JDMSTIVA V2 Build Thread

[w4rkry]

It is now Official! I will soon be switching from my current rusted out shell to an all-new, rust free shell!

I bought it over a year ago and it has been sitting in my garage ever since. Many of my recent mods have been made in preparation for this shell to get painted and then put on the road.

I have decided to make a new thread to keep it all organized. Some things will be coming off of my current car and being put on this one, so I will be copy & pasting any relevant mods from V1 over to this thread.

I will begin by listing all the info on the new shell, as a starting point.

[ThisVelologist]

WOW

[w4rkry]

I went searching for a new shell in Summer of 2015.

I had the JDMSTIVA for about 4 months at the time. I knew it was pretty rusty, but at that point, with money pretty tight, getting a rust free project car was a long ways off.
Then, one day, I cam home from work to find a big dent in the side of the car, right in the middle of the driver side rear quarter on the gas lid. My mom had backed into it while I was at work. See offered to pay for the damage. However, she was expecting a bill of around $200 - $500.
When I got a quote from a local shop north of 1,200 due to rust and time, she quickly changed her tune. I mentioned to her that it would likely be cheaper to find a non-running rust free shell, and just swap the parts over myself. She agreed to pay for half of a new shell, up to $500.
So off I went in search.

In about 3 weeks time, I cam across an ad here on the Forums from member HTC.

Here is a copy of the AD:

Up for sale is my 1993 Festiva L. I've been wanting a truck lately, so when the motor went out I decided it'll go as is before I do another swap just to sell anyway. It'll start, but sounds awful. Probably enough left in it to drive onto a trailer.

220,xxx miles on the chassis, give or take. I swapped the dash and lost an accurate reading.
Pretty clean exterior, no rust, small dent by passenger door handle, the roof has some dents and the clear coat is fading
Driver's seat is split at seam, headliner was removed to try and fix roof dents (never replaced but is included), rear interior plastics pretty rough
Aspire swap with original shocks/struts.
Tach cluster (needs one blinker light replaced, but it's included in the spare parts)
Escort master cylinder
Passenger's side mirror
Fusible links replaced with fuses, spare fuses included
Comes with all the "in the glovebox stuff" (Owners manual, spare key card, VIN Warranty card (probably expired)
Needs a new set of tires

Misc parts include:
old blown motor (kept for parts/overhauling)
Orignial Festiva trailing arm
Extra set of pads, springs and retainers for all four brakes
Well used Haynes manual
3 aspire wheels (no tires)
original dash cluster
spare dash bulbs, fuses, misc engine gaskets, and extra wheel bearings

I'll cut my losses and start at $1500 negotiable. Text # REDACTED, Located in MO

He was asking $1500 at first when I saw it however, so I moved on.
Just 2 days later, he lowered the price to $1000. A great price I thought, so I got in contact with him. He was 5 hours away from me in MO.
I went to look at it a week later. We talked for awhile. The engine still turned over, But oil was absolutely everywhere. It wouldn't start, we assumed due to low fuel. The headliner was removed after he had attempted some DIY dent removal. There were a lot of leaves and dirt in the car, as well as a lot of Dog hair. I think his may have been using the rear and passenger seat as a bed. No matter though, as I could fix or swap all of that pretty easily. We negotiated for a bit, then agreed on a price of $850.
I drove back home and came back 2 weeks later with a truck and trailer, and took her home!

[w4rkry]

Here is the only picture I took of the car before stripping it down to prepare for paint:

[w4rkry]

Here are a few pictures of it after getting stripped down:

[festyfreak39]

nice start bro

[Festivaranch]

Can't wait for updates!!

[w4rkry]

Can't wait for updates!!

They are coming, I'm just slow haha

[Advancedynamix]

This is going to be a really nice car. Looking forward to the finished product.

[w4rkry]

Wheel Time!

Since this car was already aspire swapped, I began the hunt for some wheels. I need 4x100, and preferably 14's between 5-6" wide. I got a lucky break when some friends where moving out of town after graduating college, and had a collection of old wheels they were giving away. I picked them up and took them home. The collection included:
3x VW GTI "Snowflakes", made in 1983. 14x6 and 4x100.
2x BMW E30 "Bottlecaps", late 80s, 14x6, 4x100
1 BMW E30 "Basketweave", late 80s, 14x6.5, 43x100

All were in pretty rough shape, with curb rash, spraypiant, chipped clear coat, etc. None had good rubber. But hey, they were Free! Here is all of them the day I got them.



After looking around at some pics online, I decided to go with the VW Snowflakes. My friend said they should have the 4th one laying around somewhere that would turn up when they finished packing up the garage.
After about 2 weeks and lots of searching,, it was determined the Civic they bought with the wheels on it originally only had 3, and the 4th never existed. I again went on a hunt, now searching for just 1 decent condition snowflake.

