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Used to own a 2.0 Fiesta Si that unfortunately got broken for bits. I missed the car dearly and wanted another since I sold the other. Me and a lad in work have been looking into a track day project and when this came up it was a no brainer however, being the potential with the Si, we said It would be better to track my Saxo (or something else) and I keep the Si for my daily endeavors. Without further a do here it is.
It's a bit of an old kipper much like my last one but is shaping up to be a very promising project. Spec is as follows;
1994 Fiesta Si (poverty spec)
1.6 Zetec
Keep fit windows
Avo coilovers
Finished in Audi Spirit blue (not the best finish but will do)
Delocked and debadged boot
Cosworth front splitter
The car needs a fair bit of work, mostly welding which is more or less done now. It was initially for sale for £400 quid, but an ignition barrel issue meant that the seller couldn't get car to start, plus missing locking wheel nut key we knocked him down to £275. Bargain!! Has no MOT yet but me and my mate are getting round to it. The plans are;
2.1 Zetec Cammed Zetec engine (sourced and waiting delivery)
ST150 or 170 Brakes
Polybushed all round
OMP 280mm steering wheel (just need boss)
Mondeo, GTI or RSk wheels (again, need to find some)
We picked the car up 4/08 and have already completed a lot of the work. Main thing is to sort welding and engine swap so we can put a 12 Month ticket on it, then I'll be using it and slowly adding the other bits. The coilovers are wound to around 50mm I believe, but we need these locking nuts off to change the wheels (god knows how)
Here's some pics of the build so far, not bad for mostly evening work.
When we collected it
Progress
New engine and engine removal
That's all for now. More pics to follow when new engine has arrived and ready to go in. Really looking forward to getting it on the road.
Engine is now in, what a pig of a job! Today we just wanted to get the engine in and mounted up, tomorrows job is to get all the box bolts back in, starter and alternator on, then swap the loom and fire her up! Hopefully all should go to plan!
More progress today, got the engine, box, starter etc all bolted in correctly and tightened up. Then cracked on with putting the Si loom on and the ECU in. Got in the car to start it up and it was really struggling, wouldn't start well and wouldn't idle at all. We were fiddling round swapping coilpacks/leads etc for about 20 minutes because it was running on 3 then 2 cylinders. Then we had a look on Autodata and found the injectors were in the wrong order! Got them in the right order and it started first time and runs a treat! We do have a few spare bolts though.....maybe from the escort engine mounts and several bolts on top of the engine that came with it when we bought it. Plus a bracket, can't for the life of us remember where this bracket sits so will get a picture tomorrow see if anyone can help. It's not on the road yet and won't be going anywhere till the bracket it on. Plus it's very smokey, one of the spring bolts snapped taking it off so we can't get the exhaust to seal properly but I have a few spares
So the car is now MOT'd for the year and on the road! With the cams the car pulls very well from 4k, there is a noticeable pick up in power over the last 2.0 MK3 I had. Plus this will rev up to about 6.5k and still have good power, unlike the last being out of puff around 5.5k. Overall quite happy with the build however I feel the engine is quite tired, it breathes very heavy and fills up my catch tank with oil quite fast. It doesn't smoke as far as I can see, but the catch tank soon fills (cheap eBay one might not being doing it any favours) Mondeo alloys have also been purchased, two need bead sealing but will get that sorted tomorrow. The car also after a few runs, does a 0-60 time of around 7 seconds, which for a 21 year old car isn't too bad. The next plans are to sort the niggly problems being, stupid rev counter that reads only 5k one minute then reads accurate the next, sort the steering column out which again, is stupid. I'll also be ordering some ST150 brakes on and hopefully a 4-2-1 like my last one. Plus I want to put a belt on it for peace of mind, was allegedly rebuilt but no proof so want to change that. Would have changed it when engine was out but couldn't get the damn pulley bolt off! Maybe once these bits are done, I'll look into carbs, would like the car to be able to hold it's own against modern hot hatches.
Got some more pics of the car now, really liking how it's looking. The splitter scrapes everything though, even small bumps I have to crawl over! Also got my rocker blacktop rocker cover fitted and catch tank on!
Right, so I'm in two minds about selling the car but anyway here's a big update of stuff done since I last was on here.
Shortly after the last post, I went down to Santa pod to give the car it's first good run for Fordfest. Had a really good time down there, saw loads of smart motors.
And then had a small issue with a tire de laminating on the way back....
The car then stayed pretty much as it was for a bit, but I didn't really like the Mondeo wheels anymore and decided to find some RS2K wheels after having a set on my MK5.
After putting the wheels on though, the tires scrubbed everywhere and the way the coilovers had been set up amplified how cocked up the car looked. It was lower on the back than on the front and the left side was slightly lower than the right, so that came next as well as some standard rear lights.
Here it is with the coilovers set up better and my terrible grainy camera. Eagle eyed viewers will also spot the addition of the ST150 brakes which are mad good!
Calipers are about a knats cock away from touching the wheel but they are honestly awesome brakes. Very easy to swap over and don't half make a difference.
