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Finally! Another thread dedicated to SKEETER!!! Skeeter update Thread #2 is here:
And that links to my first thread.
At the end of my last thread I had just got my Aspire breaks, and was planning on putting them on. Also did my paint job in the last thread. Well, at last I have some time to work on getting the update about my break install on! Things have gotten a little crazy with school and all, and my car has needed a bit of work (accident) so I have a lot of things to include in this update, it may turn out to be quite a novel (again! lol)
I’ll start from where I left off, and try to fill in all the lil gaps and include pics along the way!
Aspire Swap
At the end of my last thread there are a few pix of where I had just got back from Matt’s house in OH w/ a load of aspire stuff. Well it took me a lil while to get around to working on the swap, because of 2 more week-long trips to PA, but in the time I was home I worked on cleaning up the parts I picked up from Matt. The struts/etc were all still attached and needed removed, I got the fronts apart OK, exept one bleader valve which decided to break off
so I ended up replacing both calipers...
The rear turned out to be a little more difficult. One of the lower strut bolts came out fine, the other one started to come out but was real hard.. and I couldn’t figure out why. I kept turning/spraying w/ PB blaster, and finally realized that the strut bushing was actually so seized onto the bolt that as the bolt was backing out the bushing was pulling the metal out! Well I couldn’t figure out what to do, and ended up taking the sawzaw and spending a lot of time cutting thru the bolt on both sides of the bushing! Those bolts are hardened, and it was quite a pain... but I finally got it off.
By this point the aspire stuff was all taken apart and I wire-wheeled/rust-converted/painted it. I wasn’t too fussy, just trying to make it look a little better and keep the rust down as much as possible.
Put some new shoes in the back, re-built the cylinders, greased things up good and re-assembled.
Also got my new calipers in. here are some words of wisdom: ALWAYS get fully-loaded calipers!!! I didn’t know what the difference was and went for the cheapest set (not fully-loaded) and I payed later! it would have been so much nicer to have new pads/pins/springs/backing plates/ everything!! So, if you need to replace your calipers spring for the fully loaded. Well worth the couple extra $$. Of course I wasn’t putting on new calipers just to have them look rusty again in a few months, so I sprayed some yellow on them:
I had a can of yellow krylon interior/exterior spray paint laying in the garage; that’s what I used. No expensive caliper paint here! And now, several months later it has held up quite well: no chipping/flaking/etc. all I did was wipe the caliper down with some mineral spirits first, and then spray.
Also during this time I picked up a can of gunmetal grey paint, and sprayed the aspire stock steelies with it. I thought the gunmetal would look good w/ my car, but I had also thought about black. I went with gunmetal and I like it. In this front ones gunmetal, rear ones black:
Well, now that my aspire parts were more or less ready for install one day I did the back end. First I removed the e-brake cable.... another pain! Installing was easier than removing... still not too bad. Then I dropped the rear beam, and put up the aspire beam. Front 6 bolts in good, one lower strut bolt mounted, and then... the side that had been such a pain removing, was just as much a pain going on. I had thought the nut inside the rear arm was OK and I’d just use a bolt from the festiva. Well... I’m turning and turning and turning, can’t figure out why it wouldn’t thread in... tried a bunch of stuff, finally the weld broke off the nut inside the beam. It was all stripped out; go figure! Ran to the parts store in my mom’s van and got the closest bolt/nut set they had to what I needed b/c I couldn’t find the right sized nut for the stock bolt. Now came another fun part: trying to hold the nut inside the closed beam, get it all aligned, and tightened! Well I finally did it.... and then I couldn’t get the durn wrench I was using out!! And it was my good craftsman wrench, so...... I took it out again. found a old junky wrench, put it back together, and just left the wrench in there!! haha... yea, a lil redneck but who cares:
After a few miles I took the rear wheel off again to check the bearings.... and it was gone!!! Guess it was possible to get it out after all, but oh well. the nut/bolt was still in tight so all is well till I replace my struts or something!
I drove the car for a few days w/ just the rear swap on, everything was working fine so a while later I proceeded to do the fronts.
