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Project: Fiesta
Zetec S
Source suitable car
A 2001 Fiesta Zetec S
was acquired from a local salvage dealer via eBay for the reasonable
sum of £1200. It has the stronger series 2 Zetec SE engine
with only 60k miles, no sunroof, no air con and is in excellent
condition except for the crash damage!
We shall keep the car
standard for the time being which should allow us to race it in
Class E of the Ford Saloons hopefully.
Fix Faults
The crash damage needed
to be sorted out first. Although the engine runs, there is no
coolant in the system due to the bent radiator and as there is no
history with the car there are some question marks.
- Removed the
broken bumper, grille and lights.
- Pulled out the
top of the front panel and bottom radiator support to allow
removal of fan and radiator. Fortunately there does not
seen to be any damage to the engine from the crash impact.
- Removed the
crossmember from the backing plate after drilling out all the
spot welds.
- Tried pulling
the chassis leg and backing plate back into shape but no joy.
- Ordered new
lights and fan.
- Ordered new
grille, bumper and radiator.
- Removed damaged
air box.
- Changed oil and
spark plugs - much easier to do with no bumper and radiator in
place!
- Bought slightly
used K&N induction kit via eBay.
- Fitted radiator
and filled with coolant - engine now operational.
- Hired trailer
and took car to a bodyshop on Canvey to have the metal work
properly straightened and painted. New bonnet ordered to
be fitted at the same time.
- Ordered Gearknob.
- Ordered steering
wheel and boss kit.
- Car now back at
base and looking good!
- Fitted assorted
bits.
- Now
concentrating on getting the car road legal so am worrying about
the airbag light on the dashboard - will it pass an MOT like
this?
- MOT inspector
likes the car and it passed first time with only a slight tweek
to the headlight beam.
- Taxed and
insured - now can test properly!
Test
All appears well
except for a slow puncture in the front nearside tyre. The
car is fun to drive and engine is perfect. Have now put
about 2000 miles on the car.
The airbag light
is still annoying. Have tried removing SRS fuses and
attempting to remove the bulb - but it's an LED. May have
to try the Homer Simpson technique of using some tape over it.
We may have joy
by finding the SRS control unit which lives somewhere behind the
dash but is nowhere where the manual says it is - will have to
wait until the dash comes out during preparation then.
Also annoying is
that all 4 wheels have completely different tyres on them -
makes for interesting handling!
We will be
keeping the car on the road while we are race preparing it as
it's useful as a runabout.
Prepare
We are now
planning the preparation and what toys to buy for the job.
Will need:
- FRP Rear
handling kit. Done.
- Coilover
suspension units with suitable springs. Done.
- Engine bay
tidy up. Done.
- Strip and
reduce weight. Done.
- Roll Cage.
Done.
- Seat.
Done.
- Harness. Done.
- Fire
Extinguisher. Done.
- Electric cut
off switch. Done.
- Timing
transponder. Done.
- Proper
tyres. Done.
- Race brake
pads and disks. Done.
FRP Rear
handling kit:
Although easy to fit
in theory, it required using various combinations of sockets and
extensions to remove the 4 bolts from the hub as 2 of the bolts were
partially obscured by the damper which also made removing the ABS
sensor a pain. Once the drum was removed it was also necessary
to drill out the 2 rivets holding the hub backplate onto the rear
beam. Now came the tricky part of threading through the new
longer bolts through the beam, spacer, backplate and drum while
keeping everything lined up.
Once fitted though
there was a noticeable reduction in understeer and a more solid feel
to the rear.
Coilover
suspension units with suitable springs:
Have now
ordered Gaz Coilover kit with 8" 300lb springs at the front
and 9" 400lb springs for the rear. Unfortunately they
will take about 4 weeks to arrive as they are custom built
to order.
Suspension now
arrived - far quicker than expected! Now need a whole weekend
to fit, adjust and test.
After a full weekend
the units have now been fitted starting with the easier rear end.
The old units were removed with just 2 nuts holding each one on.
The top rubber donut was removed to be reused with the new units
with the aid of spring compressors. The ride height was set at
16cm and after some testing the dampers set at 10 out of the 24point
bump/rebound settings.
The fronts were
somewhat more difficult with the mounting point for the antiroll bar
and brake pipe to contend with - however some serious bashing was
required to knock the old damper out of the hub. The ride
height was set at the lowest possible which results in 12cm of road
clearance. Dampers were set at 10 as per the rears.
Strip & reduce
weight:
Stripping out is the
easiest but most time consuming job to do properly. So far we
have removed:
- 14kg rear seats
- 34kg front seats
- 6kg stuck on
sound deadening
- 2kg sound &
airbag/pretensioner wiring
- 1kg nuts & bolts
- 10kg heater &
engine bay trim
- 13kg carpeting &
underlay
- 1.5kg headlining
- 19kg seatbelts & trim bits
- 4kg surplus
suspension parts
- 2kg dashboard
- 3kg rear wiper
and motor
- 16.5kg spare
wheel & jack
- Side trim,
bumper, rear wheelarch liners
Total so far:
129.5kg!
Engine bay tidy
up:
The removal of the
heater unit has left the heater control valve and the coolant hoses
floating around the back of the engine bay looking rather messy and
needs to be replaced which will also save a little bit of weight.
Also the 'evaporative
emissions system' has been removed. This is a system to
recycle petrol fumes from the tank into the engine inlet via a
carbon canister and hoses and valves. All this does is weigh,
impacts on engine performance, and is unnecessary baggage on the
race track - so must go! Fortunately it's quite a simple
unbolt and unplug job at both ends of the car but did upset the ECU
which lit up the Check Engine light. A reset of the ECU seems
to have cured the light in the end.
Preparation for
rollcage and seat:
The cage was starting
to rust already, so have given it a quick coat of hammerite to tidy
it up a bit. Unfortunately the front legs of the cage fit very
closely to the A pillar of the Fiesta which means some modification
to the dashboard is required. This was compounded by the metal
beam and support mounts that run through the dash being in exactly
the wrong place, and so after taking the dash in and out several
times we've now chopped off about 3 inches from both ends of the
dash. The support bar also has been chopped but the dash is
still supported in the middle and in 3 locations under the
windscreen.
The paint has now
been ground away from the reinforcement plate positions to allow for
welding and the door bars cut to length with the mounting positions
marked on the cage legs which will need the fresh paint removed for
welding up. It looks likely that the door cards will not need
modifying to allow for the door bars as we've positioned the bars to
run in front of the recess in the door card above the door handle.
Having seen some
other Fiesta's with the same OMP cage we've noticed a flaw in the
kit we received and now installed. Essentially the 'bolt in'
feature of the foot mountings are upside down with the nut that the
foot of the cage is bolted to being welded to the top of the
reinforcement plate rather than underneath which other folk have
received.
Now that doubt's of
the mounting's safety have arisen with an impact possibly breaking
the nut's weld and the cage foot then being free to deform into the
car which is bad.
We've decided to
enhance the safety margin by bolting completely through the car
floor with higher tension bolts and with a sandwich of cage
foot/welded nut/reinforcement plate/car floorpan/big washers.
Hopefully the scruitineers will approve!
Develop
Things to
do...
- Replace tow
points with strap version - done.
- Remove side
strips - done.
- Move video
camera mount - done.
- Remove engine
bay sound deadening
- Remove heat
shield from exhaust
- Source & install
exhaust
- Source & install
strut braces
- Source & install
LSD
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