Sierra Estate Cosworth 2WD, LHD, £3,500 ovno
10-06-2006, 10:12 PM
#1
Testing the future
Thread Starter
Sierra Estate Cosworth 2WD, LHD, £3,500 ovno
Sierra Estate Cosworth 2WD, LHD, £3,500 ovno
I have priced the car very fairly to sell quickly as the parts in the car are worth far in excess of that if broken. Below is the story and full spec. of the car. If you’re seriously interested, please either email me n.sharpin@sanden-europe.com or call me (Nick) on 07920 126603
For sale is my beloved Cossie Estate. This car started life as a German registered 4x4 Ghia with 2.9i engine that I bought when I moved out to Germany in 2001. It was my everyday car that I had in addition to a Sierra Sapphire Cosworth 2WD for a bit of fun and I loved it. Out of all of the Fords I have owned in my (short) life (which is more than 25!) it was easily the most relaxed and comfortable to drive with luxurious features like the tilt & slide sunroof, electric front windows and Air Conditioning.
The Sapphire had previously been owned by a salesman from a Ford dealership, Weidinger, in a quiet little German town by the river called Kahl am Main. In his care, it wanted for nothing being treated to genuine Ford parts whenever they were needed and when I took it on I wanted to do the same.
Over the couple of years that I owned it, I built on the Motorsport theme that the previous owner had started by fitting Koni adjustable coil over dampers for the front suspension with compression struts. I used the car for fun days out at the Hockenheim F1 circuit that opened for tourist drives in the summer months, and a few times a year driving on tourist days at the 13 mile long Nürburgring toll road. To benefit the performance of the car during these days out, the brakes were uprated to have massive 330mm AP Racing discs with 4 piston callipers at the front, which necessitated bigger wheels for clearance. I chose Ford wheels in the RS 7 spoke softline design to keep an original look to the car and the 17” rims fitted with 215 width Goodyear Eagle F1 tyres certainly gave improved grip. All of the front suspension bushes were replaced with uprated polyurethane ones to further aid stability.
I drove the car on the occasional weekend like this for a couple of years until it started to use a lot of water and over-pressurise the cooling system. Suspecting a damaged head gasket, I removed the cylinder head for an inspection. The head gasket was not damaged, but unfortunately the cylinder block had a hairline crack between a cylinder head bolt hole and the water jacket. That meant replacing the block, so another 205 block was sourced and bored out to fit the 0.5mm oversize pistons. As the bottom end was being rebuilt, I took the opportunity to put new bearings on the crankshaft journals and con rod big ends. The cylinder head was ported and the inlet and exhaust manifolds were matched to the head and gaskets. The oil pump was replaced and the engine was rebuilt using Cometic gaskets and a Group A headgasket. A new Grp. A cambelt was added, with a new tensioner pulley to eliminate any risk of premature failure.
To exploit the extra grip and braking performance now available, and knowing that the engine was in a suitable condition to handle extra output, the engine was the next thing to be uprated. The boost pressure was turned up to 1.5 bar, the MAP sensor uprated to a 3 bar item to be able to sense the increased boost pressure, and dark green ‘803’ injectors were added to flow enough fuel for that boost. The ECU was replaced by a later L8 model with a Stage 2 chip from Clint off the Turbosports website (who has mapped a Cosworth YB engined mk1 Escort capable of over 170 mph) to control the fuelling and ignition requirements.
Unfortunately, during one such trip to the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife ‘circuit’ in May 2005, the 320 lb.ft of torque available proved too much for a friend who was driving and he couldn’t regain control of the car. The rear end collided with the Armco on the side of the road, which then swung the front end into the barrier. Fortunately, neither of us were hurt, and the only damage was to the bodywork. The shell was damaged beyond economical repair but was not so badly bent that we couldn’t drive it home and no mechanical damage had been done whatsoever.
Rather than deciding to sell off the powertrain and mechanical parts of the car, I thought about reshelling it. My initial thought was to reshell it into another 4 door Sapphire bodyshell, but then I was looking at my V6 estate and thinking how good it would be to have something more interesting. A performance car that is also extremely practical – so practical that you can inflate an airbed in the rear of it and sleep in it instead of a having to use a tent, transport 2 wardrobes from Ikea, put 2 bicycles on the roof etc.
