Despite being a member since the start of Pf i've never posted up pics of my car. Mainly because its always in bits but i wanted to wait until it was as near finished as possible before i did.

Anyway, I bought my RST in November 2002 which at the time was almost standard bar a Janspeed exhaust, filter and dump valve pushing out a respectable 164bhp @ 14 psi

And here she is 2 weeks after I bought here from Dartford:





Let the mods begin..............

Being a student at the time i couldn't afford to do much. Smoked rears and clear front indicators, chrome lettering and a good polish made a hell of a difference though


First set of SFS hoses go on the car and the chrome provided by a local company that have now sadly gone belly up.


Now the fun really begins...... Off to RSX for a nice reliable 200bhp conversion (that didn't last long :P)



1.6 Engine being stripped down. Not bad nick for a 100k miles






Hmm some work to be done here....



So whilst Steve at RSX was working on the engine I had the shell trailered back to my house.



So i could then put my hand to cleaning up the engine bay ready for its nice new engine. Not much changed here from standard apart from some extra wiring loom protection and repositioning. I was a bit worried about removing all the dirt and finding lumps of rust. But as you can see, it was in top condition!

 

Oooooo those were the days........

Car was gonna be a nice reliable low comp 1600cc with stg1 head and stg 1 turbo......



Then a 1900cc block was bought, stg 3 head, Bernie gearbox, stg 3 turbo.....1600cc and nice reliable power was the plan and that lasted about a week before the RS bug got hold of you and the rest is history ...... Shame RSX closed and I couldn't carry on the dream with you

 

You muttered some fatel words at the time though Steve... "if i was doing it i would.... bla bla" and that was it, what ever u said it had to be done lol I'm so glad we did though.

Collection of the parts to be chromed. This took months to sort out due to 2 companys going bust and a very unhelpfull company in amersham! Dont go there!

 

Where's the up to date pix m8 ??

 

Nice Dan!!! Can't really do anymore mate shes a beaut!

 

KSA-Cossie - They will be up soon dont worry

Rob - Thanks mate, only things left at the mo are to fit the oil cooler & rear disks. And fix everything else that goes wrong

2WD disks combined with 4x4 cossie calipers for the fronts


Nice shiney cam cover from my parents one xmas


First batch of many, many shiney bits from Lee @ Fusion! thanks mate

 

Nice story so far Keep the pics coming, I've seen your car in the flesh @ the shows, lovely example

 

 

The head was sent off to karl @ NMS for stage 1 port and polish and the gearbox to Bernie for a Stage 1 rebuild
Then there was a change of plan
I bought this 1905cc american tall block for a very good price:



Karl was then asked to change the head to suit a 1905cc block rather than the original 1600cc so a Stage 3 big valve head was now on order

A few weeks later the engine was coming together. Piper Cam and vernier timing pulley all in place, just needed a turbo now.......






I also decided it was time to get rid of those horid Poloris wheels so I purchased some Boss 17inch alloys, which i think suit the car very well.




The stage 1 turbo idea was scrapped and a suitable stage 3 .48 housing item was ordered. The potential of the engine was growing with every part ordered and way behond what we had origanly planned lol! Engine finished and ready to go back into the car.






Now this is the point where i say "and it fired up first time". Oh no, not my car! Steve spent almost 2 weeks trying to get the friggin thing to start. Turned out that Piper had sent us the wrong cam for the car and the valves where opening and closing at the wrong times, giving the car little or no compression. Anyway, new cam arrived and first turn of the key she fired up. But it was the longest 2 weeks of my life, I think steve lost some hair that week too! (if thats possible? :P)

Car finaly came home in March 2004 and for most of the year stayed as it left RSX.
The next addition was an Evo 4 GRS Intercooler and soon after a pace rad as the water temps went skywards!







Lots of money spent but well worth it. Here are some pics of the car in its finished state for 04. Including a rolling road print out of 276bhp & 276 lb/ft @ fly





Rebuild No. 2 coming soon.........

 

I had a full head of hair when it all started....... now look at me lol....

PS it was 2 days of checking everything over before I came to the conclusion it was a wrongly profiled cam at fault...... felt like 2 weeks tho

 

Deffo the longest 2 days of my life then Worth it in the end though

 

thats well sexy nice one

 

During the 2004 show season I had been collecting parts for an engine management change to Cosworth Level 8. I managed to pick up quite a few bargins thanks mainly again to Steves eagle eye such as greens, ECU and 3 BAR map sensor. The rest came from the local scrappy.
Anyway, once i had collected all the parts the car was dropped off to Gary Chamberlin in October 04 to work his magic and install it all for me (thanks for the pics mate!)