Excuse me for muddling myself up now, but before I changed the brakes, I found quite a bit of play in the N/S lower arm so naturally I decided to replace it. What a job it turned out to be, a "30 min" job, ended up taking nearly 2 hours after both bolts holding the arm to the subframe refused to move. One eventually ended up snapping, and the other totally rounded off, so I took to removing the stubborn buggers by dropping the entire subframe. In the process, I got covered in the most expensive, difficult to remove underseal on the planet....
To my delight however, I found now the car drove very weird. The car would dart to the left under acceleration, then dart to the right off the throttle so I decided when I did the brakes, to replace the pair of arms. This has now cured the problem, which then meant I could get rid of those horrendous ling long ditchfinders that came on the wheels when I bought them and get some decent tires. I opted for some grippy, Toyo TR1 proxes which are fantastic in the dry and surprisingly good in the wet. With the 50 profile tires I had on before scrubbing at every chance, I decided to get some 195/45/15's which totally stopped the scrubbing and meant I could lower the car a bit more to set it up exactly how I wanted.
The car now stands like this and now that I've aligned it where I work, it drives absolutely brilliant and just has endless grip!
Last edited by JoeyBoyden; 28-12-2015 at 09:38 PM.
More recently, I have now added a polybushed MK5 Zetec S rear axle which totally alters the handling characteristics. I didn't really get any pics of me doing this, but should be able to see it in the background before I dropped the Si one.
Again, this was a bit of a pig so I ended up replacing both rear brake hoses and handbrake cables. The car handles even better now, it's slightly lower at the back again but only by 5mm and really hugs now. The axle bushes are quite common to go on these but I must have had limited edition MK3's because both Si's I have owned had bushes that were in good condition. However despite this, I noticed under heavy cornering the back did feel a bit vague but now with addition of the thicker axle and stiffer bushes, it really hugs the road well! The bigger MK5 drums also have noticeable difference when braking even if it's a subtle difference.
I have found after owning it a while the colour hasn't really grown on me so I am ideally looking for another MK3 with an original colour to swap all running gear and goodies off this one to put into an original shell. I miss my old one a lot!
"One minutes silence for where my green one inevitably ended up"
Last edited by JoeyBoyden; 28-12-2015 at 09:47 PM.
Then last week, I swapped the tired looking original number plates for some new ones I had made up at work. Granted they aren't the original ones (still kept them though) they don't half finish the car off. I then took the car up the cat and fiddle to get a few shots!
I also got my hands on a nice set of ERST seats only to find they didn't fit properly. A quick search on eBay, and a lad was selling a pair of FRST seats so a quick message if he wanted to swap, and the deal was done. I've only fitted the one seat at the moment but will get some pics soon when they are both in!
Quick update, couple of weeks back when I was changing the rear axle over, I found a bit of crusty looking mess in the inner arch skins. Poked about for a bit and it ended up looking like this haha
I got round to doing it earlier this week and have fully rebuilt both N/S and O/S rear inner arches where they'd gone, then under sealed inside the arches. I've also fitted my 20.5MM rear axle spacers and they don't half alter the grip when cornering spiritedly....
Yesterday I also re attached the boot release. Some while back, the boot release unhitched itself from the aftermarket boot popper so had a few mins and decided the put it back together. A bit awkward to do, and now the boot popper doesn't seem to be doing anything at all now. Hopefully just a blown fuse...
Last edited by JoeyBoyden; 07-01-2016 at 07:52 PM.
About time I updated this. For a good while I've been toying with the idea of reshelling the car with another MK3 in an original colour. Whilst the paint is pretty good on this, It's not really my bag so I'd been looking for a solid MK3 for a while to reshell all the good bits from this with, however whilst I was looking on eBay, I found a G plate MK3 that already had everything that I wanted, so naturally I decided to just sell this one because the work on this other MK3 was done.
The new MK3 I've bought has a very extensive spec list;
2.0 Zetec with Twin Weber 45's
Ashley 4-2-1 full exhaust system
1.8 Diesel big bearing box with LSD
Highspec 4 pot front brakes
GAZ coilovers
OMP bolt in cage
Compomotive TH wheels
S1 ERST Recaro's
Not only was the spec list this impressive, It was a genuine 1.6S shell, very rare now and I paid £950 for it! Absolute bargain! Came at a price though, I swapped my insurance from the Blue one to the White one, and it's given me nothing but grief since dailying it....So, I took the for sale posts for the blue one down and started using it again. The white car has been thrown together by previous owner, so I'm currently in the process of tidying it all up, but I'll save all that for another separate project thread!
Here's a few pics of it though,
Last edited by JoeyBoyden; 10-02-2016 at 09:50 PM.
Here's a pic of old faithful aswell after a good wash, I must say, I took power steering for granted in this one because driving the white one is like trying to manoeuvre a cruise liner at low speeds.....
Despite both having 2.0 engines and similar suspension setups, they drive very different, my blue one has very sharp tun in and grip, the white one feels a little less communicative, but still hangs on well, but has bucket loads more torque!
Hi mate this is a long shot as your posts where 9 years ago but I've got myself a MK3 fiesta and want to do the black top swap could you give me a complete list of parts you used for this as I've found a few different forums with different answers I need to start getting hold of parts soonish so would be great to know
S
09-08-2015, 06:36 PM
Fiesta MK3.5 2.1 build. 09/08/15
