my car "Skeeter"

[festivakid88]

This is my first car, a '91 festiva. My dad bought it in the summer of '04, and I turned 16 in September. When he bought it we agreed that he would buy it and I would fix it up. A friend of ours had it, but it wouldn't pass inspection and he needed the money. So for $300 it was ours, and I had some work to do
The kid who had it before me cut the shocks down really low, and that was the main reason it wouldn’t pass inspection. so my dad bought a set of 4 struts from a junkyard and I went to work putting them on. I got them on fairly easily, and bled the brakes and al while the wheals were off. I got things back together enough to get it moving, and my dad took it and got it inspected (I think it needed one tail light to pass, and that’s it) so my first car was on the road.
I got my permit the same week we got it inspected, IIRC, and my dad started teaching me how to drive... its a 5 speed manual, so it was fun. my dad said he'll teach my brother on an automatic tho.... lol
it had a stock Ford radio, sitting on the floor in the back waiting to be hooked up. but it didn't even have a cassette deck. and there was no antenna... luckily the kid b4 me put two pioneer 4" coaxials in the front, so I just plugged in the radio and antenna I got @ the junk yard and we at least had some for of audio. guess its about time for pix

^This is shortly after it got inspected and I started driving.

^There was a lot of road noise, I don't know if that’s common in festys or not but I took an old towel and cut it up and taped it and stuff so that it now covers the weal well. I stuffed as much in around there as I could, basically. I just did this yesterday (2/4/05) and haven’t driven it yet, we'll see if it was just a waste of time or not.

^This is the right side in the back after I insulated it and pulled the speaker wires out from under the paneling and then replaced the paneling.... you can see that at some point in the cars history someone knocked a section out of the plastic, and you can see the cloth under there. that area is stuffed w/ cloth to cut down on road noise.

^After I finished with the sound insulation/pulling the speaker wires out I vacuumed the whole back area and cleaned the windows and basically just wiped everything down with a rag/soap. then I hooked up to 4" speakers I pulled out of an old boom box where the speaker holes are in the back. then my dad brought in a set of old house speakers, they look huge but I think their just 6.5" midranges in a big box..... lol. still they sound alright. the reason I used those and the other ones in the back is that they were free, and I don't have money to put into good expensive speakers. so long as they make fairly acceptable noise its OK for now

^Just another pic of the system in the back.

^This is the inside front/dash area, you can see the stereo I installed. I got some money to use at pepboys for christmas, and I wanted a CD/Stereo. I got the cheapest one they had; a piece of junk. it was shot in a month. so I returned it and got this, its digital and has 30 pre-sets and sounds perty good so far as I can tell (I haven’t used it much yet), and was still relatively cheap. I hope it lasts...

Well, that’s al the pix for now. there are some more things I want to do to it. Perty much anything I can do that’s really cheap/free sounds good to me at the moment It needs a bath b/c right now its all covered in salt... guess that’s what I’m doing now, since I’m done blabbing about my sweet little car on here for a lil while

[FestivaBiker1971]

rock on dude! have fun fixing up and enjoying your car. that's what this place is about!

[Silv3rBull3t]

Good stuff man, you seem to be extremely dilligent working at getting it back up to tip top shape! It looks good! -Kyle

[htchbck]

Rock on with the home stereo speakers. Thats what I had in my old station wagon, then the same ones went in my van when the wagon died, then the came out of the van into my festiva, and now they are in my new wagon. They definitely put out plenty of sound for these little cars. Keep up the good work and keep us posted.

the other Joseph (not Eye of Ra)

P.S. I like how the Haynes manual is featured in the pics of the speakers... while they are by no means perfect, they are still one of the greatest publications ever.

[Safety Guy]

Kid, it's good you're starting out young! I wish I'd done more with cars when I was your age. Most I did was installing new shocks in my Chevette when I was about 22. Now I'm beginning my serious grease monkey training in my FORTIES! (Early forties, though.)

