90 L Street BP Build

[Ford64Muscle]

Hello!

It's about time that I finally post a build thread, I have been watching you guys have all the fun and I finally drank the Festiva kool-aid.

This build thread is for my second Festiva, a 1990 Festiva L Automatic car, 140k miles, options including A/C.

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My first Festiva is a 1988 Carb'd 4 speed, 135k miles but a little rusty. I've cleaned this car up but decided I wanted a cleaner car to swap.

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I finally brought home a good swap motor, 1990 Ford Escort GT motor, 1.8 BP. From a manual car, but I will be bolting it up to my Festiva transmission for now. It has stock intake and exhaust manifolds, throttle body, and sensors. I will be buying new accessories, sensors, and rebuilding the BP before I drop it in. As well as rebuilding the Festiva Automatic transmission before the BP goes in.

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I hope to take some good pictures and document for the future BP swap Festiva owners, I would like to give back to the forum that has helped me research for the past 5 years. My previous vehicle experience has mostly been classic cars, and regular maintenance on newer vehicles.

[sc72]

Hey sounds like a great project, keep the info coming.

[bhazard]

The automatic becomes a lot more fun when it has some good power going through it. A rebuild does wonders to them too. Look into adding extra clutches and turning up the line pressure.

Actually I noticed your location, you aren't far off from Jim DeAngelis, aka FB71. He's more or less an automatic guru and rebuilt the one in my turbo car. Might be able to contact him for advice.

[FB71]

I can help, but my time is limited, so you'd need to be flexible. Brad gives me too much credit. I stand on the shoulders of the great Yvan, who pioneered F3A trans performance. But, I certainly understand what he did, and can easily duplicate it and build upon it.

[shorestiva]

Eastern shore or western shore? I thought that white one looked familiar I almost went and bought it lol.

[Ford64Muscle]

Thanks for the comments and advice! And Jim thank you for the offer. I'm constantly surprised by the generosity of everyone on here. I will be in touch when I get the transmission out. I'm debating buying another one, as it already has a problem going into reverse when coming straight from drive. It needs to be put into park before it will go into reverse. Not a big problem driving it at the moment but I would hate to waste time opening this trans up to find out that issue was a larger problem preventing it from being happy working with the BP power levels.

shorestiva: Born and raised on the Western shore but now finally a resident of the Eastern shore! I find myself across the bay often though so if you guys ever plan a meet then I'd like to make it out there!

[shorestiva]

I'm 1/2hr south of Salisbury so probably closest to you. Other than a few guys in Pennsylvania there aren't many of us around. I usually make it out to OC for cruisin though.

[Ford64Muscle]

Awesome! Not far at all. I'm about 20 minutes north of Salisbury. Definitely trying to make it to cruisin' in the spring.

[bhazard]

You might just need to adjust the shifter cable.

[Ford64Muscle]

You might just need to adjust the shifter cable.

Thanks!I will be sure to take a look at that this weekend. I was reading Yvan's Auto Performance thread over in the How-To Articles. I saw you were participating in it, did you happen to save a copy of the PDF he put out? I'm running low on new reading materials! TIA

[bhazard]

Thanks!I will be sure to take a look at that this weekend. I was reading Yvan's Auto Performance thread over in the How-To Articles. I saw you were participating in it, did you happen to save a copy of the PDF he put out? I'm running low on new reading materials! TIA

I'll have to look later. Might have it.

[Ford64Muscle]

Little update:

Ticking was a dead hydraulic lifter in the head. Its not a bad two hour job or so. The trans not shifting was exactly what everyone on here said, that the shifter cable needed to be adjusted. I actually went a little too far in the correct direction. Now I have to shift past drive to get it consistently into drive from park or reverse.

Radio was replaced with a pioneer unit as well as speakers. Loving it!

Sorry for the long absence... mustang has taken a priority recently. The goal is to get the mustang off to paint and then break down the festiva and build it while I have the garage space.

[Ford64Muscle]

Anyone have a lead on a replacement decal for the automatic transmission selector? Mine is peeling and looking down to select gears every time makes me sad to look at a peeling and rough, shoddy decal. TIA!