Voting for June FOTM

[Damkid]

This month we have 6 entries, the most we've had in a while!! i'm starting the voting a day early since i'll be at Ohiostiva tomorrow

The entries this month are from:

hotfordcat
Ford_For_Life
19festiva90
Biglay5150
boostmaster
g-crozier

here is hotfordcat's entry:

OK, I'll give it a shot.
This is Lil Red, I bought her April 28, 2003 for $600. She was sitting in a Sinclair gas station for sale. I drove by her everyday on my way to work. I had just sold my 91L to a college girl, and was missing Whitey, but didn't think I needed another Festiva right away, so I passed her up.
About two weeks later the mother of the girl I sold whitey to called and told me that her daughter had just TOTALLED the car, and wanted to know if I wanted the extra parts I had given her back. I said yes, and went and got Lil Red. Put on a rebuilt cylinder head two years in, the rest has been routine care. Here's Lil Red.






Chuck

[Damkid]

Ford_For_Life's entry:

Here's my entry, a 1989 Festiva L. After I bought Old Red my dad got bit by the Festiva bug again, They had 2 festivas before, that is how I got into them. We had been looking for Festivas locally and on Craigslist for a while, and had no luck, then I pointed this one out to my dad a few times. It had been for sale on Craigslist for a few months already so we weren't sure if it was still for sale now, but it was. So we called the guy and met with him, took the car for a test drive then bought it. We drove it home the same day (175ish mile drive) and it ran great. I haven't done too much to the car, just cleaned it up some and added a few things to it.

Here it is the day we bought it:







And here it is a few months later..










So far I have:
-Popped out some dents from the P.O. hitting deer
-Replaced the broke corner light
-Replaced the broken drivers side mirror (Thanks Levitan!! )
-Replaced the grill with a new one (now switched to a 90-93 style grill)
-Installed map pockets
-Installed a passenger side mirror
-Replaced the hood with a dent free one
-Painted the bumpers and side moldings black
-Painted the wheels black
-Installed 12" trim rings
-Touched up some of the rust spots

Here are the latest pics of the car








Well, thats my entry.. I know it's not much to look at but it gets the job done

[Damkid]

Biglay5150's entry

Ok I think I will enter this month.

This is my 1991 Festiva GL.
I got this car in 2007 to commute an hour to work everyday. I got the car for $400. After driving it for a few months and found FF.com. It was all over from there....
Heres a pic of it when I first got it from a camera phone.


The first mod I did was the Aspire swap. I posted an add on craigslist wanting a crashed or broken down Aspire. Within a couple of days I had bought a car for $40 it was a 97 4door auto. It had been drove into a ditch and the airbags were deployed but I actually drove it 30min home. Now I had my swap.


So I did the Aspire swap and I used the master/booster setup. I also used the Aspire front springs cut 2 1/2 coils up front I originally used the Aspire springs in the rear but I soon changed to Festiva fronts back there cut 2 1/2 coils. I used the Aspire struts. I now had the ride hight that I was looking for.
I started playing around with the paint. I painted the hood flat black and the lower half of the sides and bumpers with rubberized undercoat. This is how it looked....



I soon picked up some Miata wheels and painted them....


One day I decided to pressure wash my car and the undercoating just started too peel off so I washed it all off the best I could. Heres a pic of it at my work....


The b3 that was in it was starting to get tired at over 200,00 miles so I found a b6 sohc out of a 91 323 for $100. I installed a gasket kit before I put it in the car and when I took off the head the eng looked like it had a fresh hone. I got it from a j/y so I had no idea how many miles it had but it wasnt much. Score! When I did the swap I bought a new exity clutch off ebay. Now my car was quick and I love it.

I now have 15" wheels on it with 195/55/ Falken ze912 tires and they fit well but I did roll the fenders a bit. I also wet sanded the hood back to white. I think it looks alot better now. This is how it looks currently....



I started to run it in auto-x this year and it was pretty hard on my tranny. Two weeks ago it started to leak realy bad from the imput shaft. I decided to upgrade and found a f5mr trans in an 89 323. I got the trans,flywheel,clutch,axles and all the stuff I could use in the swap for $50. I got it done last week. Its a new animal with 4.10 gears thats for sure.