After just a lil work the stock front hub was removed:
Except the tierod end! I had PB’d the tierod end already, and put wrenches on it, and twisted the outer end right off! The inner, however, was another story.... this is was the worst part of the swap I tried and tried all kinds of things to get that sukker off... vice grips, cheater pipes w/ me bouncing on them, all kindsa stuff.... finally I was getting ticked (this was supposed to be the EASY part now!) and grabbed the torch, heated it up jumped on the cheater pip.. it moved! Yey! Pull the socket off. Crap.... bent the inner tierod end > gave Paul (carbonvmax) a call and asked him if he had one, he said he had a whole steering rack.... so I drove out to Roanoke (45min or so from me) and picked up the rack from him (thanks paul!) and headed back... the rack was from an 88/89 car so it was different than my newer one, so I had to replace the whole thing.
Yep, that was fun too! Actually, removing mine wasn’t so hard and getting the new one up in there wasn’t that bad... it was getting the new splines to fit into the splines from the steering column! Apparently there was a little difference in diameter of the splines, b/c my old one slipped in and out easy... the new one was HARD!! this was the only part of the swap I needed a friend for, I called up one of my buddies from college and between us, a pry bar, and lots of sweating/grunting we got that sukka in. at last I could start to install the new stuff!
Heres a pic w/ everything removed from the front:
I put on the escort tierod ends, new ball-joint boots, new steering rack boots, installed the hubs, hooked everything up, and that was that! Well, sorta.
Here you can see the new rod ends/ ball-joint boots and steering rack boots:
And I backed it out of the garage and this is what it looked like:
That is one nice lookin car, if you ask me :p unfortunately that is the ONLY pic I have of it looking good w/ swap and all! :’( soon it should be looking like that again tho.
Well, I said it was finished.... almost. I had a problem: it was making funy clunking noises, and it had bad “highway shakes”. Swapping the front tires to the back helped the shakes some, but still had funy noises... finally isolated the noises to the front pass side: the bushing AZ gave me for the brand new caliper was the wrong size!! I have since then replaced the caliper, and the rotors (which were a lil worped and worn out, thanks for the new ones Karl!!) and pads..... so smooth now!! And they work so much better than stock! lol.... the other day I saw a deer and just smashed the breaks (going like 45) and locked them up... still hafta get used to that! However, there is a fair amount of pedal travel before they grab... I think an aspire MC would clear that up, but its nothing too worrisome.
Any way here are some more pics from the swap:
Rear beam comparison:
Front hubs/rotors/calipers comparison:
During the process, garage a mess!!
New Rotor installed (after accident):
That about wraps up my aspire swap! Very happy with it, even though it ended up taking more blood/sweat/tears/time/$ than I had at first anticipated. Still I think total was <$200, and the handling/braking is so much better! I don’t slide on every corner I take and ... well, its just all in all perty awesome
Cone Filter
The next lil upgrade I did was a $9 cone filter off ebay. Bought and installed it, looks good and seems to be of good quality. I’m still working on getting it somewhere where it will get some better cold air!!
Accident
This portion of the thread is the most sad portion ;( the story can be read about here:
Basically, I got in an accident and near totaled my car. Many thanks go out to the members here for their support and encouragement, as well as helping me out with parts! Since the accident I have been driving around with a grey front bumper, black hood, and red fenders. Oh well at least it was driving!!! I am very thankful for that...
There are enough other pics in the other thread that I won’t go into much detail here, but it was a sad time for skeeter. Right now, actually, I have the red fenders in the garage getting paint! Coat # 4 is drying, and I have been driving w/o fenders for a few days now (lol). the front bumper is already painted black, and the hood is remaining black for the time being. You think I should paint it blue, leave it black, or something else?
Valve Cover Gasket
I had been spraying oil around for a lil while. Replacing the crank seal helped it, but it’s been getting worse and worse, and w/ the accident it went to the very bottom of the list of priorities! However when my mom wanted to take it up to PA I decided it better get done, so I picked up a gasket from the auto store and installed it... removed the VC w/ removing the TB!! I didn’t think it was possible (tried before) and couldn’t get it this time either, however 5-6 strokes of a file and pop! It came right off. Hasn’t really leaked any oil since then; yey! Something went fairly smooth and worked
that’s always nice for a change...
