It finally happened...

[FestYboy]

those switches not being hooked up will not cause any issues, they are on individual circuits. now, off to check that stereo harness for you....

[zoom zoom]

Ah ha! Got a rockauto order in today! Gives me something to do while its raining out I suppose

[FestYboy]

ok zoom, the blue/ yellow is your switched power... the one with the black wire bundled with it is your cigar circuit, the one bundled with the red/green is for the radio. the red/green is an illumination circuit. the ground for the radio is a seperate wire bolted to the dash frame.

[Bert]

Working on this little by little....I hit the junk yard today trying to get a steering column and front knuckles. The rotors are warped really bad and it's just getting worse.
http://www.carcoverplanet.com/2003-m...FcNaMgodTWYAtQ

After stripping out 2 homely-looking (IMO) 97 Aspires I have concluded that predecessor Festys were accidentally/intentionally designed to be worked on by people that didn't read manuals and rely on intuition and common sense. Aspires are just ordinary cars in the way everything is smoothed off, purposely fashionable-looking (Festy flat cardboard door cards, no way!) and fasteners hidden away so that only techs can access them without breaking things. But Festys do have horribly archaic features such as the OEM stupid front brakes and minimum spec suspensions and that's why Aspires, with their vented and floating rotors, beefed-up trailing arms/sway bars and more universal 4 x 100 upsize wheels are so much revered on this site.
Glad to see you've seen the light. An 1800 lb Festy with a roller rocker B3 and absolutely no frills is sure enough gonna be way more fun for you than a spruced-up and stretched 4 door 'boat anchor-laden' Aspire with the very same engine.

[zoom zoom]

haha, I love reading your posts bert, they're so....motivational, to me. I suppose it's a good thing I don't have any stretched 4 door boat anchors laying around since they're all just a bunch of slugs!

ok zoom, the blue/ yellow is your switched power... the one with the black wire bundled with it is your cigar circuit, the one bundled with the red/green is for the radio. the red/green is an illumination circuit. the ground for the radio is a seperate wire bolted to the dash frame.

Thank you VERY MUCH sir!! I gotta go fix it now..

[Bert]

haha, I love reading your posts bert, they're so....motivational, to me. I suppose it's a good thing I don't have any stretched 4 door boat anchors laying around since they're all just a bunch of slugs!Thank you VERY MUCH sir!! I gotta go fix it now..

I know you have a soft spot for bubble cars, and by now you've figured out that I don't. So of course I have to goad you every now and again. To me it was an unwise marketing ploy to replace Festys with Aspires. Could be they did that on purpose to justify discontinuing small cars by virtue of diminished sales.
Airbag retrofits to a Festy would have blown out the rear glass, plus the driver, every time there was a fender bender!

[blackhandbeagles]

I think the dash lights are just toast. I had it apart once and there was power to the wires.

[zoom zoom]

hmm alright then I'll grab some extras next time I hit pnp.. I was in a couple junk yards up by you yesterday and found a festiva dimmer switch! I don't know if it will do any good in this car, but it sure does look good filling the empty hole haha.. I got a blank too.

[zoom zoom]

I hit a local yard and I think I scored big time, they have an 89 tracer with just over 90k mile b6, 150+core(will get later) and it has cruise!!!!! He said he would get the engine fired up if I want to listen to it.

I tried to look but it was so wet out (and raining on me) that I didn't get too deep into it. I did however grab some goodies...

[zoom zoom]

Oh crap Haha I didn't get get the intermittent in the pic!!!!

I got the multifunction switch swapped out before I even made it home, my wife went into the grocery store and when she came out she just said 'that's not the one you just bought is it?!?!' Hahahaa..

Anyway, what I did get a decent pic of is some type of defroster switch? See it behind the wiper arm? It plugged in but it doesn't do anything that I can tell. Looks good though. Do I need a hatch with rear defroat for that to work?

I kinda need to know a few things, definately want to install cruise, so if you guys can tell me anything about the cruise setup for these cars please enlighten me, its super easy with an aspire, just the CPU mounted externally to the stock ecu(zip tied from the dealership.) Power ground tach and the brake petal kill switch. Is this one (I assume factory) built into the stock ecu or can I use it?

Also what other types of switches do I need to fill this beast in completely? Even if they don't work I want to look at them! I should at the very least eventually make them work or do something else.

They also have a 93L that is "wore out, the steering rack and ball joints..." I quit paying attention but for 20 bucks I'm going back for the distributor tomorrow. I may grab the steering knuckles to rebuild too. It's bare bones with no fancy options, white cluster and 5speed.



Anyway, last question, I grabbed these thinking they might fit bh they don't, if I were to go and grab the spacer deal that makes the switches on the left dash stick out could I plug these in? I'm tempted to snag the power mirrors off the tracer too.

[zoom zoom]

If anybody knows if the OJ tach cluster will swap ill grab it tomorrow too. I couldn't tell if the dimensions or.mounting tabs were the same because I didn't tear into it...or a FestivA cluster yet.

[zoom zoom]

Well...I got up early and decided to swap the Festiva knuckles I rebuilt back in the car before 11am when I'm supposed to leave for Columbus PnP....well, I got the driver side knocked loose and was pulling the lca out...and this happened. Don't know if ill have it back together in time or not but I'm gonna try.

[crazyrog17]

Get some early rio strut mounts. Ball bearings make it easier to turn the wheel

[bhazard]

Rio mounts are a no brainer.

[zoom zoom]

Get some early rio strut mounts. Ball bearings make it easier to turn the wheel

got some, had extras, sold them less than a month ago... I just need this to hold up until I can do some kind of coilover setup.

luckily I have some extra stock top mounts, got the driver side wrapped up and the passenger side did the same. I've been fighting my harbor freight mcpherson spring compressors for the better part of an hour because one side had to seize up and won't turn in the nut. I had to cut it off....very delicate procedure hoping the damn thing didn't pop off and poke my eye out or something. Anyway I'm trying to get ahold of the guy that was wanting to go to the junk yard, hopefully he bails so I have time to fix this today.