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Follow the build of one of the most extreme Ford Focus RS's

Suspension! Struggled with this one, Propper Billys/Reigers coming in at silly money (like the whole budget of my rally ...
18/08/2026

Suspension!

Struggled with this one, Propper Billys/Reigers coming in at silly money (like the whole budget of my rally project silly!!) I had to be realistic, but also know the importance of decent suspension! So wasnt going to be junk going on it!

Call to long time Strathdee madness supporter Paul at Part-box.com and after a bit of advice, specs of said fiesta and planned usage, set of custom GAZ Gold coilovers were specced. Drop will be minimum, with keeping travel/droop in mind.

Took a bit of time for them to get made but they were worth the wait! The fronts will go on when the front end refresh takes place, but i couldnt help myself but get the backs installed and delighted with how they look! Cant wait to play about with the damping!

Just call me Mario! With the underside drying, it was a good time to start plumbing the inside.Fuel lines ran in -6 brai...
16/08/2026

Just call me Mario!

With the underside drying, it was a good time to start plumbing the inside.
Fuel lines ran in -6 braided PTFE hose, brake lines done in copper pipe, Sounds easy right?!
A sucker for detail, and having near zero in brake line making bar the odd repair part i had to get my thinking cap on.
ABS-Bypass was needed, but after a bit of digging its not a simple case of chucking it in the bin. Due to being tied into the cars CANBUS system, you need to keep it in the loop. So all lines removed from it but leave it plugged in was the answer to that.
Issue is with the ABS "pump" removed, you also loose your brake bias, hence why pulling the fuse doesn't have the best results... Having done some research combined with my previous hot hatch knowledge, i knew i was going to have to fit a brake bias valve.
Reading up, since you need to lower the rear bias so much, people fit two "cheap" bias valves to lower the rear brake pressure, or apparently 1 high quality bias valve can have the same effect.
For neatness and 2 less leak points, i had to splash the cash and bought a AP Racing bias valve - Not a cheap day out but brakes is something iv always though you should never cheap out on....

So with the ABS bypassed it was onto sifting through all the different fittings i was going to need to hook it all up, M10, 3/8's, 7/16's and M12, feel like iv got them all!
Then the horrible job of bending the pipe so it looks likes its semi supposed to be there! Bit of planning and what felt like a million pipe clamps later lines were all ran!

Onto the fuel lines next, The fiesta runs a "returnless" system, but also has a v***r breather, So a few adapters letting me plumb into the stock hardware off the pump/fuelrail/breather i had the simple task of running 2 lines with my newly designed hose clamps keeping it all neat and tidy!

Now the fun part of trying the bleed the brakes šŸ¤£

With the temperature still in my favour it would be a waste not to get cracking with the underside! Something i said i w...
14/08/2026

With the temperature still in my favour it would be a waste not to get cracking with the underside!

Something i said i was never doing again after doing the focus but here we are!

So the underside was typical 16 year old ford, crusty, very crusty, Its had some repairs to the sills at some point in the normal areas but much to my surprise it was actually very solid, and the sill lips havnt been destroyed and flattened over!

This will be a 2 part job, doing the rear up to the front subframe first, and then doing the front subframe "outer sills part" when the engine comes out. No point in making it hard for myself, or a mess of the engine with overspray!

So nearly everything on the back will be binned, bar the fuel tank.
Everything removed it was onto the job of buffing all the underside to remove the loose rust!

Then all rust areas were treated with 2 coats of Dinitrol RC900 rust converter, very nice product that you spray on and not brush on (the bilt hamber stuff i last used destroyed my garage floor paint :( )
Then whole lot sprayed with Upol Gravitex. Looking back it might of been worth painting a finish ontop of that, but how that would last im not sure with rallying. Feel like underside painting is something you will do more than once on a rally car! haha!

With that all drying, it was time to make a kevlar tank gaurd. Could i of bought one, yes, but for the same money i was able to make one, and i now have a vaccum pump for more carbon kevlar making things! So a bit of a ruff meathod of making it, i just wrapped the tank in clingfilm as tape wouldnt stick to it at all! Then used tape to soften the edges and "mould" the strap areas to stop the kevlar locking onto the tank. Cover in kevlar, wet out, pull vaccum and let dry! One tank gaurd made!

Then it was onto building it all back up, ST rear axle, powerflex bushs and the exhaust back on!

Yes iv been non stop! haha!

Little mid week update!Itā€™s all about the details.Now I donā€™t pretend to have the best eye in the business, but I can te...
13/08/2026

Little mid week update!