So I went about combining the Cosworth parts into the Estate shell. The first job was to remove all necessary parts from the Cosworth. That meant the engine on it’s cross-member complete with all front suspension and braking parts, the wiring loom and ECU and all sensors, the complete cooling system, the complete transmission and rear suspension and braking parts, the complete fuel system, exhaust, interior and body kit. That didn’t leave much remaining on the shell and left it in a bit of a sorry state.
I then started on the Estate by removing the V6 engine complete with the 4x4 running gear and all suspension and braking components to be replaced by the Cosworth parts. Part of the removal process also involved removing the A/C condenser to make way for the Cosworth intercooler. The Cosworth engine was not fitted with an A/C compressor, so the pipes were also removed. The Evaporator and TXV remain in place in the bulkhead should a compressor be fitted to the Cosworth engine.
The reshell was very straightforward with all of the front suspension and engine parts bolting directly into the estate shell.
There was a little more difficulty at the rear, as the estate has different shape semi-trailing arms on the rear beam to the Sapphire 4 door. This is because the damper runs through the centre of the spring on the estate to give a flat floor in the boot area. It was necessary to use the Cosworth parts from the Sapphire, as they are uprated over the V6 models to handle the extra power available from the Cosworth engine. To overcome this, I combined the rear beam with 7.5” Limited Slip Differential from the Sapphire with the semi-trailing arms of the estate and then added the brakes and driveshafts from the Sapphire Cosworth. Luckily, the Power Engineering exhaust stainless steel exhaust system from the Sapphire also fitted perfectly to the estate as it bends around the differential and away from the semi-trailing arms where most other aftermarket exhaust would foul.
The Cosworth body kit from the Sapphire also fitted to the estate shell, although I had to source another front bumper as the original was damaged in the accident. I also sourced a Cosworth style rear bumper (different for the estate because of the opening tailgate) that happened to be painted in white like the rest of the body kit.
Inside the car, I transferred over the front Recaro seats from the Cosworth, as they are in excellent condition with no worn bolsters, that also happened to match the existing trim in the estate, including matching the door cards, rear seats and centre console with armrest. I managed to finish the transformation in August 2005 shortly before moving back to England in September 2005.
The first time driving the car after building it put such a smile on my face. It was so much more fun than the Sapphire was due to it’s unusual nature. The feeling when you drive it and you know that people don’t think much of it is superb when you blow them away. I managed to get one last trip to the Nürburgring in it before leaving Germany, and it was a superb experience, overtaking other vehicles that couldn’t quite believe their eyes.
Fast Ford magazine summed it up well when they saw it at a trackday at Bedford Autodrome in February of this year. They wrote “One car that did stick in our heads was a Sierra estate, which despite a set of alloys and a Cosworth body kit, still had the distinct tow-car look about it. However, when it took to the track it became obvious that there was a little more going on under the bonnet than originally thought, especially when it span on the corner in front of us, and launched into a couple of smoky donuts!”
The practical nature of the car allowed me to transport a car full of stuff including a couple of flat pack wardrobes, but during the journey I launched away from a standstill rather too enthusiastically and the extra weight placed too much stress on the differential causing it to shatter a pinion gear a common weak point. Rather than fit another limited slip differential, I decided to get a normal 7.5” differential from a Scorpio and weld it together, with a view to taking the car to some drifting events. I was slightly concerned of the effects on cornering of welding the differential solid, but I needn’t have worried. Apart from making it difficult to make very tight low speed turns where the differential speeds of the inner and outer wheels is greatest, I have only found advantages to it. The grip during cornering is much increased, as is the grip from a standing start, as both wheels will always get power. I honestly wish that I had done this straight away with all of my previous rwd cars.
