Da Groj

Big thanks to Joe for welding, and Phillip for lending a hand! The flares are tacked in and ready for action.



More photos in the gallery.

Keep the fender, straighten the hood? (Must add a scoop!)

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Maybe we'll go full harlequin and replace the hood with a different color?

Apparently Blue, Green, Black and White are out there...

Looking good

Loren wrote:Maybe we'll go full harlequin and replace the hood with a different color?

Apparently Blue, Green, Black and White are out there...

It's more than amusing that the car is actually "Hot Red"

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I just did something weird. Seemed weird as I was doing it, anyway.

The ride of the Festy is horrible. Mostly due to the rear suspension. If you just hit a plain ol' bump, it BOUNCES over it. If you hit a one-wheel bump, because the beam axle is so stiff, it 3-wheels and then CRASHES back down. It's really not that bad for autocros (except at the dog track) as long as you're smooth. But, street manners are atrocious.

With the new coilover kit, the rear spring rate went up from about 170 to 250. Needless to say, that didn't help things AT ALL!

So, after much hemming and hawing, and tonight was my 2nd foray into research... I decided that I've wasted well over 6 hours trying to find "the ultimate spring" to give me what I need without spending a bunch of money. (for the front, I found a 175# 14" spring that I cut in half to make two 350# 7" springs... for about $30!) Wasting way more time than I'm saving money. Time to buy something, dammit!

Still, I try to be frugal, so I did manage to find springs for about $35 each (instead of $48-70 each). That means that I didn't get exactly what I was after, but had to compromise to save a few bucks.

Still with me? Good.

The current rear springs are 250# and 6" long. The coilover sleeve is set as low as it will go, and it's at a good height. To go any lower, I'd have to get creative... there's probably .5-.75" of not-too-creative space available if I needed it.

With an estimated 900# of rear roll stiffness from the beefed up beam axle, we really don't need stiff springs. HAVING stiff springs is what's making the car BOUNCE over bumps and CRASH upon recovery from lifting a wheel. (particularly over a bump) What we had before was 170# and was barely tolerable. The 250# we have now just sucks. (corners like a mo-fo, though) So, I wanted to go somewhere under 170#. Something like 150# didn't seem like enough of a change, I was really aiming for 120-130#. Wanna make yourself crazy? Try to find springs in the sub 200# range that are shorter than 10"! They can be found. But, try to find them cheap or used... nope!

Ultimately, what I ended up with was a pair of new 100# springs that are 10" long. Would have preferred a 7 or 8" spring, but this will work.

The maths say that:
The 100# spring will have a static installed height 2.2" higher than the 250# spring. I can remove about 3/4" of that, making it more like 1.5" higher. Will give the car a slight rake. Can probably live with it if it makes the car FEEL better.

The 100# spring will compress about 3" at full body roll (this could in itself reduce a lot of the wheel lift... less entertaining to watch, but could feel a lot better). The 250# spring only compressed 1.2"! That was ALL of our rear suspension movement... about an inch!

I'll be installing our full-length progressive bump stop, which will help alleviate some of that compression travel... it might only compress about 2" with that, we'll see.

Always the science project, this car!

Hopefully, the new springs will arrive Monday or Tuesday and can be installed before next Sunday. (the rear suspension is super-easy to R&R on this car, could do it by myself in about 20 minutes per side)

New rear springs arrived today. They're so cute! By far the softest coilover springs I've ever laid hands on.

I also had an epiphany about how the upper rear spring is seated. Can do it much simpler, better, and without raising the rear ride height unneccessarily. But, it will probably still sit a little taller in the rear than the "stance" crowd would approve of. We'll see.

I'll be installing them Friday if anyone is bored and wants to play along.

I think the flares look way cool "except" for the open rears. Don't get that??? Buy Joe more welding rod please. Joe is cool.

So you've got big tires, new springs (again), farfenneugen, Jesus, the best of Saturday Nite Live AND Brass balls.

Still unlikely with my decent alignment, working shocks AND new tires (without Ben the invincible but Steve the Sir Mountable) you will be able to beat the Grey 8 next time out.

Sorry Charlie Tuna. Grey 8's trump the red herring.

Doug

Yeah, I wasn't sure how the open rear flares would look, and I don't like it, either. Easy enough to change at a future date. Our initial goal was just to get the flares DONE so that we could fit the tires, so we made a plan and stuck with the plan. We'll do some refinement along the way.

If you're trying to make any comparison between the FASTiva and your RX-8, it needs to start with the fact that our total investment in the car (not including tires) is under $2200. Fun/$, I think the only people who have us beat are the Endsley's with their Honda.

I can't believe we've gotten our $500 beater up to $2200... It's about time to draw the line.

Loren wrote:I can't believe we've gotten our $500 beater up to $2200... It's about time to draw the line.