Itā€™s all about the details.

Now I donā€™t pretend to have the best eye in the business, but I can tell if something looks crap.
And case in point is the running of the fuel lines inside the car.
For obvious reasons they need to be secured, but itā€™s sometimes the simple jobs that annoy you the most.
I had planned to keep it simple and use 2 P clips to hold both the hoses and then secure it to the body via 1 mounting point. But the spacing of the P clips was just too large, the hoses looked like they were miles apart rather than ā€œtogetherā€. This could have been solved by staggering the P clips along both lines but that would require double the holes and that was basically the deciding point for me not to continue with that idea.
I then looked at hose clamps (used to keep two runs of hoses together) but the only problem with that was expense and they all looked a bit to bulky, if they wernt bulky they were expensive. And given I was going to need 5/6 of them it just seemed excessive.
But then it popped into my head that I own a 3D printer! And even better I have some ASA filament! I did look on the normal print sites for a file but ended up designing my own, doing a few prototypes to check for wall thickness, ā€œpinch on hoseā€ and strength, few Tweeks and I had something that was made for the job!

The cropped first photo is the P clip idea, and the second is my designed hose clamps šŸ’ŖšŸ»

Itā€™s the little things!

Cheers

So a little longer between posts...But Father was up so i kinda wanted to surprise him without him seeing it on FB first...
10/08/2026

So a little longer between posts...But Father was up so i kinda wanted to surprise him without him seeing it on FB first!

But what a solid week its been! Loads of progress and big job items ticked off, so lets get right into it!

Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents P**s Poor Performance!
Weather, with the heat wave in scotland due to end, i had a very small window that was closing!

Craig and myself put in some mega work to get the cage done.
So with the cage done it was all over to me! Whole thing cleaned up of surface rust, etch primed and then it was the fun job of masking - i hate masking, its something that takes forever and you dont really see any progress! But with the wiring and windows all masked it was time to lay down the inside paint. I went with RAL9006 - I spent far to long trying to decide what colour i wanted. All the greys to me looked like primer glossed or battleships which i just didnt like. I wanted bright silver. So hopefully if anyone else in the same boat as me can see real life what that colour turns out like and imo its perfect!

Its 2K paint with gloss which is only my second time painting direct gloss but really happy with the finish! Only down side was getting the paint gun in to areas was tight, even with running a small paint cup!

Decided to not paint the doors/boot but im on the fence now, if i have time i might strip them all down and do it! Time will tell!

Onto the underside next!

Exhausting! Non stop fab work, so swapped the manifold onto the car, and got to work routing the exhaust! Fiesta is bles...
28/07/2026

Exhausting!
Non stop fab work, so swapped the manifold onto the car, and got to work routing the exhaust!

Fiesta is blessed with a fairly straight tunnel, into a 90 left don't cut, 90 right, over crest into cat (f**k im rally ready!šŸ¤£)
But yeh, fairly simple to mock up, and Craig was on the tig ready to weld her up.

Looking about at the Msport R2 they ran the cat just in front of the back box, no idea why? Weight further back? Heat out the engine bay, away from the driver/co driver? No real idea? Its not like i have anti lag trying to blow it to bits, but since they did it i copied it!

Tail pipe to fully weld, and run over the brackets but thats another job ticked off!

Brap!

Another day, another deep dive into the regulations šŸ¤£ Seat mounts this time! So with the cage tac'd in place, this allow...
20/07/2026

Another day, another deep dive into the regulations šŸ¤£

Seat mounts this time! So with the cage tac'd in place, this allows me to now figure out where the seats can/can't go!
Passenger side was easy, as far back and as low as practical - with a fwd pushing some weight to the rear isnt a bad idea, granted you can go to far and loose the "tip toe turn in" but with a stock fiesta being about 60/40 got a bit to play with. Plus it keeps my dad nice and snug in the middle of the cage!

So the focus kindly donated the passenger Sparco seat for allowing me and Craig to use to allow us to position it!

Craig got right to it doing all the important welding, where i fannyed about making little fill in blanks for boxing back in the stock seat rails where we had to cut to allow the seat to go as low as i wanted! Then i got too excited and gave welding the newly fabbed blank up! Then while on a high i made up and blanked the holes left from the interior heater/AC/Matrix in the firewall, but got so excited that i forgot to take a photo of probably the best welding in the world! Hate it when that happens! šŸ«£šŸ¤£

But in all seriousness buy the end of it we had 4 new regulation style seat rails mounted in the car! Looks like so little but this was hours of seat in out in out in out action!!