That’s the story of the car. The reason that I am selling it is that I now need to get on the property ladder. I am looking for £3,500 for it, but am open to offers very close to it. I have priced it very fairly to sell quickly as the parts in the car are worth far in excess of that if broken. Below is the full spec. of the car. If you’re seriously interested, please either email me n.sharpin@sanden-europe.com or call me (Nick) on 07920 126603
Body
1989 Ford Sierra Estate 4x4 shell in mercury grey with A/C
Ford tinted windows
Electrically heated front & rear screens (with integrated radio antenna)
Slide & tilt sunroof
Roof bars
Rolled wheel arches
Genuine Ford Cosworth body kit including front bumper, side skirts and rear bumper
Front fog lights
Sierra Cosworth 4x4 bonnet with vents
Interior
Sierra Cosworth 2WD Recaro front seats in light grey cloth in excellent condition
Sierra Cosworth 2WD dash clocks (rev counter to 7k rpm, speedo to 170 mph)
Front electric windows
Central locking
Lamp failure warning and door open display
Centre console with armrest in matching light grey trim
Aftermarket leather steering wheel
Engine
2.0 16V YB Turbo from Sierra Cosworth 2WD
T3 Turbo boosting to 1.5 bar on Sierra Cosworth 2WD exhaust manifold with individual Exhaust Gas Temperature sensors
Twin 2.5” exhaust system in stainless steel from Power Engineering with single backbox
Controlled by L8 ECU with 3 bar MAP sensor, PF09 TPS and 4 x Bosch ‘803 injectors running Turbosports Stage 2 chip – see Performance section
Sierra Cosworth 2WD wiring loom
Grp. A iginition coil
Rebuilt 10k miles ago into 205 block with 0.5mm overbore with new crank bearings from Cosworth and gaskets from Cometic
0.5mm oversize genuine Sierra Cosworth 4x4 pistons from Mahle
New oil pump
Grp. A headgasket and std. head bolts
Grp. Cambelt with new tensioner pullley
Sierra Cosworth 2WD fuel tank, fuel pump and fuel filter
Sierra Cosworth 4x4 fuel rail with integrated Fuel Pressure Valve
Sierra Cosworth 4x4 inlet plenum cover
Sierra Cosworth 2WD cylinder head with 16 new valves bought from Cosworth
Ported cylinder head and matched inlet and exhaust manifolds
Sierra Cosworth 4x4 intercooler
Sierra Cosworth 2WD airbox with K&N panel filter
Sierra Cosworth 2WD radiator
Transmission
Std Ford Sierra Cosworth 2WD 9.5” clutch
Borg Warner T5 5 speed gearbox with shortened gear lever
Sierra Cosworth 2WD propshaft
7.5” welded differential with 3.64 ratio
Sierra Cosworth 2WD driveshafts
Wheels & Tyres
Ford RS 7 spoke wheels in ‘Softline’ design – 7.5J x 17”
Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3 tyres in 215 45 ZR17 (2 x rear tyres only 1k miles old)
Brakes
Hydraulically assisted Teves ABS system
Front: AP Racing 330 x 32mm discs on gold anodised bells. 4 piston Ford callipers with spacers and custom brackets
Rear: Sierra Cosworth 2WD std. rear single piston callipers with 273mm solid discs
Suspension
Front: Koni coil over McPherson struts with under bonnet adjustable damping and height adjustable spring platforms and polyurethane bushes on the top mounts
Sierra Cosworth 2WD anti-roll bar with polyurethane bushes
Sierra Cosworth 2WD track control arms with polyurethane bushes and eyes for adjustable compression struts
Rear: Koni adjustable dampers on Estate semi-trailing arms mounted to Sierra Cosworth 2WD rear beam holding a 7.5” differential
Steering
Sierra Cosworth 2WD LHD steering rack with PAS (2.6 turns lock to lock)
Sierra Cosworth 2WD tie rods and tie rod ends
Sierra Cosworth 2WD hubs
Performance
Rolling Road measured at 280 bhp @6000 rpm at 1 bar boost, with 320 lb.ft of torque @ 4000 rpm
¼ mile measured at Santa Pod at 14.4s @ 100 mph at 1 bar boost
0 – 60 mph in sub 6s
Capable of sub 9 minute laps of the Nürburgring Nordschleife
Magazine appearances
The car has appeared in the December 2005 edition of Fast Ford magazine and May 2006 editions of both Fast Ford and Performance Ford magazine
I have priced the car very fairly to sell quickly as the parts in the car are worth far in excess of that if broken. Below is the story and full spec. of the car. If you’re seriously interested, please either email me n.sharpin@sanden-europe.com or call me (Nick) on 07920 126603
For sale is my beloved Cossie Estate. This car started life as a German registered 4x4 Ghia with 2.9i engine that I bought when I moved out to Germany in 2001. It was my everyday car that I had in addition to a Sierra Sapphire Cosworth 2WD for a bit of fun and I loved it. Out of all of the Fords I have owned in my (short) life (which is more than 25!) it was easily the most relaxed and comfortable to drive with luxurious features like the tilt & slide sunroof, electric front windows and Air Conditioning.
