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Hello to all from across the pond! My name is Jereme (or Jeremy if you prefer) and what I have is a 1988 Merkur XR4Ti. For those unfamiliar, it is essentially a North American delivered Ford Sierra XR4i with a turbocharged Pinto engine in lieu of the 2.8l V6, as it didn't meet US emissions regulations of the time. A total of about 45,000 were delivered from 1985 to 1989 before the Merkur brand was discontinued due to poor sales and other factors. As for the name change, GM owns the rights to the name Sierra for use on it's GMC pickup trucks, so Ford had to drop that nameplate.
I acquired this car about two years ago from the second owner on a trade for my SVT Focus (basically an ST170 stripped of nicer options) that I had owned. What he was given was a running, driving, fun to drive car. What I was given in return was an non-drivng, barely running mess with what seemed like a lot of potential. My understanding of the history of the car came from other members of the Merkur community, and that the guy was brutally rough on the car and didn't want to take the advice of people who knew the car more than he did. By his own admission, he was trying to build a Cosworth clone. Further Facebook sleuthing led me to believe that the last thing he tried to do was swap in a PiMP (a literal plug-and-play Megasquirt ECU) and couldn't figure it out, so he more or less gave up on the car. That's where I came in.
Ultimately, this will be a restomod project. I want it to look as period correct as possible with the modifications I have made and will make in the future, but with a few modern touches for functionality. I'm not looking to continue the previous owner's "Cosworth clone" line of thinking. I do want a few Cosworth parts because I like the way they look, but I have no desire to clone a Cosworth because I would never be satisfied with knowing it isn't the real thing. I live near a lot of nice, twisty roads and like to do autocross events with the local car club, so it'll be set up for more spirited driving than what a stock XR4Ti could handle. As well, I'd like to drive the car more frequently than just for play, so I will modernize and modify several things for greater reliability and easier serviceability without being so obvious. I'm decent with a wrench and am doing as much of the work that I can by myself. I'm no professional mechanic, but I like to learn as I go, and this has really been a great project to learn with. With all that said, here are some pictures from the project so far.
The night I brought it home, it was in sad shape. It ran poorly and looked disgusting from sitting for three years prior to this with minimal attention. I set to work cleaning out trash and taking care of some small cosmetic issues inside the car before turning in for the evening. That weekend I started working on fixing mechanical issues, starting with the basics. I thought to myself "maybe I'll get lucky and it will only need some minor maintenance" and decided to start with the basics.
When I removed the fuel filter, I emptied the contents into a drain pan and found a good bit of rust and other crap, so draining and flushing the tank was more or less my next big to-do. It turned out that the car shared that sentiment and decided to empty it's fuel tank out while I was at work one night.
It was a Friday night before an autocross that I was so excited to try to attend that my fuel tank ruptured and left it's contents in the parking lot. Thankfully, my neighbor is a police officer and happened to be home at the time. He contacted the local fire department and had them bring absorbent material to clean up the spill and contain what was still leaking out. I got home at 10:30 PM to see the mess I had missed and began immediately trying to contain the rest of the mess. That meant dropping the tank and emptying anything that hadn't leaked out into a container, then cleaning up the absorbent material from the parking lot.
After patching the tank up and dealing with a few other mechanical issues, the car was finally somewhat driveable. I gave the RS wing a new coat of paint, stuck it back on the car, and took it for a spin. It still didn't like boost, the driveline had a horrible vibration, the brakes were dodgy, and it didn't seem to be charging the battery like it should've, but it worked.
Addressing the dodgy brakes, the rear drum brakes were pretty much destroyed. I tried to rebuild them to see if I could get some pedal feel back but had no luck. Thankfully, a guy named Tim Spencer had designed a bracket to allow XR owners to adapt Mk3 Focus rear calipers and Mk1 SVT Focus rotors to the car, so I bought the kit and proceeded to swap the rear brakes to discs. Unfortunately, this setup didn't clear the stock 15" wheels in the rear. That meant I was getting my new wheels a little ahead of schedule.
The wheels I went with are replicas of the Speedline wheels that were used on the Saleen SC Mustang. They're a staggered 17x8" in front and 17x9" in the rear. These were the only wheels I could find that I liked and looked relatively period correct while being available in those specific sizes for a 4x108 wheel hub. I gained about 50mm in tire diameter and significantly more width, which created clearance issues with the exhaust that the previous owner put on. It also put a lot of emphasis on how terrible the suspension setup was. Two more issues to address.
Suspension issues were remedied first. I ordered a set of GAZ Cosworth coilover dampers for the front and XR4 dampers and a set of springs for the rear. The difference is astonishing. Not only did the car make power, but it could also brake and corner with gusto!
Now to address the exhaust. I had gotten a lot of...uhm... negative feedback on the way it sounded. I wasn't too fond of how it sounded either, and there were clearance issues with the new wheels as well, which is why one pipe was missing when I arrived at the muffler shop. The previous owner went with a 3" in, dual 3" out to the very mullet-y 4" slash cut exhaust tips. To tone down the angry bald eagle look, I decided on a Magnaflow 3" in, 3" offset single outlet to a 3" straight cut, rolled end tip. Below is the result.
Much better. It's a little quieter, but still makes some noise. What I like most is that it's a much deeper and smoother sound than before. Now that all of that has been sorted, it's time to address something the previous owner couldn't: Engine management.
Jeff Esteban, a friend of mine that I met through the Merkur community (who also happens to be my tuner) told me he had a PiMP for sale with all the peripherals to make it work, so I bought it before I missed my chance. In between work and college classes, I got the charge air temp sensor, boost control solenoid, fuel injectors, and a few other upgrades installed and rewired the ECU connector to match the pinning on the ECU. Once that was installed, we got to work setting base timing and configuring the types of sensors we were using in TunerStudio to get the car ready for startup. Officially, we have succeeded where the previous owner had failed. The car is now running a Megasquirt ECU and no longer has the typical Ford EEC-IV tip when it switches fueling tables.
Of course there are still issues to address. My last outing with a couple of friends left me on the side of the road while my car was cooling down due to a modified cooling system that simply isn't up to the task of prolonged hard driving up winding mountain roads, and ultimately on a tow truck with a stuck clutch cable when the pedal box failed due to a heavy clutch and a missing pivot shaft clip. The latter has been remedied, but I'm holding off on addressing the cooling system issues for now. It's fine for around town or trips back and forth to work, but my Subaru takes priority right now as I work on building an engine for that.
There's plenty of cosmetic work to do as well, but my main focus is to get it to work as it should before I worry about how it looks. With the ongoing Covid mess as well, I've been hesitant to throw more money at any of my vehicles in the event that my home state locks down. We've been fortunate to remain somewhat business as usual, mask orders and other limitations notwithstanding, but I don't want to end up in a bad financial state because I wanted to build an autocross car, so progress moving forward is going to be somewhat slow until we can all go outside again without restriction.
Nice to see a Sierra on the other side of the ocean! I think the Cosworth body kit (skirts, bumpers and grill) improve the look, but imo the Cosworth rear wing doesn't suit the extra window of the XR4(t)i body shell. It makes the rear a bit too 'busy' for me, so I prefer the bi-plane wing of the XR4i in that case. Nice to see all the upgrades you are doing. It must be a lot more difficult getting all the improved parts over there. Rear disc brakes would have been an easy upgrade if you were in Europe.
I think I saw a picture of your car (the over heating one) on facebook a while ago. I have been looking for a merkur rolling shell on and off for a while now.
American Sierra: Restomodding a Merkur XR4Ti