While I had it off I took a few pics, this right after I did the VC gasket I changed the oil so in this pic the color is a lil darker than usual, still looks like its in good shape! :
Future Plans/ B6
A while back Joseph (htchbck) and I had been talking about doing a B6 swap... I think he recommended I do it in a reply to my first update thread, and at some point along the way he offered me a B6 he had w/ a blown head. At that point I still lived in PA, and GA seemed forever away! But then during the accident and afterwords I was having some problems w/ the B3 (since resolved by re-setting the ECU, finding a plug wire that was a lil loose, and fixing some fusable-link problems) and so he and I were talking about it again, and then oxbrain posted that he had a B6 he was parting out... I asked if the head was good, he said yes, and sent it to me! I then planned a trip down to GA over thanksgiving break (the beginning of last week) and went down and met Joseph, his family, his 2 festivas, picked up the engine, and we visited a u-pull-it while we were there! it was a rather eventful trip, but loads of fun. It was eventful in that I ran out of gas in the mountains about 15min from his house, so he had to come and give me a lift to a gas station (what a way to meet someone, eh?) and then had fusible link problems again... I have a new block I just haven’t put in yet, but its been working fine. However this time I was blowing fuses, not just lozing contact. When we were @ the JY I picked up about, oh, 14 fusible links before heading home I put in a 40amp one and haven’t had a probs yet.
Then the way home I left his place around 7:30pm and drove all night (with a few short rest stops, and a few pee stops along the hwy due to excessive amounts of mountain dew) in the rather heavy rain to get home just as the sun was rising around 6:45 am , and went to bed for a few hours... lol.
So right now I have a B6 sitting in the garage, waiting to be rebuilt! Plans so far are just to re-build it and then put it in sometime in the spring. It’ll need quite a bit of work before it goes in! And I’m sure I’ll have a few questions. I’m already looking at gasket sets and stuff, and I’m not sure what all I’ll need... but that will come in the future! For now I have to get to real work..
Thanks so much to all who have helped, I should have pics of the car w/ the newly painted fenders and maybe a few pics of the engine too so you guys can help me w/ advice on what to do with it.
This is one long update .... and its also my 200th post. I need to start posting more, get that count up! lol. hope at least a few of ya’ll enjoy the read!!
Festivas forever!
And that links to my first thread.
At the end of my last thread I had just got my Aspire breaks, and was planning on putting them on. Also did my paint job in the last thread. Well, at last I have some time to work on getting the update about my break install on! Things have gotten a little crazy with school and all, and my car has needed a bit of work (accident) so I have a lot of things to include in this update, it may turn out to be quite a novel (again! lol)
I’ll start from where I left off, and try to fill in all the lil gaps and include pics along the way!
Aspire Swap
At the end of my last thread there are a few pix of where I had just got back from Matt’s house in OH w/ a load of aspire stuff. Well it took me a lil while to get around to working on the swap, because of 2 more week-long trips to PA, but in the time I was home I worked on cleaning up the parts I picked up from Matt. The struts/etc were all still attached and needed removed, I got the fronts apart OK, exept one bleader valve which decided to break off
so I ended up replacing both calipers... The rear turned out to be a little more difficult. One of the lower strut bolts came out fine, the other one started to come out but was real hard.. and I couldn’t figure out why. I kept turning/spraying w/ PB blaster, and finally realized that the strut bushing was actually so seized onto the bolt that as the bolt was backing out the bushing was pulling the metal out! Well I couldn’t figure out what to do, and ended up taking the sawzaw and spending a lot of time cutting thru the bolt on both sides of the bushing! Those bolts are hardened, and it was quite a pain... but I finally got it off.
By this point the aspire stuff was all taken apart and I wire-wheeled/rust-converted/painted it. I wasn’t too fussy, just trying to make it look a little better and keep the rust down as much as possible.
Put some new shoes in the back, re-built the cylinders, greased things up good and re-assembled.
Also got my new calipers in. here are some words of wisdom: ALWAYS get fully-loaded calipers!!! I didn’t know what the difference was and went for the cheapest set (not fully-loaded) and I payed later! it would have been so much nicer to have new pads/pins/springs/backing plates/ everything!! So, if you need to replace your calipers spring for the fully loaded. Well worth the couple extra $$. Of course I wasn’t putting on new calipers just to have them look rusty again in a few months, so I sprayed some yellow on them:
I had a can of yellow krylon interior/exterior spray paint laying in the garage; that’s what I used. No expensive caliper paint here! And now, several months later it has held up quite well: no chipping/flaking/etc. all I did was wipe the caliper down with some mineral spirits first, and then spray.
