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Well, in many ways this is the opposite of Festiva survivor stories. I seem to be hard on cars, and I am now on my third Festi Chassis. You might call it a survivor story though, because the parts keep moving from car to car.
Thricetiva is the latest race car, and she is the FOTM entry. She spent years out in the back 40 as someone else's parts car, loosing front and rear axle to other cars, the engine and tranny were lost to the ancient past, and the hood actually rusted through on the front lip. There were also rust big holes in the floor. This chassis was destined for the scrap metal yard, at the insistence of someone's wife.
And then, she was donated to me for my third Festi Race car. (Having destroyed the past two.)
Now I am going to be a bit lazy, and send you off to the build threads instead of re-posting then all here, but there are some pics.
Thricetiva's build: -Icetiva-3-race-car-build
Here is how ThriceTiva turned out. She won her fourth race.
But Thricetiva was built off the bones of her predecessors.
The cage came from Icetiva, as did the turbo, intake and exhaust, front suspension, G25mr tranny and mounts, and fuel tank, dash board
Icetiva also gave the seat mounts, race gauges, Reich Racing ECU, and wiring harness too, along with ice race tires. The original build, and the major salvage job on the front end for Icetiva can be found here:
//-B6T-head-with-MX3-Bottom
-Front-Clip-Replacement
And then there was the second car, a BP instead of a B6T, but it too suffered at my hands, dying a crushing death. It was built by another, who passed it along when winter weather and cold became too much for his health, and his wife thought he should only race one season, not two. So I saved that one, until I had to send it off to the crusher too.
This one donated the fenders, doors and spare hood parts to Thricetiva, also the rear suspension, axle and brakes, race springs, plexiglass side windows, windshield wiper motor, steering column and steering rack. The rear bumper made it from the blue Festi to Thricetiva too.
Well, it's late, I will add a bit more another day.
But for survival, not only has a rusty old chassis made it to the glory of racing, but all the parts from the past cars live on in Thricetiva, the phoenix can still rise from her ashes!
So, how about a few pics on salvage from each car, to show the survival/revival claims are real!
Thricetiva started out as a very forlorn shell, and this is really a revival story for her. All the donor parts from the other two cars make the survival story.
No interior left, no dash,no steering column, cut wiring harness, cut up rear axle, grungy gas tank,
there were several big rust holes in the floor, and there was almost nothing in the dirty engine bay
None of this build would have happened without the incredible generosity and dedication of my friend, "strong-man" Hiroki, who did all the welding, and all the thinking about how to transfer the roll cage. And he let me use his heated garage for 14 weekends of car build!
Of course, there was fresh paint used to rejuvenate the sad old shell.
And when finished, I had a winning race car, winning the feature Rubber race at the 2014 Western Canadian Ice Race Championship, and taking third place overall on the weekend!
Here she is running in 2015, after the front axle was replaced and before the blow by stopped me for the day.
But no race car really dies, with the parts that made Icetiva and the Blue Car all going into Thricetiva to make a proper race car.
The mount brackets for the B6T from Icetiva
Turning the Miata 1.6L donor motor into a B6T-like engine required major donations from the previous B6T, everything bolted to the engine on the left went onto the Miata block on the right. The B6T ran out of coolant when I holed the rad, and so needs a rebuild. It likely has a warped head, and certainly needs a new head gasket at the least. Given its age, I am sure it needs a full rebuild, so the JDM sourced Miata block with its 9:1 compression went in instead.
Then the final product slipped into the engine bay on Thricetiva.
The steering column with removable race wheel came out of Icetiva, and so did the dash.
The Blue car, number 89, came with lots of spare body panels, so those replaced many bad parts on the Thricetiva shell, and even decided the main colour for Thricetiva.
And most of the running gear came from the Blue Car,
The BP engine and wiring harness from the Blue car was part of the spoils for all of Hiroki's hard work. It sits in his shop waiting to go into the ice racer he hopes to build for his son one day, with the nice shell he has sitting out in the back 40. Race cars never die, they transmogrify!
In truth this story is all about being hard on cars, and bringing them back to life again after brutally beating on them, kind of like a really nasty action movie, or zombies, I guess. (I really don't get the interest in zombies though.) Icetiva was my first B6T build, and the donor engine never worked, so I sourced a B6ME from a junkyard and made it into a B6T, and it ran a few weekends before seizing. I took it back to Pic N Pull and got my money back! (They had a better return policy a few years ago.) But I had run into the back of a few cars and really twisted the frame, so I cut it off, and H welded on half a new front end clip. Then I sourced another B6T and ran Icetiva until I rolled it and twisted the frame so bad it could not be straightened at reasonable cost. But I saved the cage, running gear and all the race parts.
Next I bought someone else's BP swapped race Festi , fixed it up a bit and ran the Blue Car for some seasons, but eventually t-boned someone in a blinding flurry of snow when they stuck themselves in a snow bank. So that was the end of the blue chassis. And then H and I revived the poor old white parts chassis, dropped in the old roll cage, swapped all the parts on, and I am back racing in Thricetiva!
What can I say, it has to be a staggering amount of fun out there in the race car to be worth so much effort, and require so much dedication to the rebuilding. And it is! Imagine owning your own roller coaster .... If I were less hard on cars it would be less work, but it would be less fast too, and what's the point of that!
