Trailer park fresh, white trash Festiva

[festyfreak39]

Long story short:

I once had a festiva street car and sold it to Ian. Basically, the minute i saw it drive off on a trailer, i decided i need another one. (true story).

I guess you could say the hunt was on, to find a new festiva. Thats when i stumbled across this gem:







And then i decided.. hey.. Maybe i should buy this gem too!!! (big mistake)



So the green one was a big mistake. Bought it for parts but ended up scrapping it. Got a couple useful things out of it, and so did another forum member. The car had dents EVERYWHERE. I bought the car on impulse but hey. I ended up sending it to the scrapper. (sadly) i had no more room for it.

AT this point i decided to build up the white one. It was a GL sport, and white. (2 fav things) Also had more rust but less dents which i could handle more.

So off to the scrapper this turd went:



So then i started construction on the White car. The basic plan was to make something fun. And something cheap. As everyone knows life priorities get in the way (aka house girlfriend, couches, daily drivers) all that fun stuff. So this thing was built on a super budget.

Car cost $120.00 after i sold a couple of parts off of it. The b3 was hurting, so i swaped that out for a b6 i had laying around from my old race car

But first to address some issues. car was broken into, and windshield was smashed.





had a tonne of work cut out for me. Regardless i started with the engine. Here is the donar vehicle: My old race car. Embarrassed lots of people at auto cross.



Ok - so my internet is slow. Ill post more tomorrow. I give up

[dliverance]

The white car looks like a great starting point. Is that a dent on the bottom of the rocker though?

[350freak]

yeah looks like that door would be a bit of a bear to open and close without a 3 lb sledge hammer. Nice find though, I think you'll be very happy with the outcome.

[festyfreak39]

The white car looks like a great starting point. Is that a dent on the bottom of the rocker though?

Yah.. thats the real bad part that pisses me off. The last 3 festivas I've had had a dent there. Dont know why dont know how :\

This is the picture of my other race car. This one also had said dent. Excpet this one suffered lots of body damage from racing so its also gone

[firebush357]

My little brothers car has a big dent in the door like your yellow one and My car has a gouge down the side of the driver door that goes all the way down to the fender...

[lessersivad]

Alright. I'm just going to throw my 2¢ in and say I would rather deal with dents than rust.

These cars are made of some pretty thin metal that isn't hard to remove dents from vs. patching holes and HOPING the 'cancer' doesn't return.

Everyone has their preferences as to what is more workable for them and i can't say I haven't repaired any rust on my '93 (approx. 12-15 square feet of sheet metal went into that 'rusteration'. The deeper i dug, the worse it was.

It ran (runs) too good to give up on so i simply kept cutting, forming, welding and smoothing until it was done.

After the patches were welded in I didn't want to revisit the 'fun' for a looooong time so I coated everything I could with Fluid Film and so far it's been holding up real well.

Again, just my 2¢.

[festyfreak39]

so one of the first things i decided on this project is that "comfort" was not needed at all for this build. I already daily drive a volvo so i dont need a stereo, any options. I want this car to be a "street legal race car".

I decided to mount a kill switch and make a kill switch panel. I sprayed some old aluminum with truck bed liner and think it turned out pretty clean. I plan to mount a fan switch along with launch control on this panel as well (eventually)



nice couple coats of bed liner. Should look good.



Also picked up this bad boy. Just showing where this build thread is going (eventually) its a PCS dashlogger. You can calibrate the unit to accept many different sensors. This will read Boost, RPM, Water Temp, Oil Pressure, and Speed. I'm trying to make a GPS unit work as a sensor input for speed. This is what im basically working on now.. I mean,this is an older unit but considering this thing is worth $1200.00 new and the car was bought for $120. I think its acceptable to use!



I started taking some of the old bolts, sand blasting them and coating them in zinc for corrosion protection. This is a quick before and after Something about taking a bolt that was garbage and making it look like this is really satisfying.






OK- onto the engine bit. This was my old auto cross car. It was a good car at the time but it has been sitting in a farmers field for 7 years!!!! I remember this engine pulling pretty good back in the day, i figured it was worth saving. Super gross/rusty and full of cow poop.



Well shortly after pulled this gross turd out. Man this thing was NASTY





nasty stuff guys and this was even after some more cleaning



Well after some scrubbing, (scrubbing bubbles thanks to my buddy turbo tom for helping me discover this stuff) some paint, some wire brushes and a TONNNE of elbow grease, here is a bunch of my stuff after being cleaned, Also decided to use an EGT water neck. Probably what im using when I go turbo.



Its all in the little details for me. Part of this build was to show that you don't need lots of money to build something clean and well painted the oil pan, painted the timing cover etc.

[festyfreak39]

So i spent a good 2-3 days cleaning, painting, sanding scrubbing, and tucking.



So i got a bit tired of doing dirty time consuming work, So i started doing some very satisfying easy mods to keep me motivated

Mounted my steering wheel and hub, and my home made shift knob. Also fixed the door panels, and locks since the car didnt have keys. Also replaced the ignition column. now the car has one key to start drive unlock and lock!





Also thought this was funny. Love my white hatch back it appears. This one is my daily car.



OK time to pull the b3 out of the festiva. Here are some pics of some more nastyness.



Then i ended both head lights out, scrubbing behind them and giving the headlight housings a coat of black Just to make it look a bit more presentable. I was personally very pleased with this little detail. The headlights also got a pretty good scrub and polish in.