Brand new Throttle body and assorted parts:



Quick release fuel line and fitting:



Cam and lower pulley bits and bobs:



Then the hard graft began. Stripping my S2 loom and combining a 2WD cossie loom. You need brains for this job lol.



No more MFI unit



Quick releasing KA Fuel Filter and bracket:



3 Bar map sensor and ignition amplifier neatly tucked away behind the air box:



CPS in position:



Pulley Sensor off a 1800 cvh seirra



Loom wiring through bulk head and into ECU in glove back cossie style



Efi > Mfi adaptor plate from Grove Grange - A work of art might i add



Efi inlet starting to come together:



Hmmmm green injectors



Throttle body added to the Efi inlet manifold:



Finished............ i wish



We had a bit of a mare with the ECU. Despite sending it to karl for a once over he could find nothing wrong and no matter what we tried it just wouldn't run. So having testing an L6 which ran fine despite the Pf09 TPS we decided to go with that! A few mods to the wiring loom and it was ready to me live mapped by karl, well almost............

 

Blimey dont seem a year ago it was over at Gadgets

 

Looks cool as fook in them pix m8.

 

I remember doing a few jobs on that thing at RSX mainly sweeping up Steve's hair!!!

 

Awesome

 

nice work goin on here

 

Some serious work gone into it such a short space of time, and 276bhp isn't too shy either on standard management

 

Thanks guys

I took the car to Karl for a setup prior to the rolling road and having shown me how skinny the rods on my engine where from standard and then telling me that we were way beyond the limit of the rods he convinced me to have some steel items fitted. These of course being for a 1905cc engine had to be custom made by Farndom to Karls spec..... not a bad job even if i do say myself











Fitting them to the pistons was a right pain the in arse (Karl will tell u why) and this delayed the second rebuild of the engine. They finally made it into the engine at the end of Jan 05

 

I've always liked this car and kept an eye on what mods you have done since you have had it

Looking forward to the rest of the story Dan

 

another cool car in the making those wheels are fantastic on the car

 

I had trouble with my farndon rods too. The small end was smaller than they stated so we had to carefully hone them out to get the pins to go through

 

My Farndon rods were spot on however!

 

haven't seen this topic before, but loved to read it!!!
Very nice car m8

 

Love it Dan

 

Thanks guys, more pics up soon

I'm not 100% sure of the terminology but basicly the way my pistons fix to the rods ment karl had to make up a jig to force the pistons apart to release the old rods, and reverse the process to fit the steel items! A right pain

 

fair play. bloody good on std management aswell tho

 

Over Christmas i started sorting out parts ready for it to go on track. The main thing being the roll cage. I orderd the cage 7 days before xmas and it arrived 3 days later. Hows that for service!!



I also decided to try and mod the bumper to allow as a bit more air to pass over the intercooler/rad. Removing the lower "strut" makes quite a difference and doesn't ruin the look of the bumper.



The car was only on the road for about 2 weeks before the beds rsoc trackday at bedford so it was a bit of a rush to get everything done. I decided that i wanted to try and keep things looking fairly stelf like on the inside and so it was carpeted and boarded throughout the rear. Fusion rear strut brace, fire extingisher and harnesses finish it off.





Some last minute welding under the fuse box ment the car was sat in a garage the week before the beds track day, only to be finished the day before. I was up till 9pm sorting last minute bits and bobs like oil temp and water temp gauges.
Then 7 laps into the day, disaster! I hit a fooking rabbit on the back straight doing about 120mph. Needless to say my freshly painted bumper was now in a million peices...... and so was the rabbit
Then the very next lap, my turbo dies. No smoke, no noise, just no boost. I thought a hose had come lose or somthing, but closer inspection of the turbo showed it was truely fooked.


Thanks Performance Ford for capturing the worse day of my RS's life lol



Oh well, good excuse to go and buy one of these....... T34




Once fitted, the car seemed to be fine. and I thought it was finally finished. It was puffing a fair bit of oil but I thought this was just old stuff left behind when the last turbo died........... oh how wrong I was

Anyway, here she is June 05













Next update is not for the faint harted!!

 

Bring it on m8!

 

great job done to it , looks the bizz. i'd say there's a nice kick out of it.

 

thats a nice car dan. love it ,

 

lovely

 

Come on Dan give us some more

 

Patience my son

 

good read mate, v. interesting!

 

thats one tricky lookin heatshield any closer pics looks like its been made to divert the heat away from the charge carrier i could do with one of them mine gets stupid hot

 

Thanks Ballin

I designed it myself Lee@fusion fabrication kindly made it for me. The idea was to allow heat to escape from the turbo/manifold but provide some protection for the right side of the engine bay. It works quite well Here are some pics for you:

 

Looking good Dan