For more on the builds, and bigger pictures, check out the two links in my signature line.
Thricetiva is the latest race car, and she is the FOTM entry. She spent years out in the back 40 as someone else's parts car, loosing front and rear axle to other cars, the engine and tranny were lost to the ancient past, and the hood actually rusted through on the front lip. There were also rust big holes in the floor. This chassis was destined for the scrap metal yard, at the insistence of someone's wife.
And then, she was donated to me for my third Festi Race car. (Having destroyed the past two.)
Now I am going to be a bit lazy, and send you off to the build threads instead of re-posting then all here, but there are some pics.
Thricetiva's build: -Icetiva-3-race-car-build
Here is how ThriceTiva turned out. She won her fourth race.
But Thricetiva was built off the bones of her predecessors.
The cage came from Icetiva, as did the turbo, intake and exhaust, front suspension, G25mr tranny and mounts, and fuel tank, dash board
Icetiva also gave the seat mounts, race gauges, Reich Racing ECU, and wiring harness too, along with ice race tires. The original build, and the major salvage job on the front end for Icetiva can be found here:
//-B6T-head-with-MX3-Bottom
-Front-Clip-Replacement
And then there was the second car, a BP instead of a B6T, but it too suffered at my hands, dying a crushing death. It was built by another, who passed it along when winter weather and cold became too much for his health, and his wife thought he should only race one season, not two. So I saved that one, until I had to send it off to the crusher too.
This one donated the fenders, doors and spare hood parts to Thricetiva, also the rear suspension, axle and brakes, race springs, plexiglass side windows, windshield wiper motor, steering column and steering rack. The rear bumper made it from the blue Festi to Thricetiva too.
Well, it's late, I will add a bit more another day.
But for survival, not only has a rusty old chassis made it to the glory of racing, but all the parts from the past cars live on in Thricetiva, the phoenix can still rise from her ashes!
So, how about a few pics on salvage from each car, to show the survival/revival claims are real!
Thricetiva started out as a very forlorn shell, and this is really a revival story for her. All the donor parts from the other two cars make the survival story.
No interior left, no dash,no steering column, cut wiring harness, cut up rear axle, grungy gas tank,
there were several big rust holes in the floor, and there was almost nothing in the dirty engine bay
None of this build would have happened without the incredible generosity and dedication of my friend, "strong-man" Hiroki, who did all the welding, and all the thinking about how to transfer the roll cage. And he let me use his heated garage for 14 weekends of car build!
Of course, there was fresh paint used to rejuvenate the sad old shell.
And when finished, I had a winning race car, winning the feature Rubber race at the 2014 Western Canadian Ice Race Championship, and taking third place overall on the weekend!
Here she is running in 2015, after the front axle was replaced and before the blow by stopped me for the day.
But no race car really dies, with the parts that made Icetiva and the Blue Car all going into Thricetiva to make a proper race car.
The mount brackets for the B6T from Icetiva
Turning the Miata 1.6L donor motor into a B6T-like engine required major donations from the previous B6T, everything bolted to the engine on the left went onto the Miata block on the right. The B6T ran out of coolant when I holed the rad, and so needs a rebuild. It likely has a warped head, and certainly needs a new head gasket at the least. Given its age, I am sure it needs a full rebuild, so the JDM sourced Miata block with its 9:1 compression went in instead.
Then the final product slipped into the engine bay on Thricetiva.
The steering column with removable race wheel came out of Icetiva, and so did the dash.
The Blue car, number 89, came with lots of spare body panels, so those replaced many bad parts on the Thricetiva shell, and even decided the main colour for Thricetiva.
And most of the running gear came from the Blue Car,
The BP engine and wiring harness from the Blue car was part of the spoils for all of Hiroki's hard work. It sits in his shop waiting to go into the ice racer he hopes to build for his son one day, with the nice shell he has sitting out in the back 40. Race cars never die, they transmogrify!
In truth this story is all about being hard on cars, and bringing them back to life again after brutally beating on them, kind of like a really nasty action movie, or zombies, I guess. (I really don't get the interest in zombies though.) Icetiva was my first B6T build, and the donor engine never worked, so I sourced a B6ME from a junkyard and made it into a B6T, and it ran a few weekends before seizing. I took it back to Pic N Pull and got my money back! (They had a better return policy a few years ago.) But I had run into the back of a few cars and really twisted the frame, so I cut it off, and H welded on half a new front end clip. Then I sourced another B6T and ran Icetiva until I rolled it and twisted the frame so bad it could not be straightened at reasonable cost. But I saved the cage, running gear and all the race parts.
Next I bought someone else's BP swapped race Festi , fixed it up a bit and ran the Blue Car for some seasons, but eventually t-boned someone in a blinding flurry of snow when they stuck themselves in a snow bank. So that was the end of the blue chassis. And then H and I revived the poor old white parts chassis, dropped in the old roll cage, swapped all the parts on, and I am back racing in Thricetiva!
What can I say, it has to be a staggering amount of fun out there in the race car to be worth so much effort, and require so much dedication to the rebuilding. And it is! Imagine owning your own roller coaster .... If I were less hard on cars it would be less work, but it would be less fast too, and what's the point of that!
For more on the builds, and bigger pictures, check out the two links in my signature line.
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