The inside of the car is nothing special. No carpet not even a sterio. I did make a homemade rear strut tower brace but I have no pics of the inside. To me the inside doesnt matter that much. Im more about function.

Next major mod will be a BP and that will happen real soon!!!

Anyway thats my entry. I hope you guys like it.
Bob

ps. heres some random pics and a video.....




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q07Xtod9-8

[Damkid]

boostmaster's entry

Well, crap... Kinda hard to put my car into the mix when I have the prior mentioned festy's all shooting for FTOM. I guess I'll give it a shot.

I'll give you guys the story first and then some pics...

Back in 1995 I was in Hawaii for a surgery at Tripler Army Medical Center. I got tired of riding the bus so I went and rented a car. I'm not a fan of dumping tons of cash to impress otehr people so I asked them for the cheapest thing they had. I was surprised to be given the keys to a little white 5-speed Festiva. That was the smallest car I'd ever seen! It looked like it needed a wind up key out back. I laughed the whole time I was getting in and situated.

When I took off driving it was a different story. It had some pep and was actually kind of surprising. Being that I had a Grand National at home as my dd, this was the polar opposite but it still kept me grinning the whole time I drove it around the island. It was also easy to squeeze into any parking spot I wanted.

After I left hawaii and later the military, festiva's were never on my mind-basically just cheap little econo-boxes that no one seemed to want- especially not me. I like muscle, I like a car that can get out of it's own way. All the cars I own are either supercharged or turbocharged... I am not the typical Festiva demographic.

Anyway, fast forward to 2008. We'd recently moved to KY from SoCal and the gas prices were going through the roof. I told the "boss" that I needed to park the big truck and maybe get something smaller; Something good on gas. We shopped around on craigslist to look for a high mpg beater and I jokingly told her that if I could find a Festiva for a good price I'd buy it because it still was kinda neat looking (as opposed to the metro's and aspires, etc.) Additionally, I never really saw many of them (and had visions of a SHOgun conversion dancing in my head)

One day While checking the usual internet sources, I stumbled upon a Festy with high miles but a very negotiable seller in WV. He told me that the car had minor rust. We drove 6 hours to look at /buy this car. The car was a disaster. The rotors were shot (ie: as in almost completely gone-forget about brake pads), the exhaust was gone from the manifold back-but the muffler was still hanging in there. When I looked under the car I could see the carpet, fron the holes in the floor-not to mention the holes in the body... The car had no A/C, a terrible stock radio, blown speakers, rusty wheels, bald tires, a grimy engine, a filthy interior, a passenger window that wouldn't roll up or down, broken door handles, a broken grille, and to top it off- an obscene sticker in the back window for the whole world to see...

The guy wanted $1k. I almost beat him up.:violent3: But I could see he was young and stupid and I gave him a gift by offering him $400 even. That's what he still owed on the car!!! Anyway, with title in hand, I started the journey home. At first the car would struggle to do 50, after a while it relaxed a bit and we were cruising at 75 mph with no problems. It wa summer and it was hot, like an oven in the car. Remember there was no A/C and there was no exhaust so it was so loud that I couldn't roll the windows down and I couldn't turn the radio up. It was miserable. To top it off, I had a few cars pull up along side of me to take pictures of the obscenity and me driving along without even the decency of window tint!

About an hour away from home we stopped to fill the other car that we had filled prior to the return trip. I topped the festy off and later calculated an astounding mpg! I figured if it was this good with no tune up, it would be much better with one...

So the adventure began....

The car was backed into the driveway and the sticerk was the FIRST thing to go!!! (we backed in because there are lots of children in the neighborhood and I really did not want to explain to them or their parents- the guy across the street is a cop...:p

Then the car was cleaned out and gutted. The seats and carpet were cleaned. The rear bench was stored.

The car was placed in the garage and put on jackstands, the wheels removed to assess the damage. I took pics of everything. Then I called the local parts stores to buy the necessary parts... Rotors, drums, brake shoes and pads, bearings for everything.

After the car was found to be driveable I took it to my bodyshop where they fiberglassed the holes for $150 and hit the floor with some rust preventative paint.

When it got home we dynomatted it completely.