Nice car, too. Is it a light blue or more "aqua" in color?

Karl

[festivakid88]

hey guys! thanx for the nice comments...

its like a light blue, i've only seen one other the same color and it is the same year and everything. its up on e-bay now... lol. trying to talk my uncle into buying it, but am not getting anywhere.

I wish i could be doing more to it than i have been, it seems like every way i turn there end up being problems with something and its really annoying. Right now i'm sorta waiting till after i get my license to do too much, i don't want to go to the testing center with a tinted/painted car b/c they might be a lil harder on me... :roll:

A lil while ago i cleaned the engine a little bit, re-located the horn into the engine compartment because it died, got a little better ground and connection there and it works some when the car is running, but not great. Needs to be replaced.
I'd like to do the aspire brake swap over the summer, and mabye a custom ground kit or something... not sure. I'd like to do more things to it 'mechanically' but the funding is low

[Kindred]

Nice car, too. Is it a light blue or more "aqua" in color?

Karl

I also have a teal festiva. Course, someday it's going to be black... :twisted:

[htchbck]

If you can scrape together a $200, a weekend worth of time, an engine hoist, and a lotta elbow grease, the best mod available for these things is a B6 out of a Mazda 323. My advice would be try to find an '88 or '89 with manual transmission (saves moving the air intake box and having to switch the ecu). If you want something mechanical that is worth every penny, get a B6. Good luck with the car!

[festivakid88]

$200? this week the local JY is having a sale on all their motors.. 50 bux a pop 8) but i'm not gona do the swap yet.... want to keep the gass milege in teh 40s and the good ol B3 is running fine yet!

i did spend a *lot* of time on the car over yeasterday (Sunday) and today...
Sunday afternoon after church i spent the afternoon tinting the rear quarter windows with 20% Autozone tint. they went OK, but deff not the quality of a profesional job. plenty good for me though, as their not like all bubly or anything... form 10' they look fine, so its good enough

This morning my dad and i went to the JY and hunted for some parts. I got a woopin $32.65 worth of stuff for Skeeter, and my dad picked up a turn signal for our van (some stupid SUV hit us). There were 3 Festivas there, an older carbed LX and two Ls that were fairly stripped. the LX had some stuff tho.
I grabbed:
-door pockets
-power mirrors
-hatch light
-shifter knob w/ lil sticker
-dome light w/ map lights from Tracer
total: $32.65

I installed it all today (who needs school?). the door pockets are real nice! deff a good plus. the power mirrors have a much cleaner look, but are hEAvier! and of course the fact that i now have a mirror on each side and i don't hafta roll down the window to adjust is nice. they were real easy to install, tho i had to re-rout the wire in the door some to make it reach. i took it out of all the little plastic holders and then ran it in the most direct way to the mirror.... easily done. the switch plugged right into my dash, and that was that!
The hatch light was sort of an afterthought... i hadn't figured on getting one b/c i didn't want to replace the latch, but when i saw that it had a lil on/off switch i figured who cares about having it turn on with the hatch, as long as you can just hit the switch to turn it on. so i grabbed it. When i installed it on Skeeter tho, it didn't work... a quick check of the leads showed that it wasn't getting a ground. idn if there is a problem with the switch, or how it works... but i just grounded it to the body for now and it works fine.
I took the dome light from the Tracer b/c it was the first car i walked by with the right type of light in the right color for my car... funy thing is it was more *right* than the write up on projectmazda.com would indicate. I pulled the harnes out of the roof and cut it off, took the whole thing and came home... when i started to install it, however.. i notice that the plug for the new light and the stock festy plug are *identical*, even the little tab to hold the plug to the light (which serves no purpose on the stock festiva dome light). and so i cut the head liner and pluged in the new light. after replacing the bulb (it was shot from the JY, but uses same bulb as festy) i tested it and it worked (at the point i had only the center screw in to ground the map lights). so i remembered that only one of the screws worked in the writup i read... well, both holes looked close to me. so a stuck a screw in one of them, then one in the other, and bingo. the plugs were the same and i got all 3 screws in!!! its very nice, and looks straight so far as i can tell

