake booster and master courtesy of Rock Auto also showed up today. Once again, non of our local parts suppliers could find them. I wish I picked normal cars to modify...




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[Zman86]

Earlier this week, a friend was nice enough to let me use his lathe to polish the spindles for the rear, since they looked pretty crappy







Installed the hardware in the spindles



Masked and painted the drums as well






With the Christmas holiday upon us, we are closing the shop for a week and a half. My boss agreed to let me bring the Festiva to work to swap over my brakes/suspension during our week off. Got started on it tonight after work.



Decided to start on the rear, here's the pile of parts.



Undercoat for days!






Old beam/brakes/struts out





Ready to install the Aspire beam



Custom made poly rear spring perches



Rear camber/toe adjusters installed on the backing plates along with new wheel cylinders



Backing plates and rear coils installed. I'll be getting a batch of hardware plated to replace all the rusty stuff, however I just couldn't get it done in time this time around.







Threw the races and bearings in a drum to test fit the rears. Unfortunately there are some fairly serious fitment issues with my choice of rims/tires. Looks amazing, but I don't think I'll be able to make it work without cutting the fenders and adding flares. Either that or going with a heavier spring rate to reduce the amount of sag in the rear. For now I'm just going to get it rolling and sort out the issues later.







I wanted to have the rear brakes done before I called it a day today, however I've misplaced my new brake hardware kit, and none of our suppliers could get us one today either, so I'll either have to go hunt for it at our old house or re-use the crappy old hardware.






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