Then after reading this board, we went to the jy and found a set of 13" rims and a set of decent 13" tires and mounted those.

Since there were no festy's in the jy we frequent, I bought the other parts from board members or ebay.

We bought a Sony deck to replace the stocker, added Pioneed speakers in the dash and got a clearance deal on some Alpine 6x9's that we put in individual boxes.

We removed the old broken fog lights and added some cheap ones from wal-mart.

We also pressure washed the engine bay to remove as much grime as possible, replaced the plugs, valve cover gasket, t-stat and th temp sensor as well as the O2 sensor. Added some pipe to complete the exhaust, added a locking gas cap to keep out gas thieves, and replaced the fuel, air, and oil filters.

On a trip to the jy we found an 88 festy with A/C. We stripped it out and put it on a shelf as a project for summer 09.

The car was used this way for the fall and winter and recently underwent a front suspension surgery to replace all the worn bushings. The shocks were sagging so they were replaced as well. When we pulled the front strut the spring came out in two pieces. After an impropmtu trip to the jy we got new front shocks, and some new 15" steel wheels off of a Nissan Altima.

We installed all of the A/C components recently and are still searching for a piece or two to complete the modification. So far it's proving to be tougher than expected but I'm sure something will turn up.

After we got the 15" wheels, I ordered a new set of tires and had them mounted. After the suspensiton surgery, the tie rod end on the driver's side wa not going to come loose so we took the car to the shop where they took over an hour with a torch to loosen it. (I don't feel so bad now).

After the fix, we now have the tires mounted and it looks pretty good IMHO. I had the "boss" go get the windows tinted in anticipation of the A/C getting finished up here in the next few weeks.---
Funny side story: When she went to the tint shop there was a NEW 2010 Camaro getting the windows done. The owner of the Camaro came up to her and was asking her about the Festy. She said it was kinda funny that he was the guy with the cool new Camaro and he was asking her about the festy and the 15's on the car and how it looked really good...

That's really about it for now. We had originally called the car Cheapstiva, but recently it has been renamed Expenstiva due to the ongoing projects this car has demanded.

At this time everything on the car works perfectly. All the gauges, power locks, defrost, everything.

Now for the pics....

Here's the pics of Cheapstiva/expenstiva...











some more:















some more still:








Hope you guys and gals like it so far....:glasses11:

[Damkid]

g-crozier's entry

I am not really sure how this works, but here goes.. my entry is an 88 L, I got it from a guy that had big plans for it but never got around to any of them. I picked it up for 350.00.
The head was warped and the engine that was a spare was also huffed. The first thing that I saw was a damn near perfect body with NO rust at all.. This was the one.
I began buying bits as I could afford them, parts cars (2), headers, exhaust, springs, struts, Koenig "Incident" wheels, Bridgestone potenza tires, sway bar, etc. I stripped the interior out, and proceeded to build a 1700 lb. autocross car.
I kept the 1300 engine to stay in that displacement class. It runs with MGs and Sprites with their 1275s.
This little car is an awful lot of fun, a lot drier than my old bugeye sprite, roll up windows, good heater, fairly quick, and it really attracts folks. I actually won 'best ford' at a car show last year. ha.
This is also my daily driver (spring, summer, and fall) and is capable of carrying all kinds of guitars, P.A.s, etc., as I play alot of open mikes here in Columbus.
So there it is, and I hope this posts alright. Thanks for looking, Gary aka Silver 88

[91blufestiva]

decisions, decisions

[25Horseplay]

Some good ones this month!

[NovaSS]

Wow, nice turn out . Not an easy choice this month.

[MONSOON]

Whew this is a tough one. Good entries 1 and all.

[festymick]

Wow. 6 entries! votes in!

[boostmaster]

Just looked at the rules. Can we vote for ourselves:p

[Biglay5150]

You sure can!!!! Why would you vote for anyone else. lol

[Damkid]

Just looked at the rules. Can we vote for ourselves:p

Of course :p

[boostmaster]

Looks like I need to do some autocross and take some sweet jumps in order to catch up to biglay5150.

[g-crozier]

Hey, I just want to say that there are more pictures of my car on the album on my profile page, I mentioned this on my entry but it got left off. Thanks, silver 88