Trip of a Lifetime!

[TominMO]

As far as the kids sleeping in the car, I would think anyone would consider it more safe than in a tent. It's metal. Place the kiddie seats on the Festiva front seats, do the rear seat trick. Crack a couple of windows for ventilation, done. Faster than erecting a tent, and you don't have the second one taking up space and weight.

The custom intake is pointless on a stock motor. More important is removing exhaust restrictions, maybe open up the airbox with holes drilled into the bottom piece (helps with high-RPM breathing). Advance timing. All that together might be worth 10 HP on a B3, esp. if the exhaust part was a really good header.

Or just stick in a B6, which automatically gives you significantly more HP and torque than the above mods.

[TominMO]

I have crossed North America 7 times in 3 different awesome uber-festivas myself.

Fixed it for ya.

[Advancedynamix]

Lol. Thanks Tom. 1 of them was a stock 89 auto that burned more oil than gas though. Lol.

[TominMO]

I have crossed North America 6 times in 2 different awesome uber-festivas myself.

I stand corrected.

[AlaskaFestivaGuy]

88/89s, which have the removable front headrests for the best flat floor configuration have much wimpier/non-rigid rear tiedown brackets to which you would be attaching your trailer hitch. I have a thread on here from a year or three ago showing photos of both types of tiedown brackets. Basically, in my opinion, you cannot sleep in and tow with the same Festy. I have only ever towed with later models with the rigid brackets.

That being said, I agree with TominMO above. I would not cram a bunch of people in a Festy and tow on anything but MOSTLY-STRAIGHT Interstates, no passengers, and carefully balanced loading with proper tongue load. If the road is wet, or you steer to avoid something in the road, you're a split-second from being in a deadly jackknife situation. I actually did try once towing 10 miles across Detroit on I-94 at 20mph on a wet road and did jackknife -- no harm done at that speed, but you'd almost certainly all end up dead at 60 or even 45 mph.

The thought of doing any of this with anything but a rust-free vehicle (which all of my Festies are) sends shivers up my spine. Gas is cheap these days ... get a much bigger vehicle.

[TominMO]

I can vouch that Ian's family felt safe and surprisingly comfortable driving/riding thousands of miles (that's even more Kilometers, lol) in the Festiva. I met them on a couple of their furthest points along 2 journeys. An inspiring family to say the least.

Yes, with a B6 and Aspire brakes; and no trailer, I believe. An example of common sense. Yes, five people in a stock Festiva can travel long distances; but more safely with upgraded brakes, and more efficiently with upgraded motor.

[TominMO]

Ryan, IIRC you mentioned some huge tongue load like 200-250 lbs. Two reasons why that would not work:
1. the constant bouncing would likely cause a shear force that would weaken if not break the fasteners holding the bumper on, and/or where the hitch is mounted to the body as well.
2. that much force pushing down the rear suspension would make the front end dangerously light. You could not safely steer, a safety issue greatly magnified by the load drastically exceeding the vehicle's basic design.

The solution would be simply to balance the load in the trailer so that you have a lighter tongue weight. My rule of thumb is that I need to be able to pick up the tongue of the fully-loaded trailer with one hand; I guesstimate at 50-75 lbs is good.

Trailer weight:
5 x 8 steel = 274 lbs
+ 6 sheets of plywood to enclose the 5x8, you then have a 4' high, 5' wide, 8' long enclosed trailer (rear 4x4 panel is hinged to be a door). Total build weight on the 4x8 steel = ~450 lbs. Maybe 500 if you put wooden shelving in the trailer for easier organization. You would have some plywood left over, for shelving. I have built a 4x8 trailer just like this, without internal shelving, in a few hours.

Decide you will only take what you can fit into this trailer (you could put light weatherproof stuff on top too), or into the car itself. This will drastically reduce your towed weight and its inherent issues. (This does not mean you can skip the brake and suspension upgrades tho.)

[AlaskaFestivaGuy]

I recall getting a mere 27mpg at 55mph on the BOS-BAL run, which has a few but not many hills (at least relative to what we call hills in the West and Alaska). The same car as a commuter easily gets 42-44mpg around town with jackrabbit starts at every light. So just the lightly-loaded trailer on that trip nearly halved my mileage numbers, obviously due to added air resistance.

[TominMO]

I recall getting a mere 27mpg at 55mph on the BOS-BAL run, which has a few but not many hills (at least relative to what we call hills in the West and Alaska). The same car as a commuter easily gets 42-44mpg around town with jackrabbit starts at every light. So just the lightly-loaded trailer on that trip nearly halved my mileage numbers, obviously due to added air resistance.

Right, I've had the same experience both times I took trailers cross-country, once behind a Civic 4WD wagon and the other time behind a Subaru Loyale 4WD. Fighting headwinds was a bear too! Luckily my clutches held up.

[Advancedynamix]

Yes, with a B6 and Aspire brakes; and no trailer, I believe. An example of common sense. Yes, five people in a stock Festiva can travel long distances; but more safely with upgraded brakes, and more efficiently with upgraded motor.

No doubt about that. Ryal should chime in here as he tows heavy loads regularly with his b3 auto festiva. It's got aspire brakes, but the engine is really tired. He trailers loads heavier than the car a few times a month, on freeway and back roads.

[william]

His tongue load sounds about right to me , if you have ever pulled a trailer loaded with to light of tongue wight then you know it will make it sway dangerously and will end up jack knifING you at highway speeds see it more then once .
About 10% of your total trailer weight is what you want.
As for stock hp your not gunna be much different power to trailer weight then any other rig out there .
Just be smart and take your time and I believe you can make a save trip . Personally I would upgrade breaks it's a scary feeling getting pushed by your trailer load believe me.

[avitsefdrof]

Three letters....O M G!

[TominMO]

His tongue load sounds about right to me , if you have ever pulled a trailer loaded with to light of tongue wight then you know it will make it sway dangerously and will end up jack knifING you at highway speeds see it more then once .
About 10% of your total trailer weight is what you want.
As for stock hp your not gunna be much different power to trailer weight then any other rig out there .
Just be smart and take your time and I believe you can make a save trip . Personally I would upgrade breaks it's a scary feeling getting pushed by your trailer load believe me.

I would buy the 10% tongue weight figure when the trailer is attached to a more substantial car. Maybe if he can manage to keep his loaded trailer's weight down, that will still be feasible. But I still believe too much tongue weight will negatively affect steering.

[ryanprins13]

I can vouch that Ian's family felt safe and surprisingly comfortable driving/riding thousands of miles (that's even more Kilometers, lol) in the Festiva. I met them on a couple of their furthest points along 2 journeys. An inspiring family to say the least.
Ryan, I admire you and your wife's desire to take this journey. I have faith in your ability to provide a safe journey for your family. I've also seen high mileage, stock festivas do amazing things, and I have crossed North America 7 times in 3 different festivas myself. Please keep this thread updated with your progress. I'm looking forward to following along.

Thanks! Any tips for the trip itself as far as good cheap places to camp, find water or shower would be appreciated! Although if you did hotels the whole way none of that would have been a problem. Longest drive I have done in a day before is 14 hours and it was very comfortable in the festiva. I hope the passenger seat and rear seats are just as good, lol.

As far as the kids sleeping in the car, I would think anyone would consider it more safe than in a tent. It's metal. Place the kiddie seats on the Festiva front seats, do the rear seat trick. Crack a couple of windows for ventilation, done. Faster than erecting a tent, and you don't have the second one taking up space and weight.

The custom intake is pointless on a stock motor. More important is removing exhaust restrictions, maybe open up the airbox with holes drilled into the bottom piece (helps with high-RPM breathing). Advance timing. All that together might be worth 10 HP on a B3, esp. if the exhaust part was a really good header.

Or just stick in a B6, which automatically gives you significantly more HP and torque than the above mods.

Safer yes, but some people flip out when your not within 5 feet of your kids. Its not the main reason I dont see that as feasable, just a small one which would be ok if everything else worked. A 4 year old and a 2 year old loose in a festiva all night could literally destroy it though. I dont even want to think about that.

Ok, my original idea was an intake and exhaust manifold at the same time but it was abandoned before I really got to any serious thinking about it. My airbox is already drilled and I used to have a hose going from it to the grille with a big funnel taped on the end. Maybe I should stick that back on. I will keep my eyes open in the for sale section for a header, thanks. Will advancing the timing help with the stock manifold or only if I change it?

Yup, If I want more power I will stick one in. Like I said, if things go as planned I will get one this fall.

