Westiva 2016 photos

In spite of the rainy weather we had a great day! Final tally: five Festivas and one Suzuki Swift convertible.

Of the five Festivas only two were stock and only one of those was an automatic. The other three had engine swaps and some other custom work. Even the Swift had some modifications in the engine bay!

Joe and his friend Brian drove in from Saskatoon and won the "Long Distance" award, a gift card from RockAuto.

Joe's military themed Fesitva

1.8l DOHC sourced from an Escort GT

Those are not bombs but speaker enclosures!

Julian drove down from Edmonton to join us in his B6 SOHC swapped Festiva...

This definitely qualifies as a low budget build. Julian paid less than $200 for the car, sold about $100 worth of parts off it which he put back into the car, then used bit and pieces he had lying around to put it all back together. Net cash out of pocket... $160!!

Julian was accompanied by Ryan and his family in their stock '93 Festiva. This car has seen a lot of misfortune over the years that Ryan has owned it but it keeps going strong. They are planning a cross country trip in their Festiva for next year and making some improvements and modifications to make the trip a little more comfortable.

Next to arrive was Sara, a family friend, in her '93 Festiva with automatic transmission. Other than the aftermarket wheels this car is stock.

Our special guest this year was Drew from Calgary in his Suzuki Swift convertible. The engine bay features a 1.0l 3 cylinder turbocharged engine which I believe was sourced from a Swift GTI, as were the wheels.

I had my B6T Festiva there as well of course. You can go to this page if you would like to learn more about it.

A Westiva regular call me in the morning to say that he wasn't able to join us and the gentleman I was expecting from Macon, Georgia had to cancel at the last minute. Met some new friends, lots of car talk, great ice cream... all in all a great day.  Looking forward to Westiva 2017 already. 

Thanks to RockAuto.com for providing some giveaways and the gift card that was used for the long distance  award. Thanks also to Rallysport.ca for making the Westiva 2016 stickers for us.

Here's a few more shots of the meet...

 

Thanks most of all to all those that were able to join us on a rainy day. Comments and questions would be greatly appreciated... use the space below. 

Westiva update!

It's been an exciting couple of days for us! The producers of a local radio show, Calgary Eyeopener on CBC Radio 1, contacted me and that discussion led to a live in studio interview on Wednesday morning!

Radio interview

That interview resulted in a follow up article on cbc.ca later in the day. A writer for a local newspaper heard the segment and gave me a call which resulted in an article in today's edition of the Calgary Metro paper.

Getting even more excited about the day.

Thanks to the Calgary Eyeopener crew and to Brodie Thomas at Metro News for promoting our little event!

Update of the update.... 
 
Here's a blog post on "The Truth About Cars" that resulted from the Metro News article! You never know who's going to find you.

Westiva is only a few days away!

Only a few days left until Westiva (details in the featured post). Looking forward to reconnecting with long time friends and meeting new ones.

Should be an interesting day. There will be at least three Festivas there with different engine swaps, ours with the Mazda 1.6l DOHC turbo, one with a Mazda 1.8l DOHC and another with a 1.6l SOHC. One of our regular attendees will be there with the 1990 Festiva LX he bought new and still drives almost every day.

Come back early next week to see photos of the day! For now, here's one taken by our son from the top of "The Wedge" during our 2011 meet....

Westiva @ Wedge Pond Day Use area. July,2011

 

Another drive to add to the bucket list.

I follow a few blogs on road trips and one of my favorites is Marathon Mouth which I first discovered when writing up one of our earlier road trips. Bill Corbett's posts are primarily focused on the food side of road tripping but occasionally there's a post on the trip itself. This is one of those posts....

One of the World's Grandest Drives: Through the Palouse Hills

Here's one of the photos from the post...

From the Marathon Mouth blog.....

Enjoy! 

Our next road trip is in the planning stages

We are in the process of planning a  road trip for the last week in August. We'll be in the "new" car and are being joined for a portion of the trip by friends on their "new" 2009 Kawasaki Vulcan 1700. They purchased it last fall with only 7800km (4850 miles) on it.

 

Kawasaki Vulcan Classic 1700

We will be meeting up with them in Great Falls MT. From there we'll head to Laurel MT via the Kings Hill Scenic Byway.

From Laurel we'll head to Cody WY over the Beartooth Highway and Chief Joseph Scenic Byway. From Cody we'll head across Yellowstone to Ennis MT for one night.

We are still working on the tail end of the trip but do plan to stop at the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park. Not sure yet if we are just going to head straight home from Ennis or take another couple of nights and perhaps revisit the Going to the Sun road.

Here's our proposed route...

Preliminary route for our next road trip

 

Watch this space for more details! 

If you have any suggestions regarding things to see or do along the way please share them in the comments section!

Just a little update... we've decided to head home directly from Ennis MT, with a stop at the Lewis and Clark Caverns, saving the Going to the Sun Road for another day. We will be taking the less travelled routes by avoiding the main highways if we can.

An early econobox

Another of my favorite websites in Petrolicious. They recently posted this article about an early econobox, a 1973 Honda N600, for sale. 

1973 Honda N600 as posted in the referenced article

The oil crisis of the early seventies triggered the popularity of Japanese imports of which the featured Honda was one. This oil crisis precipitated the instigation of the US governments Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard in 1975. It is this standard that we can thank for the introduction of many of our favorite econoboxes in the 80s and 90s.

Out of the garage and into the real world!

A huge milestone with the project car today! We're out of the garage and into the real world. Took the car for a spin and things are working well. Now it's time for lots of driving and fine tuning. Still a number of little things to work out but the car is roadworthy. A more detailed update will follow soon on the "Our new econobox" page....