after all that stuff was done i took on the task of tinting the rear window, with 4x5.125" strips of 20% "static cling" tint. i figured w/ the static cling if i had problems w/ it being too dark i could replace it with something else... and it was cheaper than the regular stuff also. it went on OK, but took much time and patience... i think if i had to do another car i would do better, but that is to be expected

pix will come tomorow!!!! i mUST go to bed, in order to get up for trig tomorow... but i had an awsome day working on my car!!!! hehe

l8r

[HappyMom]

Good work Nate!

Your write up is the kind of thing that motivates the rest of us

[Safety Guy]

You know Nate, ten or twenty years ago I'd at least mentally chastise you for skipping school merely to work on a car!

Not any more. Without knowing the quality of your schooling, etc., I'd have to say skipping one day to work on a car is probably a great idea! You could do much worse.

My Mom was a biology teacher, and when I was little, all I wanted to do was to go take one of her classes in high school, but I was in grade school. I was TOO YOUNG! :roll:

Later on in high school, I was no longer all that interested in biology, but she persuaded me to take it in 11th grade. So I did.

Worst teacher I ever had. We took notes four days a week and watched Little Rascals movies on most Fridays. I kid you not. The main letdown was the teacher was a jerk. He would sometimes sit and say things like "frig" to one of the girls in my class. (I didn't know what that meant until several years later, when one of my Bonanza Steakhouse buddies told me it was a "polite" way to say F**K.) :evil: :x

If only I had gotten to take biology when I was interested in it! (Don't get me wrong, I'm still interested in it, but it's just not my major focus.)

Sounds like you had a great junkyard day. Good for you! And yes, your write up IS motivating (as well as our nice weather here in OH). So I shall go find that leak in my LF tire. Ho hum. At least that's more fun than TRIGONOMETRY! HA HA HA! (I hate math. I'm a sociology and literature kinda guy.)

Karl

[batstiva]

Trig Sucks!!!!!!!! Well, math in general sucks. Nice work on the car!!!
Wonder how many others you are going to guilt into messing with their Festies? :lol:

[htchbck]

Do they have any B6Ts there at the junkyard? I'll skip class and call in sick to work if they do! And btw, when you are ready for the B6 swap, don't sweat the gas mileage. My B3 got 45mpg, and the B6 still gets 42mpg, and goes twice as fast (although gas mileage does drop down to about 38 when I'm driving it hard, which is most of the time). Anyway, keep up the good work and the updates...

Joseph

[festivakid88]

thanx guys i hope i make you ALL feel motivated to do stuff to your festys!!! hehe.
sry i havn't got pix yet.... and i'lll respond more specifically to some of the replies later, but i been buzzy this week, going to NC this weekend and all.. should have some nice pix of hte car after this week

buut,,, just a lil clarification... i didn't exaclty 'cut class'... i'm cyber schooled. i'll explain more l8r, for now i'm swamped..

l8r gys!

[festivakid88]

well, I finally got pix uploaded... and not just uploaded but I spent a bit of time today actually putting together a page for the car! A lot of the text was actualy copied from my posts here, but there are many new pix/etc... ceck it out at http://nates-rockets88.8m.com/skeeter.html
Finished tint:

JY stuff:

well, there ya go! the majority of the pix are on the page tho... :-)


now, to answer Karls post briefly:
I agree, even if i went to brick'n'morter school, so to speak, i would think taking a day off to work on the car would probly be a good thing. Life isn't just about school, but school is important. I'm cyber schooled, which means i'm basically home schooled exept all my courses are online. I am taking one course at the local comun. college, even tho i'm in 11th grade... thats Trig. I actually enjoy math more than most other subjects tho so its cool :-)[/img]