The Sapphire had previously been owned by a salesman from a Ford dealership, Weidinger, in a quiet little German town by the river called Kahl am Main. In his care, it wanted for nothing being treated to genuine Ford parts whenever they were needed and when I took it on I wanted to do the same.
Over the couple of years that I owned it, I built on the Motorsport theme that the previous owner had started by fitting Koni adjustable coil over dampers for the front suspension with compression struts. I used the car for fun days out at the Hockenheim F1 circuit that opened for tourist drives in the summer months, and a few times a year driving on tourist days at the 13 mile long Nürburgring toll road. To benefit the performance of the car during these days out, the brakes were uprated to have massive 330mm AP Racing discs with 4 piston callipers at the front, which necessitated bigger wheels for clearance. I chose Ford wheels in the RS 7 spoke softline design to keep an original look to the car and the 17” rims fitted with 215 width Goodyear Eagle F1 tyres certainly gave improved grip. All of the front suspension bushes were replaced with uprated polyurethane ones to further aid stability.
I drove the car on the occasional weekend like this for a couple of years until it started to use a lot of water and over-pressurise the cooling system. Suspecting a damaged head gasket, I removed the cylinder head for an inspection. The head gasket was not damaged, but unfortunately the cylinder block had a hairline crack between a cylinder head bolt hole and the water jacket. That meant replacing the block, so another 205 block was sourced and bored out to fit the 0.5mm oversize pistons. As the bottom end was being rebuilt, I took the opportunity to put new bearings on the crankshaft journals and con rod big ends. The cylinder head was ported and the inlet and exhaust manifolds were matched to the head and gaskets. The oil pump was replaced and the engine was rebuilt using Cometic gaskets and a Group A headgasket. A new Grp. A cambelt was added, with a new tensioner pulley to eliminate any risk of premature failure.
To exploit the extra grip and braking performance now available, and knowing that the engine was in a suitable condition to handle extra output, the engine was the next thing to be uprated. The boost pressure was turned up to 1.5 bar, the MAP sensor uprated to a 3 bar item to be able to sense the increased boost pressure, and dark green ‘803’ injectors were added to flow enough fuel for that boost. The ECU was replaced by a later L8 model with a Stage 2 chip from Clint off the Turbosports website (who has mapped a Cosworth YB engined mk1 Escort capable of over 170 mph) to control the fuelling and ignition requirements.
Unfortunately, during one such trip to the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife ‘circuit’ in May 2005, the 320 lb.ft of torque available proved too much for a friend who was driving and he couldn’t regain control of the car. The rear end collided with the Armco on the side of the road, which then swung the front end into the barrier. Fortunately, neither of us were hurt, and the only damage was to the bodywork. The shell was damaged beyond economical repair but was not so badly bent that we couldn’t drive it home and no mechanical damage had been done whatsoever.
Rather than deciding to sell off the powertrain and mechanical parts of the car, I thought about reshelling it. My initial thought was to reshell it into another 4 door Sapphire bodyshell, but then I was looking at my V6 estate and thinking how good it would be to have something more interesting. A performance car that is also extremely practical – so practical that you can inflate an airbed in the rear of it and sleep in it instead of a having to use a tent, transport 2 wardrobes from Ikea, put 2 bicycles on the roof etc.
So I went about combining the Cosworth parts into the Estate shell. The first job was to remove all necessary parts from the Cosworth. That meant the engine on it’s cross-member complete with all front suspension and braking parts, the wiring loom and ECU and all sensors, the complete cooling system, the complete transmission and rear suspension and braking parts, the complete fuel system, exhaust, interior and body kit. That didn’t leave much remaining on the shell and left it in a bit of a sorry state.
