Little Smoke problem

[Fordverde]

Happy New Year to all.
My little problem is that my little 88 carb is giving me a lot of blue smoke when you drive it hard, but if the guy is at idle it does not smoke. also when you drive it nice and easy it smokes a little but not that bad.
Im putting all my hopes that it will be the valves steam seals, im not thinking that it will be pistons rings because it has a lot of power in it.
Another thing, i checked how much milles i do with one full gas tank and it gave me 256milles, is that any good for Festis??? or is it eating a lot of gas.

[Gforcefd]

It's eatting gas like a mad man, I don't know alot about carb'ed festiva's because they are a rariety on here, but a typical festiva gets about 400 miles on a tank of gas. Most of our cars average 40 mpg on the low side, a few get above 45.

Your car probably just needs a tune up.

[Fordverde]

I forgot to tell, the vacum advance in the distributor is bad, could that be the reason for the gas eating????

[Dave G]

I forgot to tell, the vacum advance in the distributor is bad, could that be the reason for the gas eating????

It's not helping any, that's for sure.

[Fordverde]

Can you guys tell me if i'm right about the valves seals???? or I should be starting to worry?

[Gforcefd]

There really isn't way to tell, you could get a compression check done, that would tell you if your on the right track. Low compression could either be caused by a piston ring going bad or possibbly a bad valve seal.

[zoe60]

I have an 89 Festiva that only gets about 33 MPG. I had a bad vacuum advance and replaced it. Vacuum leaks don't help at all! Mileage improved a little but I am not happy yet. I got the car for $50.00 but I have spent alot on it. (Head gasket, milled head, distributor, wires, plugs, cap, rotor, rebuilt the carb, went ahead and replaced the timing belt, tensioner and water pump, etc.) One thing that helped some was measuring D.C. voltage on the oxygen sensor and adjusting the idle mixture until the voltage is as close to .5 volts as possible. (Use a digital meter-high input impedence). I found a high performance ignition system and hope it will help. (Haven't installed yet) I think festivas have whimpy ignitions, but maybe it's just mine. If you figure anything else out let me know. Maybe I'm nuts but these little cars are addicting and fun to _uck with. Just need to get better than 34 MPG.

[Gforcefd]

Well mine averages around 33 mpg and thats with a BP engine in it and big heavy 15" rims on it :-)

[Fordverde]

GREAT NEWS!!!!!! It was the valves seals, I toke my little green devil to a shop and they changed them, adjusted the valves, changed one axle seal and fill the tranny with 80w90, and adjust the ignition timing and PRESTO!!! no more smoke, the guy toll me that the seals were toast!!!. By the way it only cost me $48.00 and the seals cost $3.86 all of them. Also they did a compresion test and the result was 175psi in all 4 cilinders!!!!! Now it runs like a 15year old in love!!!!
Have anyone done a convertion to LPG on this wonderful cars?????

[miami man]

that was a cheap rate on the work.

[Fordverde]

Yes I know that why I'm so happy, I took it to the Subaru workshop(I'll explain that later) and the told that I had to rebuild the entire engine.

[Pu241]

... and fill the tranny with 80w90...

Glad is was a cheap fix!
But, you might want to have that changed to the correct transmission fluid, Mercon III/IV!

Pu241

[Fordverde]

BAD NEWS!!! the little green devil didn't pass the emissions test!!!!, they said that as the car was brought to Costa Rica in 1999 and it has to pass the test as a 99 model so I'm screwed, I'm going to change the cat, and see how it goes. Any ideas????
Why change the tranny oil??? it run great and more quiet
No buddy has done a LPG conversion????

[Fordverde]

The bad news continue, after changing the cat converter, andoil seals, still didn't pass the emission test, so I toke it to a friends shop to see what was wrong, and BINGO, the engine need a complete rebuild from pistons to head and block machining, DAMN these soft mazda engines. Many it will be more interesting if they had come with a rotatory engine(that will be cool)

[monkeyracing]

80/90 gear oil?!? That will work fine if you don't mind bad fuel mileage. Run the proper tranny fluid, and your gas mileage will improve.