3 weeks into my search, I came across a guy on Facebook selling 3 Snowflakes for $60 bucks, about 4 hours away. I jumped on it and drove out to meet him. This was the car that greeted me, super sweet Jetta!



And here are the 3 wheels I went home with:

[w4rkry]

After getting some school stuff out of the way, It was time to get to work making these wheels look beautiful!
The 3 free snowflakes were covered in multiple layers of cracked spray paint, and looked awful. The 3 stock ones were faded with original paint, and some peeling clearcoat. The curb rash was incredibly deep in multiple areas on a few of them, with some chunks taken out of the wheel weight bead in areas. All of them had general curb rash, not a single wheel was unscathed. Here are each of the different colors up close, right after a pressure wash.





And here is some closer looks at the different rashes, to give you an Idea of what I was working with.




I did some research and decided that Aircraft Remover (Paint Stripper for Aluminum) was the best course of action to begin. I bought a jug of it and some dollar store nylon paint brushes, and went to work on 3 wheels to test it. I picked one of each color.

I tried Diluting it first, 1 part water to 4 parts Remover. It didn't have the greatest effect. I used a few toothbrush sized wire brushes to dig on the paint after letting the remover work for about 10 minutes. As it did nearly nothing at all to the stock paint, I will only put the 2 spary painted pics up:




I went at it with 2 more rounds, this time not diluting any of it, just smearing the goopy remover with the paintbrushes.

Orange Wheel:




Stock Paint, some seriously tough stuff!!



At this rate, I decided I needed to get the rubber removed before I tried the remaining 3 wheels, and I needed to get to work fixing the curb rash.

[w4rkry]

I talked to a few different people about the best way to go about fixing the curb rash. I figured that the outside lip was mainly there so clip on wheel weights could be used, and could be taken off without compromising the strength of the wheel too much. I went to town and had the rubber taken off and visited a couple machine shops to see if they would be willing to tale the lip off, using whatever tool they thought best. The main shop in town didn't really want to do it, as they didn't want top be held liable for safety issues. I found a guy who was running a small shop in a shed in his backyard that had almost no advertising. He too was wary, but willing to do it. However, he wanted about 30 bucks per wheel. Considering my cost on average per wheel was $10, I passed and put the lip project on hold.

I decided to try it myself. I had attempted to use my car as a Lathe previously, by jacking up one free wheel in the air and letting it spin at idle in 1st gear. I had seen this done sucessfully by John Glenn (theastronaut here on the forums) in his build thread. (His Success can be seen here)As it spun, I took an angle grinder (with a grinding wheel) to the lip. It worked ok for about 3 minutes. However, it was leaving a very rough and uneven surface finish, and by the time I took a milimeter or 2 off, the grinder was hitting the tires that I had yet to remove at the time. The project was put on hold again.

Attempting again a month or so later, Armed with an angle grinder, I wanted to try with the wheels on the ground. My dad suggested I try using a flappy sanding wheel on the grinder instead of a thick grinding wheel, thinking that the aluminum was fairly soft and the sandpaper would leave a smoother finish than a grinder wheel. I went at all 6 wheels with just the flappy wheel, trying to work out he major rash and scuffs. The results were much better this time, ending with 4 usable wheels, one almost unrecoverable, and one backup.

Here is the surface finish and height I ended up with on the 4 good wheels:



And here is how far down I had to go on the unusable wheel, in order for it to be smooth:



I went back at it again with the paint stripper, aiming to make sure the surface of the 4 nicest wheels was 100% aluminum, with absolutely no flecks of paint left.

After 4 or so hours with paintbrushes, stripper, wire brushes, and emery tape, I had the results I was looking for.

[w4rkry]

It was time for paint! I had already decided that the Car itself was going to be painted Red, with Black bumpers and my current JDMSTIVA Red accessories, like the steering wheel. But I needed a econd accent color, and I wanted the wheels to reflect that. I chose some very JDM GOld Metallic wheel paint, promptly ignored the instructions to do a base coat, and got to work in my garage at midnight. I used 1 can of paint on all four wheels, trying to do many even coats. This wheel paint had a cure time of 7 days! I took them inside to my room to cure, so the dust and bugs of the garage wouldn't interfere.

It was nearly 6 months from start of this wheel Journey to the end. Here is how it tallied up

3x Snowflakes...........................FREE
3x Snowflakes...........................$60
Aircraft Remover:.......................$15 (Still have >1/2 left)
Brushes....................................$8
Paint........................................$7


So, 4 wheels totaled $90!

Here it is, the Final Result!

[ThisVelologist]

Excellent work, buddy. Having seen these wheels in person, I can attest to the quality of their finish and how nice that gold color is.

[dliverance]

Wow. Good job! They turned out great. That color is gorgeous too.