I then started on the Estate by removing the V6 engine complete with the 4x4 running gear and all suspension and braking components to be replaced by the Cosworth parts. Part of the removal process also involved removing the A/C condenser to make way for the Cosworth intercooler. The Cosworth engine was not fitted with an A/C compressor, so the pipes were also removed. The Evaporator and TXV remain in place in the bulkhead should a compressor be fitted to the Cosworth engine.
The reshell was very straightforward with all of the front suspension and engine parts bolting directly into the estate shell.
There was a little more difficulty at the rear, as the estate has different shape semi-trailing arms on the rear beam to the Sapphire 4 door. This is because the damper runs through the centre of the spring on the estate to give a flat floor in the boot area. It was necessary to use the Cosworth parts from the Sapphire, as they are uprated over the V6 models to handle the extra power available from the Cosworth engine. To overcome this, I combined the rear beam with 7.5” Limited Slip Differential from the Sapphire with the semi-trailing arms of the estate and then added the brakes and driveshafts from the Sapphire Cosworth. Luckily, the Power Engineering exhaust stainless steel exhaust system from the Sapphire also fitted perfectly to the estate as it bends around the differential and away from the semi-trailing arms where most other aftermarket exhaust would foul.
The Cosworth body kit from the Sapphire also fitted to the estate shell, although I had to source another front bumper as the original was damaged in the accident. I also sourced a Cosworth style rear bumper (different for the estate because of the opening tailgate) that happened to be painted in white like the rest of the body kit.
Inside the car, I transferred over the front Recaro seats from the Cosworth, as they are in excellent condition with no worn bolsters, that also happened to match the existing trim in the estate, including matching the door cards, rear seats and centre console with armrest. I managed to finish the transformation in August 2005 shortly before moving back to England in September 2005.
The first time driving the car after building it put such a smile on my face. It was so much more fun than the Sapphire was due to it’s unusual nature. The feeling when you drive it and you know that people don’t think much of it is superb when you blow them away. I managed to get one last trip to the Nürburgring in it before leaving Germany, and it was a superb experience, overtaking other vehicles that couldn’t quite believe their eyes.
Fast Ford magazine summed it up well when they saw it at a trackday at Bedford Autodrome in February of this year. They wrote “One car that did stick in our heads was a Sierra estate, which despite a set of alloys and a Cosworth body kit, still had the distinct tow-car look about it. However, when it took to the track it became obvious that there was a little more going on under the bonnet than originally thought, especially when it span on the corner in front of us, and launched into a couple of smoky donuts!”
The practical nature of the car allowed me to transport a car full of stuff including a couple of flat pack wardrobes, but during the journey I launched away from a standstill rather too enthusiastically and the extra weight placed too much stress on the differential causing it to shatter a pinion gear a common weak point. Rather than fit another limited slip differential, I decided to get a normal 7.5” differential from a Scorpio and weld it together, with a view to taking the car to some drifting events. I was slightly concerned of the effects on cornering of welding the differential solid, but I needn’t have worried. Apart from making it difficult to make very tight low speed turns where the differential speeds of the inner and outer wheels is greatest, I have only found advantages to it. The grip during cornering is much increased, as is the grip from a standing start, as both wheels will always get power. I honestly wish that I had done this straight away with all of my previous rwd cars.
