Money I've invested in project so far:
$60 stereo
$10 seat covers
$1 cup holder
$2 seatback organizer
$27 tint
$33 misc JY stuff

JIC you didn't catch the recent chain of events, over the summer my family moved from Eastern PA to Central VA. Over the summer Skeeter made the trip at least 4 times, treating us very well :D On the trip when we moved down, I was driving it with my brother as a passenger. we had a bunch of my dads books in the back, and two bikes on the hatch. My mom was in the van w/ a boat trailer and pack on the roof, and my dad was in the 24' truck... we were all loaded down, but skeeter showed it the most as you can see in this shot (the last picture before we headed on the road to arrive in time for closing on our house the next morning):

^^... the poor thing sat at least 4" lower in the back than in the front! it looked even funnier than it does in the picture. made it the whole way tho, one tank of gas, 450+miles, 52 MPG .

The trip down wasn't completely uneventful, as the packed-to-the-brim 24' rental truck we were using slid backwards down the hill our new house is located at the top of into the ditch, and then took two tow trucks to get it out, but that’s another story.... ;) In the month that its been since we moved down here I had some work to do on Skeeter. It had to get inspected, and needed some stuff. first off were the brakes. some spots the pads/shoes were down to the metal... it got new pads and shoes on all around, still looking fwrd to an Aspire swap sometime tho. at least now it stops.

^^getting the brakes worked on. while I was at it I switched the rear and front tires around b/c the rear ones had better tread.. then it needed a new muffler... there was nothing holding the old one on except the rubber hangers !!

^^you can see the back of the old muffler...

^^the old one, w/ the piece I hack-sawed off, and the new 2" glass pack ($23 from Advanced Auto)

^^the new one installed... it looks perty good and sounds nice, hope it improves the MPG a lil and lasts a long time.

^^lastly it needed a new horn (the old one hasn't been working for months), so I went all out... its a higher pitch than I'da expected, but its sure louder ;)

^^here’s a pic of it at our new house... its perty happy here :) ----------------------------------------------------

The hatch light was sort of an afterthought... I hadn't figured on getting one b/c I didn't want to replace the latch, but when I saw that it had a lil on/off switch I figured who cares about having it turn on with the hatch, as long as you can just hit the switch to turn it on. so I grabbed it. When I installed it on Skeeter tho, it didn't work... a quick check of the leads showed that it wasn't getting a ground. idn if there is a problem with the switch, or how it works... but I just grounded it to the body for now and it works fine. I took the dome light from the Tracer b/c it was the first car I walked by with the right type of light in the right color for my car... funny thing is it was more *right* than the write up on projectmazda.com would indicate. I pulled the harness out of the roof and cut it off, took the whole thing and came home... when I started to install it, however.. I notice that the plug for the new light and the stock festy plug are *identical*, even the little tab to hold the plug to the light (which serves no purpose on the stock festiva dome light). and so I cut the head liner and plugged in the new light. after replacing the bulb (it was shot from the JY, but uses same bulb as festy) I tested it and it worked (at the point I had only the center screw in to ground the map lights). so I remembered that only one of the screws worked in the write up I read... well, both holes looked close to me. so a stuck a screw in one of them, then one in the other, and bingo. the plugs were the same and I got all 3 screws in!!! its very nice, and looks straight so far as I can tell.
This pic shows the old dome light, and the new plug. The plugs are identical:

This pic shows the new pass side mirror, and the old drivers side mirror so you can see the difference:

I installed it all the same day (who needs school?). The door pockets are real nice! deff a good plus. the power mirrors have a much cleaner look, but are hEAvier! Of course the fact that I now have a mirror on each side and I don't hafta roll down the window to adjust them is nice. they were real easy to install, tho I had to re-rout the wire in the door some to make it reach. I took it out of all the little plastic holders and then ran it in the most direct way to the mirror.... easily done. the switch plugged right into my dash, and that was that!
Here you can see the pass side mirror and the door pocket.

The morning of April 19th my dad and I went to the JY and hunted for some parts. I got a woopin $32.65 worth of stuff for Skeeter, and my dad picked up a turn signal for our van (some stupid SUV hit us). There were 3 Festivas there, an older carbed LX and two Ls that were fairly stripped. The LX had some stuff tho. I grabbed: -door pockets -power mirrors -hatch light -shifter knob w/ lil sticker -dome light w/ map lights from Tracer total: $32.65
Here is a shot of everything I picked up:

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And finished! Took a while, and some money, but the car looks better and I’m sure will stay cooler in the summer.

I finished the rear quarter windows on the 18th and moved on to the rear window the evening of the 19th. The rear window was tricky. Because it is curved it must be done in strips; I did mine in four 5.125" strips of static cling tint. Here the first strip is on:

And here is one of the windows in the process of being cleaned and prepared:

Over April 18 and 19th I did a bunch of work on the car. The main thing I did on the 18th was tint the rear quarter windows. I got two rolls of tint from Autozone the week before, some 'standard' tint that is adhesive backed, and some 'static cling' tint. Both rolls were 20%. I used the standard tint on the rear quarter windows, and the static cling on the rear hatch window. Using the static cling on the rear would allow me to change the shade of tint on the rear if I thought it was too dark, or if Mr. Officer thought it was too dark ;-).
Doing the tint was very time consuming, and it didn’t get perfect, but it was alright. I spent a total of $27 or so on it and it got good enough for me!
Here are the instructions. I taped them to a shelf behind where I was working so I could just look up at them at any time:
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This is the inside front/dash area as it look like at the time:

Just another pic of the setup in the back. You can see my Dual head unit in the front, and the speakers in the back:

After I finished with the sound insulation/pulling the speaker wires out I vacuumed the whole back area and cleaned the windows and basically just wiped everything down with a rag/soap. then I hooked up two 4" speakers I pulled out of an old boom box where the speaker holes are in the back. Then my dad brought in a set of old house speakers, they look huge but I think their just 6.5" midranges in a big box..... lol. Still they sound alright. the reason I used those and the other ones in the back is that they were free, and I don't have money to put into good expensive speakers. So long as they make fairly acceptable noise its OK for now :-D

This is the right side in the back after I insulated it and pulled the speaker wires out from under the paneling and then replaced the paneling.... you can see that at some point in the cars history someone knocked a section out of the plastic, and you can see the cloth under there. that area is stuffed w/ cloth to cut down on road noise.

The first 'mods'
There was a lot of road noise, I don't know if that’s common in festys or not but I took an old towel and cut it up and taped it and stuff so that it now covers the weal well. I stuffed as much in around there as I could, basically. I did this on 2/4/05 and it made a big difference! One of the best things I've done to the car, and free!! In this pic you can see what I'm talking about:

This is the oldest pic I have of the car, its myself and Skeeter after we got it running and on the road: