Jen and I were one of one hundred “Fiesta Agents” given a 2010 Ford Fiesta. Each month for 6 months Jen and I are sent on a mission. Each month has a theme. This month’s theme is Technology, and the mission we were assigned was geocaching. We got a box in the mail that contained a GPS unit, and instructions to log in to www.geocaching.com. Our assignment was to find a cache and leave an entry in the log that included a link to our fiestamovement page. We had never heard of geocaching, but we packed up in the Fiesta and headed out to give it our best shot. Here’s how it all turned out.
Life, like football, is a game of inches. So it goes with my project bike. Progress creeps along as I try to get an hour in here or there once or twice a week after the baby has gone to bed. This weekend I made a first down conversion. read more »
I’m trying to keep a late 40s – early 50s feel to this car. I studied some early custom cars built by George Barris and Harry Westergard and decided that frenching the stock headlight rings would give me the “bullet look” I wanted. Naturally, it didn’t work out that way. read more »
Things were moving quickly now, and I was happier than a roach at Chi-Chi’s. Pistol Pete had called me up to do a month’s worth of fill-in gigs while he warmed up a new guitar player. This was perfect timing because about this time I was trying to figure out how to pay for a tranny. One sleepless month later, I had a rebuilt Turbo 350 sitting in the garage ready to go! The engine was done more or less, so I went over to Jeffro’s to pick it up. I spent most of the rest of my money on a wiring harness and a brake pedal setup. Now I was faced with the problem of how to get the motor and trans in to the car. I knew the perfect tool to use… a phone! I called up my buddies Matt and Brian and picked up a sixer. Now, Brian doesn’t drink, and Matt showed up late, so this was going to make for really cheap labor. read more »
Here’s a little tour of “The D” Jen and Marc style. I put together a list of links about the places we visited in our Fiesta Movement video for Mission One: Show Us Around. There are a couple more relevant Detroit links in there as well.
Finally this car was starting to come together! Maybe I’ll finish this thing after all! I was going over to Jeffro’s one night a week and putting parts on the engine. But before I stuffed in the drivetrain, I wanted to fix up the hole in the floor. While I was at it, I figured that I might as well do the whole front floorpan because it looked like swiss cheese. From a Tarantulas gig I had met this old guy that did customs in the ghetto down in Detroit. I bought a front clip off of him because my passenger side fender is all crunched up.
“Hundred Twenty Five”, he said.
“Well,” I said “I only need the fender. How much for that?”
“Hundred Twenty Five. You can take the fender, or you can take the whole thing. Up to you. Either way, it’s a Hundred Twenty Five.” read more »
I am an irrational kind of guy. I surf on my hunches and see where they take me. Sometimes that’s something cool, sometimes it’s disastrous, but it’s always an adventure. So, late last summer, when the voices in my head announced their latest plan I naturally agreed: “You’re right! I do need a motorcycle!”
I have seen some pretty cool builds based on the XS 650 so I started trolling Craig’s List to find a project bike. I figured I could scrounge up about $500 to start the project. These bikes have become pretty popular again, so $500 wasn’t much of a budget, especially for something that wasn’t a total pile of junk. Long story short (and corner me in a bar if you’d like to hear the long story) I came home with The Basket Case. The bike was in pieces, but the guy had freshened up the motor. After one look at it in all its shiny silver glory I handed over my cash. read more »
Last Friday I went out to Chicago to pick up the new Fiesta. What a blast! Here’s a video I put together of the whole trip. The car is a lot of fun to drive, has a great stereo with a hookup for an iPod or a USB drive, gets 40mpg (not even a hybrid), and miraculously has room inside for a Sasquatch like me. Another cool feature is you can control things with your voice. The car has a British accent, and I swear that if you talk to it in a British accent, it understands you better.
We’re waiting to see what our first mission will be. In the mean time we’re letting our friends take it for a spin to see how they like it. Stay tuned for news and reviews. Check out the vid and leave us a comment.
Summer had come and gone. The Woodward Cruise had come and gone. Winter was coming, and Jeffro needed more room in the main building, so I took the Chevy home. The rear end was in, but I was out of time and money, so it languished in my teensy one car garage over the winter. I was working full-time, freelancing at night, and phasing out of the Tarantulas. The realization had set in that if I wanted to spend less time on the car, then I was going to have to spend a little more cash on aftermarket stuff. So, I took my last month’s worth of gig money and “saved up” (no, really, this time I did) to buy something I desperately needed. read more »
It is a well-known fact that an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted up on by a force. It is a lesser know fact that any car, when you need it to work, will spiral in to the toilet at roughly half the speed of light. Jeffro had graciously offered to let me work on the Chevy at the junkyard, so off it went to Northend. I hosed the engine compartment down with tractor fuel and hit it with a steam cleaner to get that tar-like undercoating and built up grease off. Then I started mocking up the engine and trans with a junk block and tranny. I got a little carried away with the sawzall though.
Things were moving quickly now, and I was happier than a roach at Chi-Chi’s. Pistol Pete had called me up to do a month’s worth of fill-in gigs while he warmed up a new guitar player. This was perfect timing because about this time I was trying to figure out how to pay for a tranny. One sleepless month later, I had a rebuilt Turbo 350 sitting in the garage ready to go! The engine was done more or less, so I went over to Jeffro’s to pick it up. I spent most of the rest of my money on a wiring harness and a brake pedal setup. Now I was faced with the problem of how to get the motor and trans in to the car. I knew the perfect tool to use… a phone! I called up my buddies Matt and Brian and picked up a sixer. Now, Brian doesn’t drink, and Matt showed up late, so this was going to make for really cheap labor. 
Summer had come and gone. The Woodward Cruise had come and gone. Winter was coming, and Jeffro needed more room in the main building, so I took the Chevy home. The rear end was in, but I was out of time and money, so it languished in my teensy one car garage over the winter. I was working full-time, freelancing at night, and phasing out of the Tarantulas. The realization had set in that if I wanted to spend less time on the car, then I was going to have to spend a little more cash on aftermarket stuff. So, I took my last month’s worth of gig money and “saved up” (no, really, this time I did) to buy something I desperately needed.
It is a well-known fact that an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted up on by a force. It is a lesser know fact that any car, when you need it to work, will spiral in to the toilet at roughly half the speed of light. Jeffro had graciously offered to let me work on the Chevy at the junkyard, so off it went to Northend. I hosed the engine compartment down with tractor fuel and hit it with a steam cleaner to get that tar-like undercoating and built up grease off. Then I started mocking up the engine and trans with a junk block and tranny. I got a little carried away with the sawzall though.