General car maintenance question

[Jaynesmason]

My festiva is reaching 160,000 miles and I'm wondering what would be some good preventative maintenance I could do on it. Although the car gets me too and from just fine there are quite a few problems I'd like to fix and get it back into peak condition. I'd just like to filter out what I should pay someone else to do and what things are easy enough for me to do. Here are the problems...

-heater works but only the defrost setting
-a/c totally broken (I don't know what the problem is)
-stereo speaks to in and out. Sometimes I get sound other times I don't.
-a rattling noise under the car (I'm 99% sure the muffler is just loose and needs to tightened back to the car)
-the paint job is fairly poor and I'd like to spruce it up. Is plasti dip a good idea?
-the interior of the car is ok but not great. The carpeting is quite old and coming up at the corners and there are coffee stains Just about everywhere, and the dash has a hairline crack going through it.
-finally, under the hood of the car just...looks gross. There is grime everywhere. Dust in tons of nooks and crannies. Is there a quick and efficient way to clean this up.

I know this is a tall order to ask of anyone, but if you could just steer me in the right direction I would really appreciate it.

89 ford festiva L

[Studebaker]

You will have to do the work yourself. Anyone who knows what their doing will not want to work on older cars.

Heater should work in defrost and floor positions. Is the rod loose?

A/C will have to be fixed by a professional. expect to pay $1,000 for a complete a/c rebuild.

Up grade the stereo system. Ask the form how.

Rattling noise is the exhust heat shields. Remove them.

Paint. Get an econo paint job.

Ebay sells new carpet. Search form for how to's on cleaning interior.

Engine bay. No quick easy way to clean with out damaging something. If you take something off clean it before putting back on. Otherwise leave it alone.

Otherwise, replace worn parts. Ask questions.

[Icedawg]

the control cables running from your heater panel to the various flaps are not working. Maybe fell off, maybe the wire seized, maybe some plastic pivot point is broken. You can probably trace it out.

wires are loose somewhere in your stereo, you have to trace them out and check them

you can buy ac recharge kits but if it needs a recharge most likely something is broken and you need to get pros to diagnose it.

on a warm dry day that you do not need the car you could pressure wash the engine bay. Water may get in the plugs or wiring, which is why it needs good conditions to dry

better get Maaco

[TominMO]

Good idea to pressure wash the engine bay. That will let you see where any oil leaks are, and it's a good morale booster besides. You will want to cover the disty and alternator with aluminum foil to keep water/soap out of them. Use a can of engine degreaser on the motor first, to help with the cleaning.

Edit: since your car seems to be a carby, cover the air intake with foil also.

[WmWatt]

None of what you list is essential or comes under "preventive maintnenace". The three things I would consider essential are the engine, transmission, and body as they are most difficult to replace. Make sure you change the fluids and filtres. Actually I vacuum the air filtre as I find them difficult to obtain and expensive for the caruretted engine. You can chemically clean the engine inisde and out and dod a minor tuneup annually. The body can be patched and painted and sprayed with oil to resist rust. If it's not a show vehicle ordinary "rust" paint can be brushed or sprayed over fibreglass or sheet metal patches. Rust comes from the indside, not the outside, so getting inside the doors and fenders is the way to go. Japanese vehicles of that vintage generally run trouble free for 100,000 km then need a lot of of things replaced, mostly running gear, and then give another 100,000 of trouble free driving. People on this site seem keep their cars running considerably longer by taking good care of them. My Festiva just passed 128,000 km with the running gear and igniton components replaced over the past few years and has been trouble free for a year. Good luck.