I've been doing this project for three years now while i'm at uni - progress has been slow due to a lack of funds
and the fact that the car is in cheshire and i'm at uni in coventry. However with my final exams in the next few

weeks and summer planned in the garage, there should be some real progress soon

I bought the shell off ebay for a bargain £211 it was sold as an "autograss car" but basically it is a RWD converted shell based on mk2 escort running gear. The shell was amazingly solid, all of the uncovered areas had a smattering of surface rust, but other than that it was good. However, at some point the roof has been replaced and it was a bodge job, so I had to redo that.

I knew I wanted a turbo engine in it, just because i wanted it to be special for weekends, and only a turbo engine would give me that, plus i was at the pod a lot seeing that blue mk2 escort doing 11s and it blew me away!

Originally the plan was to put a cosworth turbo in it, however after much deliberation I decided that a zetec turbo was the better option as the cosworths are so expensive that I could build a much stronger zetec engine, with more power for less money.

At this point I have had the car for three years, which has been about 3 months working on the car and the rest saving money to buy parts!

I'll get on with the pictures, as there are many

When i first bought the shell, in a lockup in Coventry - very dusty!:




The first job was to strip a number of layers of paint from the interior and engine bay, and then strip all of the

surface rust from underneith, which was left unprotected:


(in this pic u can see the shagged roof)



in this picture the tin foil was a failed attempt at making fibreglass headlights, if anyone has mk2 fiesta quads

then let me know PLEASE! it also shows the front valance removed, all of the wings and front/rear valance are kevlar





These pictures are the engine bay freshly coated in zinc primer, as you can see the entire engine bay is bespoke, using a chopped cross member to allow the engine to be mounted further back but extend the track forwards. The massive hole in the passenger footwell area was where the exhaust manifold previously entered the cabin!

The underside was stripped (horrible job) and then coated with zinc primer and hammerite, just to protect it





The hole in the above picture is behind where the passenger seat would be, where the exhaust exitted the cabin



This shows the back end, it is six linked and the boot floor has been replaced with this frame setup - which i was damn glad of as the mk2 floors rot like no tomorrow.

So that is a bit of an intro - that was three years ago, I did a bit of research about these fiestas, and i found only 4 including my own, all done obviously by the same company as they are identical, the best of which was shown to me by TIFF off this site, he said it was his friends fiesta and, needless to say it put a big smile on my face:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...RWDfiesta1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...RWDfiesta6.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...RWDfiesta2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...RWDfiesta3.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...RWDfiesta4.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...RWDfiesta7.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...RWDfiesta8.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...WDfiesta11.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...WDfiesta10.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...RWDfiesta9.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/06...atDonnopit.jpg

If mine comes out anything like that one I will be a happy man although I will try to do something different with

the headlights as I'm not a huge fan of these smoothed ones really.

So, unfortunately i have lost a load of pictures due to my hard disk giving up, but they were mainly bits of running gear that i had bought, and the progress pics from swapping the roof, but I may be able to find them on a CD or something and i'll upload them at a later date

The running gear i have purchased so far consists of:

Front:
big fat bilstein coilovers
eccentric top mounts
adjustable track control arms
adjustable compression struts
alloy hubs
2wd cosworth 4 pots and discs
rose jointed throughout
put a quick rack in it as well, and heavy duty steering coupling

(i'm lucky as i live close to R.A.C.E so all the escort parts are easily found)

rear:
coilovers
NOTHING ELSE :S
will have watts linkage and 4 link although these will be bought with the axle (chaching)

Transmission:
Cosworth T5
6 paddle clutch
NO AXLE! :S
need to get money together for an axle (they aint cheap) so undecided on either an atlas or this new Hercules from rally design, going to wait and hear peoples opinions.
Need to get a custom prop to suit the axle as and when i get it


Anyway, my mum set out conditions when i bought the car, that it would have to go in a garage, as she didnt want the place turning into a scrap yard (no respect, but ultimately correct) so my first major expense was a concrete sectional garage, never had a garage to work in before and it really is bliss however after doing the roof the place was a fooookin mess with about an inch of dust covering everything, so on monday i decided that enough was enough and it needed to be cleaned out so I put the front end on wheels and rolled it out of the garage for the

first time in two years

These are up to date pictures of the shell:











Its sitting very high at the front as, being a numpty, i set the comp struts/tcas when the sus struts were drooped - so it's forcing the shell upwards :S nevermind, would have been nice to drop it on its arse for the pictures!

You can see it's going to need some bad ass offset on the wheels as these standard fiesta offset 17s are lost in the arches, u can see the fibreglass boot lid as well and the mk4 fiesta dash fits snugly

well, i'm getting pretty tired of typing now! I have all of the components i need for the engine, except a suitable inlet system and a TTV flywheel to mate the zetec and the T5 (which i will order shortly).

Originally i had a 2.0 zetec engine which i stripped and i bought some accralite forged pistons and eagle steel rods, however when i came to buying a turbo i met Austin Ward who explained to me that the pistons werent suitable, the Burton website is pretty missleading and these pistons are too high compression to use with silvertop rods, I think they are meant for a zvh rather than a zetec turbo.

In anycase, I bought Austins T34 and external wastegate along with his block and crank, it made sense to buy the parts that I knew where done right and i knew would produce the kind of power i was looking for (he ran this engine at around 400bhp)

So my next problem was pistons, Austin put me in touch with Ian Howell who ordered me some custom CP pistons from the states to suit my eagle rods, and they're lovely should say a big thank u to Austin as he has helped me a lot with the engine, and a lot of the parts have been bought from him sooo... THANKS!

I then sent the block off to be honed and bought bits and bobs such as bearings and Ians turbo spec exhaust cam, it's probably easiest to just show u the pictures as there is a lot to go through:



the head will go on in standard form (probably) ian told me that with a standard head and his exhaust cam i should

see 350bhp, which in my first turbo car, and my first rwd car, is more than enough - i plan to up the power once i have got used to the car.
The head has been stripped and i've cleaned it and obviously all new valve stem seals etc



CP Pistons, 7.4-1 compression


this is the exhaust off Austins Westfield, it will have to be modified to fit the fiesta, i want it to pop out just behind the wheel, in this pic there is also a pulsar GTI-R plenum i've been playing with as an inlet option, although i've pretty much abandoned the idea now.


burton rwd conversion baffled and gated sump


external wastegate and screamer pipe


again and u can also see the carb inlet that i might use as part of an inlet system


turbo - T34 with .48


again, with a my friends phone there for a size comparison


cosworth throttle body and GTIR bodies, depending on which route i go, will probably use the single body.


HD cam belt, denso iridium plugs, HD valve springs, cosworth breather


piper verniers


bearings


machined block






cams, havent taken the new one out of its packaging incase it corrodes whilst it is standing


random gaskets, not sure about the quality of these so i might look into some differnet ones


multi layer steel head gasket


charge cooler - sposed to be good for 1200bhp so, more than capable of satisfying my cooling needs, fooking huge though!


6 paddle cosworth clutch


10mm quad core leads


t5 box


my engine laid out


doors off the donor (my beloved first car )


Ford performance white, the brightest of the whites

The colour scheme will be white, with blue stripes down the sides - like on the ST fiestas. something along those

lines anyway


random snap of the timing gauge etc


poly carb windows

Well i've got a headache from writing this so i hope u find it interesting

i've got my exams coming up so there wont be any updates soon but after that it should be thick and fast, please feel free to point out if u think i'm making a mistake or offer help or whatever, i know the cars appearance wont be to everyones tastes, pretty garish etc, but i like it!