'88 F*rd Festiva Autocross/Track/Daily Driver Build

[theastronaut]

All of the new suspension parts came in so I've been assembling that.

No one other than Tein in Japan makes direct fit Coilovers for a Festiva... those aren't the best and are expensive so we modify coilovers made for a MK2/3 Golf/Jetta. The supplied spring hats for the front were too tall so I used the rear spring hats but had to cut them down and add a chamfer on the lathe to get them to clear the strut tower at full caster/camber settings. The springs were too stiff for the lighter Festiva, so I bought 10" tall 2 9/16" 120# springs from Southwest Speed. I also had to cut the brake line tab off, bend the brake line, and weld it back on about 1" rearward. I didn't have to do that with the earlier setup I had on the car (same as the white car now) since I'm not using camber/caster plates with those coilovers.






Spring hat clearance before and after trimming.











Brake line interferance. (the lines aren't as rusty as they look, they had some sort of soft clear coat that's flaking off that has rust stains)




Camber/caster plates installed. Charlie has tested the plates with these coilovers back to back with the setup I'm using on the white car. He picked up two seconds with the new setup and said that the tires wear more evenly, last longer before overheating, and the car hooks up better coming out of corners. The plates are new so this is the first time anyone has been able to adjust caster on these cars.





I cut down an reshaped the Capri upper radiator mount and mounted/wired the fan using factory plugs from the Capri.




The guys at Oreilly let me go in the back to look at all of their radiator hoses so I could pick out a pair that were shaped correctly.




I found a set of NOS Motorcraft plug wires and sorted out the carb linkage and accelerator cable brackets.