This was my EGT water neck



I also spent a good amount of time scrubbing the head, and replacing the exhaust studs! Looked great after!
(and yes i know i shouldnt of used the red loctite. this was just to keep the studs in for instal



OK in the mean time i tried on different wheels. Cant figure out which ones i want to ultimately use.

[festyfreak39]

so i ended up making home made coilovers for the car. Will have to re-do this in the future forsure. However for now, pleased with the results.

Had some brand new 323 gtx struts in the back of the shop, probably used for a week on my old daily driver. That along with some free99 grount control coilovers and 323 top hats, they turned out semi-ok. haha



OK enough slacking julian, lets get this iron deficient B3 out for some more POWAAAA



I have a couple b6T intake manifolds laying around, so i decided to retrofit the b6t throttle body which turned out to be substantialy better. I know there are no virtual power gains from this mod. However throttle response has dramatically improved.



aight so now the engine was just about ready to drop in. as clean as it would ever be!!!



ENGINE WENT IN!!! Also painted the b6 exhaust manifold. Didnt prep the paint enough so it all ended up flaking off after westiva. Lesson self learned!



I also spent about a good day cleaning the engine bay and wiring in my kill switch



I was happy with the kill switch. And it even works (hahaha)





Mounted some phone dials on. Also got the coilovers installed.



OK!!!!! drumroll... This was the finished product!!! (for this year muahaha)



Shortly after, with the most haggard exhaust in the world i drove it to westiva!!!! was a great event. Thanks for Ian for putting it together. Car made the road trip no problem on its maiden voyage. Couple of hiccups: The heater wasnt working so i froze the entire way. And also my exhaust was straight piped so it was SUPER loud. I will fix this forsure for next year.





Well,Thats pretty much caught up to where it is today. Spent the rest of the summer playing with this thing: My buddies 3rd gen camaro "gangster" class car. 8.5" slick with a 5.3 lm7. We put 30lbs through 2 billet 66MM turbos right into that poor little stock short block. We made 1200hp and did the 1/4 mile in 8.86 at 170MPH. Our plan is to do drag week. Were currently making the car more reliable and streetable. Much fun was had on this thing so little time was spent on the festiva for the rest of the summer. Also did a couple.... races.





ahahhaah ok now some of you will figure out why this picture is so inappropriate. Probably my most favorite picture I have ever taken. What a night.




Well thats about it!!!! thanks for reading my thread. Thats a wrap for the 2016 summer build! I drove this for a week to work. Unfortunatley im not too happy with the performance. It needs more power. Still trying to figure out what the next step is.

[festyfreak39]

Well since im on here I may as well post the 2016 winter 2017 fall plans for the car:

MEGA SQUIRT! and also install my digital dash and data logger. Basically, keeping with the them of free.99, i traded some stuff for a miata gen 2 megasquirt plug and play! Great little unit. Now its time to retrofit the festiva wiring harness to use the miata megasquirt. I'm also going to adapt LSX coils so that down the road i can boost this thing till kingdom come.

The plan is to still go N/A for next year, except do a b6ze install (miata stuff) and once again go N/A for the year. The plan is to adapt the megasquirt, tune it, install a DOHC head on the SOHC block, install my fancy pants intake manifold and figure out a header for this thing!

Thanks nate for the diagrams. Saved my Bacon. Ill leave them here just incase someone wants them down the road. I found this set easy to use and read.





Thought you guys would also like to see this. Datalog from the holley EFI on the camaro. lol @ 29.7PSI.




OK so after a couple late nights on my laptop, i figured out all the wiring on excel. Ill attach it onto this build thread after i figure it all out and make sure it works. Its amazing how versatile excel is. I use it every day for work (im an accountant) made the wiring harness work very simple

I basically have to run 3 more wires. and re pin/reroute about 5. If one had a CAS and Ignitor, they could also run stock miata 1.6 electronics if they like. Im going to add a couple more wires for wideband input, boost control, and flat shift, and launch control. Since i will be using miata wiring, all this stuff is very much documented on miataturbo.net and anyone could have good access to it with a quick dr.google search



Whats comming up next: rebuilding the DOHC head!

[festyfreak39]

oh and here is a pic of my fancy pants intake manifold. This thing cost me way too much but i think its cool!

This intake manifold was off of a 300whp wrc spec 323gtx rally car in Europe. Its basically a JDM spec intake manifold

[festyfreak39]

So as of late i was cleaning my shop out, and figured I have a tonne of spare parts to make a fast festiva without breaking the bank. I had an old ice race motor that i thought was cooked, but decided to take a quick gander with a leakdown tester to see if i could re-use the engine without rebuliding one (for now) and good news! passed the leakdown test with flying colors!

out of 4 cylinders, the results were 10, 11, 15, and 9. As the engine was cold, I found these to be.... sort of respectable. Will definitely need to engineer a good catch can.



more updates this afternoon.

[bhazard]

If you're running megasquirt, ditch that data logger and run some sort of Android device with msdroid on it.

[Advancedynamix]

I just found this thread! Awesome work!

I'm having trouble seeing your custom intake manifold, which I'm very interested in. Your wheel collection is a thing of beauty!
Keep up the good work!

[festyfreak39]

I just found this thread! Awesome work!

I'm having trouble seeing your custom intake manifold, which I'm very interested in. Your wheel collection is a thing of beauty!
Keep up the good work!

Thanks!

My old man bought a kp61 starlet with a bunch of vintage wheels and the car is parked so he doesnt mind if i use them.

The intake manifold is just a JDM spec b6T. Ill get a better picture of it.