Thread: swapping engines in a Festiva

What started out as a simple plan has suddenly turned more complicated. I have 96 Ford Festiva with over 200Ks on it as our 2nd car - which has been very reliable except for the manual transmission that should have been replaced about 4 years ago, and have a front end shake. For the past couple of years I have been on the look for a wreck as a donor vehicle. Well finally bought a donor car with only 80K which is a 98 model and the plan was to drop the motor and trans axle out of donor and put into our 96.
All have been well, got the donor vehicle motor out without any trouble, but as I start to take the motor out of the 96 I notice some subtle differences with the electronics going to the intake manifold and the wiring to it
I do not no whether to cut my losses now as the transmission is not all that bad, and chase the front end shake, or keep on going and see if I can swap the intake manifolds from the 96 to the 98?

I ended up just swapping the trannies, took about 6hrs on a 4 post hoist. Had the neighbour help slot the tranny into place. I swapped the whole front end over, disc to disc, left the axles and discs on during the swap. The CVs were a getting a bit bad in the recepient car. I think the discs and axles are heavier than the tranny. Ended up being pretty easy. Took another day to put the motor and tranny back into the donor car, did it from the bottom up. An engine hoist and trolley jack positioned under mid car just behind the motor and lowered the car onto the engine. Engine hoist was used to help rotate the engine into place. Did it slowly and had no problems. Only problem was when I went to start the car it was dead, nothing when I turned the key - turned out I forgot to reconnect the battery. Now we have a paddock basher, undecided if I should sell it on e-bay or not. The whole procedure including buying a few bits a pieces cost me about 1/3 the price of a reco tranny and paying someone else to do it.