Da Groj

Loren wrote:

AScoda wrote:

Loren wrote:Oh, that's just the icing on the cake. "You got beat by a car with 63 horsepower, AND it's emissions legal."

I've seen the plume of burnt dinosaur squeezin's coming out of that tailpipe. It is totally not going to pass any emission test.

That fact does nothing to alleviate the shame of losing to a 63 hp crap can.

That would be hard to deal with. Losing to Any car loren owns. Not like he's making payments on it.

You know, it's probably more like 56hp at the wheels...

That's what I like about you, Steve. You're optimistic.

I fixed my typo.

Didn't see a typo. 56 hp at the wheels is still pretty optimistic. At 200k miles and blowing smoke, it's not making all 63 of it's factory-rated hp. And drivetrain loss is going to be more than 7 hp. Likely double that would be conservative. Probably under 50 hp at the wheels.

I want to get a new windshield banner that simply says "the shame". As in... we're bringing it.

Loren wrote:Didn't see a typo. 56 hp at the wheels is still pretty optimistic. At 200k miles and blowing smoke, it's not making all 63 of it's factory-rated hp. And drivetrain loss is going to be more than 7 hp. Likely double that would be conservative. Probably under 50 hp at the wheels.

I want to get a new windshield banner that simply says "the shame". As in... we're bringing it.

The really scary part is with an open diff it's like 50HP to the "wheel". That's how Ben does his smoky burnouts at every start. He taught me how to do that.

**Maybe with those bigger tires he won't be able to do that as the 6" clutch will slip?

Less is more...
Less power, more shame!

So, today this happened:


And then this happened:


7.5 pounds of steel replaced by 3 pounds of aluminum. This puts the total weight of our new hood right at 11 pounds, just a little less than half of its initial weight of 22.5 pounds. Of course, I still don't think we've caught up to the weight that we added with the harness bar and the fender flares.

We still can't drive it. Ordered a replacement bolt for the missing transmission mount bolt. It was an inch too long. But, that's all that's holding it back right now.

We also spent a little time trying to polish it back to "red" and give it a light sheen. (check out that door, yo!) Y'all won't recognize it at the next autocross!

Once a Fastiva always the Fastiva What? No ram air? I liked it better with the open no pounds hood. That was cool.

I wanted to cover the hole with aluminum mesh, would have been about 1/3 the weight. But, I had a hard enough time getting Ben to let me do what I did!

But, we really don't need a hood scoop. We're all about functionality.

Could have made an air intake scoop while it was open... Then you would be up 60 whp, because cold air intakes are good for 15 whp right? [emoji243][emoji90]

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The radiator in this car is tiny and offset to the driver's side. We can EASILY put a fresh air inlet on the left side of the grill without the need for a scoop on the hood.

CAI might be good for 15 hp... if you're already making 450 hp.

Ben and I spent another few hours of quality time with the FASTiva Friday afternoon. Finally got the proper bolts for the transmission mount. Drilled the heads, installed and safety wired them so they won't vibrate loose again! Also replaced the front engine mount. With the rear mount being all floppy, that front mount took a beating and was literally shredded! We're working on a beefier replacement for that.

What else? Oh, we got the shifter all back together and the car shifts properly and feels as good as it's going to. It'll work! We're ready for the next autocross.

We finished off by spending a few (way too many) minutes polishing and waxing to bring some of the red back. Looks pretty good for a polished turd.

How it looked a year ago:


How it looks now:

In other news, our quest for lightness has almost reached its practical limit for the M4 class. We can install a lighter battery, and we could take the dashboard out and remove the rest of the AC system. Not much else we can do without getting too crazy, and it would all be for minimal gains. (the hood was actually pretty minimal gains, we just did it for fun and because it now looks bad-ass)

With that in mind, we're thinking on the other side of the power:weigth ratio equation. How can we add more power and still stay in M4... and without spending a crapload of money or time?

It's an intersting dilemma with a Festiva. M4 allows engine swaps, but ONLY if they don't net more than 25% more horsepower. Not a whole lot of engines out there that are readily available that would be worth swapping in that make less than 79 hp! Anything that's an "easy bolt-in" is pushing at least 90 hp. (stuff like the 1.5 variant of the B-Series Mazda engine) And the Miata 1.6 is 116 hp. So, that won't happen... unless we decide to make the jump to M3.

That puts us at... well, how much more power can we make with the existing engine? Well, if it were a Miata, we know that installing an aftermarket ECU and ditching the MAF sensor can net us a good 5-10% with proper tuning. And Ben happens to have a Megasquirt ECU gathering dust that is set up for a Miata, so it's almost plug & play. So, we're looking at installing that and doing some tuning. Should be good for something. And it opens the door for proper tuning of any further mods we do, like improved intake or exhaust, etc.

Loren wrote:We finished off by spending a few (way too many) minutes polishing and waxing to bring some of the red back.

That's looking dangerously close to respectable.

In my best John Belushi voice, tur bo, tur bo, tur bo.

You guys put the effort into polishing it. That means you care. You should paint the bumpers and fix that lazy eye.

jbrannon7 wrote:In my best John Belushi voice, tur bo, tur bo, tur bo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngRdKSh99YU Here's 15HP and a good way to clean off TBD sand when not driving. You could just strap it in the passenger seat.

**Watch the second video to see the aftermath of their "trial"

AScoda wrote:You guys put the effort into polishing it. That means you care. You should paint the bumpers and fix that lazy eye.

http://www.fordfestiva.com/FOTM/306_car_specs.htm I think this is where they are ultimately headed.

At least Fastiva is resale Red mostly if all else fails.

Wait...they're going to paint it white?