That’s the story of the car. The reason that I am selling it is that I now need to get on the property ladder. I am looking for £3,500 for it, but am open to offers very close to it. I have priced it very fairly to sell quickly as the parts in the car are worth far in excess of that if broken. Below is the full spec. of the car. If you’re seriously interested, please either email me n.sharpin@sanden-europe.com or call me (Nick) on 07920 126603
Body
1989 Ford Sierra Estate 4x4 shell in mercury grey with A/C
Ford tinted windows
Electrically heated front & rear screens (with integrated radio antenna)
Slide & tilt sunroof
Roof bars
Rolled wheel arches
Genuine Ford Cosworth body kit including front bumper, side skirts and rear bumper
Front fog lights
Sierra Cosworth 4x4 bonnet with vents
Interior
Sierra Cosworth 2WD Recaro front seats in light grey cloth in excellent condition
Sierra Cosworth 2WD dash clocks (rev counter to 7k rpm, speedo to 170 mph)
Front electric windows
Central locking
Lamp failure warning and door open display
Centre console with armrest in matching light grey trim
Aftermarket leather steering wheel
Engine
2.0 16V YB Turbo from Sierra Cosworth 2WD
T3 Turbo boosting to 1.5 bar on Sierra Cosworth 2WD exhaust manifold with individual Exhaust Gas Temperature sensors
Twin 2.5” exhaust system in stainless steel from Power Engineering with single backbox
Controlled by L8 ECU with 3 bar MAP sensor, PF09 TPS and 4 x Bosch ‘803 injectors running Turbosports Stage 2 chip – see Performance section
Sierra Cosworth 2WD wiring loom
Grp. A iginition coil
Rebuilt 10k miles ago into 205 block with 0.5mm overbore with new crank bearings from Cosworth and gaskets from Cometic
0.5mm oversize genuine Sierra Cosworth 4x4 pistons from Mahle
New oil pump
Grp. A headgasket and std. head bolts
Grp. Cambelt with new tensioner pullley
Sierra Cosworth 2WD fuel tank, fuel pump and fuel filter
Sierra Cosworth 4x4 fuel rail with integrated Fuel Pressure Valve
Sierra Cosworth 4x4 inlet plenum cover
Sierra Cosworth 2WD cylinder head with 16 new valves bought from Cosworth
Ported cylinder head and matched inlet and exhaust manifolds
Sierra Cosworth 4x4 intercooler
Sierra Cosworth 2WD airbox with K&N panel filter
Sierra Cosworth 2WD radiator
Transmission
Std Ford Sierra Cosworth 2WD 9.5” clutch
Borg Warner T5 5 speed gearbox with shortened gear lever
Sierra Cosworth 2WD propshaft
7.5” welded differential with 3.64 ratio
Sierra Cosworth 2WD driveshafts
Wheels & Tyres
Ford RS 7 spoke wheels in ‘Softline’ design – 7.5J x 17”
Goodyear Eagle F1 GS-D3 tyres in 215 45 ZR17 (2 x rear tyres only 1k miles old)
Brakes
Hydraulically assisted Teves ABS system
Front: AP Racing 330 x 32mm discs on gold anodised bells. 4 piston Ford callipers with spacers and custom brackets
Rear: Sierra Cosworth 2WD std. rear single piston callipers with 273mm solid discs
Suspension
Front: Koni coil over McPherson struts with under bonnet adjustable damping and height adjustable spring platforms and polyurethane bushes on the top mounts
Sierra Cosworth 2WD anti-roll bar with polyurethane bushes
Sierra Cosworth 2WD track control arms with polyurethane bushes and eyes for adjustable compression struts
Rear: Koni adjustable dampers on Estate semi-trailing arms mounted to Sierra Cosworth 2WD rear beam holding a 7.5” differential
Steering
Sierra Cosworth 2WD LHD steering rack with PAS (2.6 turns lock to lock)
Sierra Cosworth 2WD tie rods and tie rod ends
Sierra Cosworth 2WD hubs
Performance
Rolling Road measured at 280 bhp @6000 rpm at 1 bar boost, with 320 lb.ft of torque @ 4000 rpm
¼ mile measured at Santa Pod at 14.4s @ 100 mph at 1 bar boost
0 – 60 mph in sub 6s
Capable of sub 9 minute laps of the Nürburgring Nordschleife
Magazine appearances
The car has appeared in the December 2005 edition of Fast Ford magazine and May 2006 editions of both Fast Ford and Performance Ford magazine
11-06-2006, 07:29 PM
#3
Testing the future
Thread Starter
thanks matt. 
it's going on ebay as well, and if it hasn't sold for a good price by the end of the month I will break it. it's worth more that way anyway, sadly
it's going on ebay as well, and if it hasn't sold for a good price by the end of the month I will break it. it's worth more that way anyway, sadly
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