Also during this time I picked up a can of gunmetal grey paint, and sprayed the aspire stock steelies with it. I thought the gunmetal would look good w/ my car, but I had also thought about black. I went with gunmetal and I like it. In this front ones gunmetal, rear ones black:
Well, now that my aspire parts were more or less ready for install one day I did the back end. First I removed the e-brake cable.... another pain! Installing was easier than removing... still not too bad. Then I dropped the rear beam, and put up the aspire beam. Front 6 bolts in good, one lower strut bolt mounted, and then... the side that had been such a pain removing, was just as much a pain going on. I had thought the nut inside the rear arm was OK and I’d just use a bolt from the festiva. Well... I’m turning and turning and turning, can’t figure out why it wouldn’t thread in... tried a bunch of stuff, finally the weld broke off the nut inside the beam. It was all stripped out; go figure! Ran to the parts store in my mom’s van and got the closest bolt/nut set they had to what I needed b/c I couldn’t find the right sized nut for the stock bolt. Now came another fun part: trying to hold the nut inside the closed beam, get it all aligned, and tightened! Well I finally did it.... and then I couldn’t get the durn wrench I was using out!! And it was my good craftsman wrench, so...... I took it out again. found a old junky wrench, put it back together, and just left the wrench in there!! haha... yea, a lil redneck but who cares:
After a few miles I took the rear wheel off again to check the bearings.... and it was gone!!! Guess it was possible to get it out after all, but oh well. the nut/bolt was still in tight so all is well till I replace my struts or something!
I drove the car for a few days w/ just the rear swap on, everything was working fine so a while later I proceeded to do the fronts.
After just a lil work the stock front hub was removed:
Except the tierod end! I had PB’d the tierod end already, and put wrenches on it, and twisted the outer end right off! The inner, however, was another story.... this is was the worst part of the swap
I tried and tried all kinds of things to get that sukker off... vice grips, cheater pipes w/ me bouncing on them, all kindsa stuff.... finally I was getting ticked (this was supposed to be the EASY part now!) and grabbed the torch, heated it up jumped on the cheater pip.. it moved! Yey! Pull the socket off. Crap.... bent the inner tierod end > gave Paul (carbonvmax) a call and asked him if he had one, he said he had a whole steering rack.... so I drove out to Roanoke (45min or so from me) and picked up the rack from him (thanks paul!) and headed back... the rack was from an 88/89 car so it was different than my newer one, so I had to replace the whole thing. Yep, that was fun too! Actually, removing mine wasn’t so hard and getting the new one up in there wasn’t that bad... it was getting the new splines to fit into the splines from the steering column! Apparently there was a little difference in diameter of the splines, b/c my old one slipped in and out easy... the new one was HARD!! this was the only part of the swap I needed a friend for, I called up one of my buddies from college and between us, a pry bar, and lots of sweating/grunting we got that sukka in. at last I could start to install the new stuff!
Heres a pic w/ everything removed from the front:
I put on the escort tierod ends, new ball-joint boots, new steering rack boots, installed the hubs, hooked everything up, and that was that! Well, sorta.
Here you can see the new rod ends/ ball-joint boots and steering rack boots:
And I backed it out of the garage and this is what it looked like:
That is one nice lookin car, if you ask me :p unfortunately that is the ONLY pic I have of it looking good w/ swap and all! :’( soon it should be looking like that again tho.
Well, I said it was finished.... almost. I had a problem: it was making funy clunking noises, and it had bad “highway shakes”. Swapping the front tires to the back helped the shakes some, but still had funy noises... finally isolated the noises to the front pass side: the bushing AZ gave me for the brand new caliper was the wrong size!! I have since then replaced the caliper, and the rotors (which were a lil worped and worn out, thanks for the new ones Karl!!) and pads..... so smooth now!! And they work so much better than stock! lol.... the other day I saw a deer and just smashed the breaks (going like 45) and locked them up... still hafta get used to that! However, there is a fair amount of pedal travel before they grab... I think an aspire MC would clear that up, but its nothing too worrisome.
