Our festiva made it into Car&Driver(kindof)

[oxbrain]

Car and Driver finally released their article on the july 24 hours of lemons. October issue, page 38 you can see the back of our car peaking out behind the C&D car. 8)

Packrat was trying to get FF.com stickers to me in time, they would have been on the C-pillar and been showing in the article. Unfortunately we had some problems with the post office and they didn't get here in time.

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[neanderpaul]

Woohoo! :thumbright:

[packrat427]

That is Sweet !!

I just ordered a 24 hours of Lemons shirt , it has the blues bros. on the front and a Chevy Caprice .

[Axlander9289]

It's tough to hear the writer complain about how small his RX-7 was, when there's a picture of it next to your Festiva. If BMW 5 series looked like buses to him, they must have looked like rolling skyscrapers to you.

[oxbrain]

There were bigger cars out there, an older('60s) hearse and a couple crown vics.

[packrat427]

Here is the shirt I ordered from a guy on Fastrides , he has a impala he races and was in the mag also ..GM high tech .

Oxbrain , you need some shirts , I would buy several

[Axlander9289]

Why is Jake driving on the shirt. Elwood always drove the Bluesmobile.

[Sleeper]

How did the festy do in the race?????

[oxbrain]

I never thought of shirts. I'll bring it up with the teammates. I know it would be kinda weird to bump into someone wearing a shirt about me. :s

The festiva did quite well. We took some huge hits early on, made some mistakes, and managed to pull the car together for the finish. The first big hit was to the right rear tire that pushed the sheetmetal and unibody in about 6". We hammered it off the tire and kept going. The next was an even bigger hit directly on the front left wheel. It bent the shock in half and shoved the axle so hard the accessory pulley dented the frame rail. We replaced the shock and had the car back on the track within 2 hours(parts store was a long ways away). Either we forgot to torque the lugnuts or the threads were stripped(I think it's the former), and the wheel fell off about 30 minutes later. We put it back on, and it came off again in another 20 minutes. We borrowed some longer wheel bolts from a bmw team and threw it back on again. When the festiva rolled onto the track after being towed off three times we got some cheers from the stands. Everything went smooth from then until about 20 minutes before the end of the race when the balljoint popped out. Some frantic hammering and a new bolt and we were back in action just in time to finish the race in 53rd.

We did pretty well for the time we were on the track. We got one of the top 20 fastest laps so we were definitely competitive, we just needed to be a bit more defensive and keep the car going around the track. I think if the $500 rule had been enforced a bit better we would have had one of the fastest cars on the track. We were getting out pulled in the sweepers by cars that shouldn't have been able to. I have an escort GT sitting in my garage to remedy that. :twisted:

Resulting damage,
Front left hub stripped, needs replacing
Left inner tie rod bent, needs replacing
Front left rotor destroyed, needs replacing
Left brake caliper binding, needs replacing
Rear beam, right arm bent, needs replacing
4 of 4 shocks blown or destroyed, need replacing
All four tires and one spare torn to hell, need replacing
Engine low on compression from pinging, needs replacing
Every body panel dented, smashed, or torn. Who cares.

I told the race organizer I wanted to bring the car back next year and he said I was insane. His evaluation put it's worth at $0, so we have $500 to spend for next year. Aside from the BP we're looking at a full FMS suspension and new bushings all around.

The frame is extremely sturdy, and any weak points are shored up by the rollcage. My goal is to continue bringing this car back until the unibody starts to tear apart. At that point I'll tube frame it and tack the same body panels on. I'm considering giving it a very light spray of green paint, for a zombie look.

My teammates were impressed enough with the car that they're talking about bringing two festivas next year.