When I like a car I don't keep track of $$ just keep biting the bullet. I just threw away $400 replacing nearly new shocks. I think everyone agrees the Fastiva is a great adventure. I can see that car entering LeMons in a couple years and doing well. Someone will buy it when you tire of it. It you let some company wrap it with adverts you can make money off of it this year? Call Gary?

Due to inflation I now add $1500 to any used car purchase just to make it reliable let alone race it. You've completely changed that car for only $1700!! That's awesome.

Yeah, I think the only major assembly we haven't yet replaced is the (leaky) transmission.

Woohoo! Rear springs went in easily, nice fit. Ride height ended up slightly higher, but doesn't look bad. Just a very slight rake. The ride is WAY better. Even over speed bumps, it's quite nice. One-wheel bumps or turning into a driveway with a dip (like mine) are still rough, but it doesn't make that hard crashy THUD when the wheel comes down like it used to.

In short... 100# rear springs accomplished exactly what I'd hoped!

And the new tires are awesome, too. Can't even get them to squeal on the street. Sunday's going to be a fun test day!

Weird side note... Drive a 25-year-old faded red econobox (even with a teal fender) and nobody notices. You're completely invisible. Put fender flares on it, and most people still don't notice, but a certain group of people... they will notice, and they will be intriqued. I've only driven the car like 3 times since the flares were done. Philip and I got a "what's THAT?" driving by some woman in her front yard while we were testing with the rear fenders cut off. I got a guy doing a full walk-around and asking me "what is that a Fiesta?" when I was getting gas the other day. And today, the manager (who wasn't even serving me, he came up specifically to talk to me) of the McDonald's that I was driving through said he thought it was cool. Never expected any of that from this ugly little car!

Wide Body, a completely different kind of cool. After working on your I want to get something to cut and weld on. Mod on!

stance kids will surely like the 80s era box flares

jbrannon7 wrote:Wide Body, a completely different kind of cool. After working on your I want to get something to cut and weld on. Mod on!

I know, right? I've already gone and bought myself another welder... and an electric angle grinder. I'm ready to make more things in my life awesome!

I've been gone almost two weeks and I miss this stupid car. It's probably for the best, I still need to unlearn some bad habits, and what better way than not driving?

Ben, you're gonna come back and find all the same bad habits under a thick layer of rust! But, you'll work it out.

The FASTiva performed well today. Was smoking quite a bit due to being overfilled when we changed the oil yesterday. We did it intentionally... but, apparently, too much. (the oil capacity is only 3.5 quarts... really hard to not want to put more than that in!)

The new and wider tires are great, and the softened rear springs really seemed to smooth out the rough stuff and keep the car more composed. I finished 11th overall out of 30 drivers. Cones count, but I did have one run that had some minor cone action and a time that would have put me 9th overall. Just can't complain about that when you're driving a piece of crap with (maybe) 60 horsepower!

Next up... gonna get the original 1.3 engine back and go ahead and put some new bearings in the bottom end. That engine should be pretty solid aside from the rod knock. It's only got 120k miles on it, we replaced that valve stem seals and the head gasket. Compression is good and it doesn't smoke. So, good bearings in the bottom end should give us a reliable engine! The goal is to have this engine ready to go in before the current one (with the metal in the oil) craps out.

Ben,
Your feet are gonna be so numb by then you can even drive one of my numb nuts cars and win. I have hacked all your credit card accounts and you will have to live off the land and begging for food. Sorry Ben, I needed new tires. Loren is so desparate letting Steve drive your car.

Minor progress on the car this week.

Retrieved the old engine and put it on a borrowed engine stand in my garage. Steve and I will be disassembling the bottom end in a couple weeks.

Ordered metal to finish the fender flares (boxing in the front edge of the rears, filling the rear edge of the fronts with some perfed steel) and to fix the front swaybar. (hollow tube to replace the center section to get rid of a "hump" that is requiring us to mount it upside down... which is a really awkward fitment)

Thinking about going "alternate material" with the hood to shave a few pounds. It's a surprisingly heavy hood. And of course, being FWD, getting some weight off of the front is good. Expanded aluminum sheet is cheap and stupid light. Should be able to cut a bunch of bracing from the hood, cut the outer panel back to make it essentially a "frame", and fill the holes with that. Bonus vented hood! (the car runs cool, anyway)

I think that a lighter hood and pulling the rear seat are about the only significant weight savings that we can do in M4. All the glass has to stay. We've already pulled the AC. I want to add some bracing (front and rear strut tower braces), so if I can offset that added weight and keep us close to 1800 pounds, I'll be happy. Maybe someday I'll weigh the car... factory weight I thought was 1850, but Edmunds says 1785! Found another reference that says 1713! I have a friend with scales...

One of our new tires ended up being out-of-round, so we had Tire Rack send a replacement. (easiest return process EVER!) Got that mounted last week and rocked another autocross this weekend. Not much to report, the car feels great! We're still trying to come to terms with the amount of grip available with the new tires and setup.