Any way here are some more pics from the swap:
Rear beam comparison:
Front hubs/rotors/calipers comparison:
During the process, garage a mess!!
New Rotor installed (after accident):
That about wraps up my aspire swap! Very happy with it, even though it ended up taking more blood/sweat/tears/time/$ than I had at first anticipated. Still I think total was <$200, and the handling/braking is so much better! I don’t slide on every corner I take and ... well, its just all in all perty awesome
Cone Filter
The next lil upgrade I did was a $9 cone filter off ebay. Bought and installed it, looks good and seems to be of good quality. I’m still working on getting it somewhere where it will get some better cold air!!
Accident
This portion of the thread is the most sad portion ;( the story can be read about here:
Basically, I got in an accident and near totaled my car. Many thanks go out to the members here for their support and encouragement, as well as helping me out with parts! Since the accident I have been driving around with a grey front bumper, black hood, and red fenders. Oh well at least it was driving!!! I am very thankful for that...
There are enough other pics in the other thread that I won’t go into much detail here, but it was a sad time for skeeter. Right now, actually, I have the red fenders in the garage getting paint! Coat # 4 is drying, and I have been driving w/o fenders for a few days now (lol). the front bumper is already painted black, and the hood is remaining black for the time being. You think I should paint it blue, leave it black, or something else?
Valve Cover Gasket
I had been spraying oil around for a lil while. Replacing the crank seal helped it, but it’s been getting worse and worse, and w/ the accident it went to the very bottom of the list of priorities! However when my mom wanted to take it up to PA I decided it better get done, so I picked up a gasket from the auto store and installed it... removed the VC w/ removing the TB!! I didn’t think it was possible (tried before) and couldn’t get it this time either, however 5-6 strokes of a file and pop! It came right off. Hasn’t really leaked any oil since then; yey! Something went fairly smooth and worked
that’s always nice for a change...While I had it off I took a few pics, this right after I did the VC gasket I changed the oil so in this pic the color is a lil darker than usual, still looks like its in good shape! :
Future Plans/ B6
A while back Joseph (htchbck) and I had been talking about doing a B6 swap... I think he recommended I do it in a reply to my first update thread, and at some point along the way he offered me a B6 he had w/ a blown head. At that point I still lived in PA, and GA seemed forever away! But then during the accident and afterwords I was having some problems w/ the B3 (since resolved by re-setting the ECU, finding a plug wire that was a lil loose, and fixing some fusable-link problems) and so he and I were talking about it again, and then oxbrain posted that he had a B6 he was parting out... I asked if the head was good, he said yes, and sent it to me! I then planned a trip down to GA over thanksgiving break (the beginning of last week) and went down and met Joseph, his family, his 2 festivas, picked up the engine, and we visited a u-pull-it while we were there! it was a rather eventful trip, but loads of fun. It was eventful in that I ran out of gas in the mountains about 15min from his house, so he had to come and give me a lift to a gas station (what a way to meet someone, eh?) and then had fusible link problems again... I have a new block I just haven’t put in yet, but its been working fine. However this time I was blowing fuses, not just lozing contact. When we were @ the JY I picked up about, oh, 14 fusible links
before heading home I put in a 40amp one and haven’t had a probs yet.Then the way home I left his place around 7:30pm and drove all night (with a few short rest stops, and a few pee stops along the hwy due to excessive amounts of mountain dew) in the rather heavy rain to get home just as the sun was rising around 6:45 am , and went to bed for a few hours... lol.
So right now I have a B6 sitting in the garage, waiting to be rebuilt! Plans so far are just to re-build it and then put it in sometime in the spring. It’ll need quite a bit of work before it goes in! And I’m sure I’ll have a few questions. I’m already looking at gasket sets and stuff, and I’m not sure what all I’ll need... but that will come in the future! For now I have to get to real work..
Thanks so much to all who have helped, I should have pics of the car w/ the newly painted fenders and maybe a few pics of the engine too so you guys can help me w/ advice on what to do with it.
This is one long update .... and its also my 200th post. I need to start posting more, get that count up! lol. hope at least a few of ya’ll enjoy the read!!
Festivas forever!
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