88/89s, which have the removable front headrests for the best flat floor configuration have much wimpier/non-rigid rear tiedown brackets to which you would be attaching your trailer hitch. I have a thread on here from a year or three ago showing photos of both types of tiedown brackets. Basically, in my opinion, you cannot sleep in and tow with the same Festy. I have only ever towed with later models with the rigid brackets.

That being said, I agree with TominMO above. I would not cram a bunch of people in a Festy and tow on anything but MOSTLY-STRAIGHT Interstates, no passengers, and carefully balanced loading with proper tongue load. If the road is wet, or you steer to avoid something in the road, you're a split-second from being in a deadly jackknife situation. I actually did try once towing 10 miles across Detroit on I-94 at 20mph on a wet road and did jackknife -- no harm done at that speed, but you'd almost certainly all end up dead at 60 or even 45 mph.

The thought of doing any of this with anything but a rust-free vehicle (which all of my Festies are) sends shivers up my spine. Gas is cheap these days ... get a much bigger vehicle.

Your festiva does look amazing, its in great shape! As I was looking through your old threads I noticed most of the pictures were missing. Could just be my computer though, Lots of warnings from the antivirus pop up while using this site. I have an '89 parts car so I know what the brackets look like on them and am happy to have the '93.
Alright, I have never towed in the rain with a festiva, once I get the larger tires I will have to try that. When I towed the u-haul I waited till I had a long straight stretch with no one in sight, went to the middle of the road and starting at a lower speed and working up to 65mph I did kind of a slalom thing. I swung that trailer really hard to see what would happen and the festiva handled it perfectly with 12 in tires. That was only a 900 pound trailer on dry roads, but the u-haul is very poorly balanced empty. I wrote it down somewhere but it was only about 40 pounds of tongue weight on that 900 pound trailer. Thats only 4.5%, I was surprised It didn't swing just on its own going straight.
I have only come close to jackknifing twice, not with the festiva. Once was when I was 13 and something broke on the disc I was pulling and the other time was just someone loading too much weight behind my rear axles and I trusted them and didn't check the load myself. So I don't have much experience of what starts it off, just stories. I tow a lot with my festiva as do other members here, would you mind describing more what happened for our benefit? Did you hydroplane? 12 in tires? How were their tread? How heavy was the trailer and was it loaded well? I would appreciate it, thanks.

As far as getting another vehicle I thought about it but half the reason for doing this is to do it in the festiva, I wouldn't want to in another vehicle. Also I would have to trust the vehicle. I trust the festiva to pull this trailer 31,000km. I cannot think of another vehicle I would trust to do that. My family has had a lot of vehicles and I have worked as a mechanic and autobody tec for quite some time and what I see and hear from people causes me not to trust unproven vehicles at all. The festiva has proven itself reliable to me, I would hop in any other well maintained festiva and do a long trip no worries, no other vehicle has my trust for that. I bought a 2002 civic to replace the festiva for towing, It proved itself to tow worse than the festiva and If I hooked up the u-haul to both the festiva and the civic stock as they are right now there is no way the civic would make it out of the province, I bet the festiva could do the 31,000km just like it is today. I know you meant a bigger vehicle than a civic, and I agree gas is cheap but I don't trust other vehicles...

Yes, with a B6 and Aspire brakes; and no trailer, I believe. An example of common sense. Yes, five people in a stock Festiva can travel long distances; but more safely with upgraded brakes, and more efficiently with upgraded motor.

Yes, his trip was much different than how I plan mine to go. But I can picture how my plan will work out, I don't know how you would take 5 people across the country with only what you can pack in the festiva! I know my wife and I are heavy packers on trips, but I cant see how you would do that. I'll have to find out more from Ian, I would assume he would have tips on how to pack light after a trip like that!

Ryan, IIRC you mentioned some huge tongue load like 200-250 lbs. Two reasons why that would not work:
1. the constant bouncing would likely cause a shear force that would weaken if not break the fasteners holding the bumper on, and/or where the hitch is mounted to the body as well.
2. that much force pushing down the rear suspension would make the front end dangerously light. You could not safely steer, a safety issue greatly magnified by the load drastically exceeding the vehicle's basic design.

The solution would be simply to balance the load in the trailer so that you have a lighter tongue weight. My rule of thumb is that I need to be able to pick up the tongue of the fully-loaded trailer with one hand; I guesstimate at 50-75 lbs is good.