So rally build moooooving! Cage was ordered from SW Motorsports, turned up in record time, but then i realised i had mad...
13/07/2026

So rally build moooooving!

Cage was ordered from SW Motorsports, turned up in record time, but then i realised i had made a slight mistake, the MUK regs had changed since the last time i had an in-depth read and what is good for circuit isnt good for rally..... sounds basic i know, but go read the bluebook and tell me how clear everything is.... šŸ¤£

So a quick phone call to them they sorted me out "upgrading" my cage to run the double A pillar bars are a roof bar. A pillar wasn't such a big deal, but if i had went and got the cage welded to then find i needed to add a roof bar id be in a bit of a pickle!

So with everything here it was time to get it in and trial fitted. And im not just blowing smoke, but the fit is really impressive! Iv been around a few cage installs but the detail on the "base feet" alone is impressive! Like all cages it will need a bit of felting to get perfect but the idea for now was get it roughly in place and then that would allow me to position the seat rails, and get them all welded in with out having to climb over the cage!

So me and Craig got to work and with in a few hours we had the cage tacked in place and looking good! So now able to move onto fitting the also changed FIA seat mounts! !

Would it be DRacing without a bit of extra power? Kinda a jump in the order here, i say kinda as i need to make an exhau...
28/06/2026

Would it be DRacing without a bit of extra power?

Kinda a jump in the order here, i say kinda as i need to make an exhaust for the car so i needed one part of the puzzle before i could do that, but yeh more power is probably not needed but yolo!

So blessed with 118bhp, i wont be winning any drag races, time im in the car the power to weight will be taking a hit! Luckily, these engines respond well to a map and a few breathing mods! In a world of turbos and 30-80bhp remaps alone the jump in power is never going to be shocking but the following should make a bit of difference!

Ford released the "metal" fiesta with 135bhp with apparently a slightly different manifold, So on the hunt for a manifold, Miltek 4-1 Evo was the one to go for, but at Ā£600 odd new was an expensive day out, Luckly for me i managed to find a 2nd hand one that needed a flexi! Ā£100 later i had it! Craig from the long lost Mellow works will weld a new flexi on it for me and jobs a good one!
Will also end up building a full system for me but we will get to that in time!
So with the blow side sorted, sucking side next!

Fiestas all share the same bottom air box, with the lids changing depending on engine, so first thoughts was a mountune ST180 air box, but i just couldn't find one for cheap, and that's when this piper cross box turned up! 2nd hand but used for a week, another performance bargain sorted!

And final bit of "power mods" is the AC delete kit, Found on Ebay for Ā£150, but when i looked at it, i seen it was a standard ford part, so with ford having alot of old stock on ebay, quick google of the numbers got me the bracket part number and Ā£28 later, plus a belt and pully i had the same "kit" for under Ā£60.... i know the AC pump is clutched so its not going to make a huge difference but the little plastic pully will defo spin up faster!

With a remap 140-145bhp should be realistic and should do the job nicely!

So Iv started to acquire parts for the build,Before you go fast you need to know you can stop, so addressing the brakes ...
16/06/2026

So Iv started to acquire parts for the build,
Before you go fast you need to know you can stop, so addressing the brakes on the fiesta was the task.

Looked at fancy big brake kits, but with them they limit the size of wheels you can pick should I want to venture into the woods. So decided to keep it simple.
Daily driving a Fiesta ST, Iv never had an issue with brake performance, discs all round stop the car time and time again. Issue is the ST was blessed with rear discs, the zetec s not so much, also bigger calipers up front, allow bigger discs and basic maths equals better brakes.

So got lucky and found a set of ST front brakes, gave them a clean up and a quick paint of silver, fronts sorted once I get new slider pinsāœ”ļø

Rear consisted of finding a ST rear axle, Iā€™m 99% sure the axles are the same, but finding the hubs/stubs separately along with a back ordered bolt for sensible money was coming to a dead end, after a week or so looking I found a full set up that was in bits but importantly complete. So again strip down and clean, took the opportunity to fit some powerflex axle bushā€™s that I got for a steal on eBay and also a set of braided lines from HEL, not my first choice in colour but again brand new and nearly half price so il over look the colour šŸ˜‚

All built back up and ready to fit further down the line!

Anyway back to trawling the adds for more bargain bits šŸ¤ŒšŸ»

Cheers

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