Trailer weight:
5 x 8 steel = 274 lbs
+ 6 sheets of plywood to enclose the 5x8, you then have a 4' high, 5' wide, 8' long enclosed trailer (rear 4x4 panel is hinged to be a door). Total build weight on the 4x8 steel = ~450 lbs. Maybe 500 if you put wooden shelving in the trailer for easier organization. You would have some plywood left over, for shelving. I have built a 4x8 trailer just like this, without internal shelving, in a few hours.

Decide you will only take what you can fit into this trailer (you could put light weatherproof stuff on top too), or into the car itself. This will drastically reduce your towed weight and its inherent issues. (This does not mean you can skip the brake and suspension upgrades tho.)

I will quote this and reply to it in the trailer thread. http://www.fordfestiva.com/forums/sh...r-Build-thread
I do not plan to have that much tongue weight, that would rip the bumper off eventually. I bought a trailer and have some updates for that thread about the build anyway.

[ryanprins13]

I recall getting a mere 27mpg at 55mph on the BOS-BAL run, which has a few but not many hills (at least relative to what we call hills in the West and Alaska). The same car as a commuter easily gets 42-44mpg around town with jackrabbit starts at every light. So just the lightly-loaded trailer on that trip nearly halved my mileage numbers, obviously due to added air resistance.

Yup, have you seen my trailer thread? http://www.fordfestiva.com/forums/sh...r-Build-thread I got 31mpg towing on large hills with a 5x5x8 u-haul. That has huge wind resistance and since wind blowing on something actually increases its mass a 500 pound trailer with a large amount of wind resistance is actually 'heavier' and puts more force on your hitch than a 1500 pound trailer that fits real nice behind the car and has no wind drag. I plan to make a trailer with as little wind drag as possible, but I will detail that more in the trailer thread.

Right, I've had the same experience both times I took trailers cross-country, once behind a Civic 4WD wagon and the other time behind a Subaru Loyale 4WD. Fighting headwinds was a bear too! Luckily my clutches held up.

question about that- I am replacing my clutch before this trip. I already bought one but if its not good enough I could get another. Shouldn't the stock clutch hold the power an engine puts out? If it grabs well enough while full throttle 'racing' at shift changes without slipping shouldn't it be able to hold while towing? The engine isn't putting out more power. Or can a stock clutch not handle the power the B3 has?

No doubt about that. Ryal should chime in here as he tows heavy loads regularly with his b3 auto festiva. It's got aspire brakes, but the engine is really tired. He trailers loads heavier than the car a few times a month, on freeway and back roads.

Someone who tows over over 1800 pounds with an auto festiva sounds like someone I should talk to

His tongue load sounds about right to me , if you have ever pulled a trailer loaded with to light of tongue wight then you know it will make it sway dangerously and will end up jack knifING you at highway speeds see it more then once .
About 10% of your total trailer weight is what you want.
As for stock hp your not gunna be much different power to trailer weight then any other rig out there .
Just be smart and take your time and I believe you can make a save trip . Personally I would upgrade breaks it's a scary feeling getting pushed by your trailer load believe me.

I would buy the 10% tongue weight figure when the trailer is attached to a more substantial car. Maybe if he can manage to keep his loaded trailer's weight down, that will still be feasible. But I still believe too much tongue weight will negatively affect steering.

Tongue weight is very important. I always thought it had to be 10-15% and I never went less than 10%. I use a bathroom scale on the tongue and roll the trailer tires onto it to figure it out. But it only goes to 300 pounds so anything over a 650 pound trailer I can only weigh the tongue. When I build my trailer I will weigh it stripped down then weigh the materials before I add them. However I just pulled an empty u-haul which had 4.5% tongue weight and it pulls just fine. I still feel 10% is much safer but think now less can be done if it is tested first. I wouldn't be comfortable pulling with less than 10% unless i had tried swinging the trailer hard, tried it over large bumps and done a quick run up to 75 or 80mph to see if it was stable. Most loads you can't do that with and its easier to just do 10% I think.
Hp wise its the same as the 1995 f-350 with the 7.3 diesel i'm used to pulling trailers. Torque to weight the festiva is a bit less than that but nothing uncomparable to a semi. And like I said, my civic with twice the horsepower didn't tow the u-haul any better and I still don't know why..
Thanks, I will try the trailer out well before the trip and install trailer brakes if it pushes too much.