After hours of rubbing down, sanding, filling and some more rubbing down, the tired old Saph shell was nearly ready for a few coats of primer. The goal for this month was to finally get some primer on it, but before that could happen I needed to finish off a couple of little bodywork issues.

The first of which was the distinct lack of rear bumper. I couldn’t believe just how scarce Sapphire bumpers have become, and how much money they command these days. Thankfully I managed to find an intact one at the right price on the internet so with Paypal as my friend it was soon bubble-wrapped up and heading towards my house.

When it arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was in good nick, had all the fixings attached, and merely required a quick clean-up and rub down before it too would be ready for some primer. The front bumper and headlight blanking plates that I’d previously made also received the same treatment.

Then it was time to go shopping for the primer. I wanted high-build primer as it means I (or the bodyshop) can give it a quick flat over with some wet-and-dry paper to give a really smooth finish ready for the top coat. It also meant that it would cover up any discrepancies or light marks in body as it is quite thick and very forgiving. I also needed a can of etch primer to go over all the areas that I had rubbed down to bare metal, especially the bonnet.

So with my cheapo gazebo-cum-spray booth safely put up, the spray gun freshly cleaned out and ready for action, and the primer mixed up and raring to go, I fired up the compressor (sorry neighbours) and got to it. Rather than hit it all in one big coat (I’m usually the master at paint runs!), I decided, or attempted, to do it properly this time.

A quick dust coat all over first meant the heavier coat would take better, and it did. I actually surprised myself at how well it all came out – not too shabby even if I do say so myself. With the bodywork dry I even found time to give the engine bay a quick clean up and another quick coat of the satin black it had already been painted with. This will give me a nice clean base when it comes to start putting things back in for the final time.

From here I have a couple of options as to what to do next. I’m already writing a massive shopping list of things I need from the States to begin building the engine, the turbos are all packed and ready to be sent off to CR Turbos for all the work they need, and I’m currently contemplating colour choices and paintwork options so I can start to get it booked in to the bodyshop for a top coat (I need to sort the rear bumper mountings and rear arch extensions before that though), so it could be a busy time coming up and hopefully I’ll start to see some real progress over the next few months.

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Last update, I told you that top of my list of things to sort on the little Fez were the rusty rear arches. They weren’t too bad (I have seen a lot worse) but you know what the dreaded tin-rot is like and once it starts to set in, it really takes hold and can ruin your ride in a matter of months. So I knew I needed to do something about it rather urgently while it was still a relatively straightforward repair.

After seeing the results of other project vehicles within the Future Publishing stable (including Neil‘s now rather tidy-looking RST) I knew the kind of finish I wanted, and I knew the paint I needed to use to achieve this: Lesonal. I spoke to the guys at Lesonal about what I’d need to complete the job, and as I’m no paint-man I had absolutely no idea of the kind of quantities or products I would need. All I knew was that I wanted the rusty bubbles on the rear arches to disappear and the car have straight, smooth lines on the bodywork again.

To help me out Lesonal sent out one of their specialists to assess the car and advise me on products and how much of them I would need. With that in hand it was soon time to find someone who could tackle the job. I asked around the office (as you do), and it just happened that the editor of one of our sister titles, Classics Monthly, had just had his rather rare Peerless GT Coupe sprayed by Jason at State of Art Refinishing. A quick snout around the car later and you could tell the job was done by a man who knows exactly what he is doing. A man capable of producing finishes like that on horrible composite bodywork might be a bit overkill for just doing a pair of rusty rear arches on a Fiesta, but I’d rather have an ‘overkill’ approach than be left with a finish I’m never going to be happy with.

After speaking with Jason on the phone he seemed keen to get involved with the project, so a date was set and the car was dropped off for him to work his magic. All throughout the respray process Jason was sending me pictures to tease me with the progress. All of which meant I couldn’t wait to see the finished result for myself.

When I went to pick the car up I’d noticed that Jason had not only sorted the rear arches (and done a bloody good job of it too!) but he’d also gone round the car and sorted out numerous other little dings, dents, and scratches that it had too. Top man! The bonnet, front grille, front wings (one of which had a Jamie-spec knee-shaped dent in it) and the rear roof spoiler have all been rubbed down, had any dents or scratches removed and then resprayed in the Lesonal Imperial Blue paint.

Basically everything bar the roof has been painted. And the car looks a million times better for it – it looks brand new. Jason even found time to give the plastic bumper inserts a coat of satin black, which means that I don’t have to worry about getting the Back to Black out every time I wash the car and I haven’t got any fears of the plastics fading to a horrible greyish white either.

Overall I am really impressed with results, and in particular with Jason’s work ethic of ‘if it ain’t right, fix it’. Now all I need to do is give the car a bloody good polish and keep it clean, but I’m glad I’ve a car that’s worth polishing now. On a slightly more downbeat note I’ve noticed that the rear beam bushes are shot to pieces and the rear of the car is making one hell of a crashing sound every time I go anywhere near a pot hole. So that’ll need a set of Powerflex polybushes then…

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With the headlight issue solved(ish), I decided to see what state the rest of the bodywork was in. I won’t lie, this was mainly due to a lack of funds, and as a bit of sandpaper and some elbow grease costs nothing it meant I could at least get something done so progress isn’t held up too much. But then the more I got in to it, the more it made sense. Yes I was planning to mock up the fuel system before I pulled the engine out for prep work to begin, but actually thinking about it the fuel lines aren’t that difficult to install, and there’s only one place they can go anyway, so it’s not like trying to plumb in the boost and water systems where everything needed to be carefully routed.

Instead I simply need to get fuel from the tank to the fuel rails, there’s no in between. Therefore it actually made sense to pull the engine back out (which I can now start to inspect and begin making a shopping list for) and crack on with preparing the shell for a coat of primer. This would serve a couple of purposes. Firstly, it’s a job that needs to be done regardless, and it’s much more habitable to be rubbing down paintwork in the warm and dry than it is in the dark, damp depths of winter, and it would also allow me to closely assess the condition of the bodywork.

Now I’m not one for immaculate finishes and this car is in no way going to be about how it looks (I mean just look at the thing!), but any major dents and dings would really let the car down. I don’t want a flawless finish – at the end of day the its primarily a track car and I know full well it’s going to get scuffed about – but massive dents and scrapes to start with will just distract from all the other hard work I’ve put in under the bonnet.

So armed with a load of sanding pads for the DA after a trip to the local DIY store, I started attacking the paintwork to rough it up and give a nice key for the primer which will follow. But with 20 years of wear and tear that wasn’t an easy task. The majority of the car was OK just to rough up, although there were a few trickier bits that took a bit more time to rectify, such as all the sticker foam left behind from the door strips and so on.

But by far the worst bit was the bonnet. The lacquer had been peeling off meaning I couldn’t just rub down the loose stuff and hope for the best, instead I needed to get underneath all that and get to the paint that still adhered to the metalwork. With that done I was able to get some etch primer on the bonnet to give the high-build primer something to grab hold of. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there were only a couple of dents, the rest of the car was actually pretty straight. A quick skim of filler later and the car is now almost ready for some primer.

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Alright, so I knew the standard ones wouldn’t fit, and after a period I kind of resigned myself to the fact that I would have to run without any form of illumination and opt for a daytime-only MoT. But I still never anticipated just how much effort it would be to blank off the hideous holes at the front of the car and make something that at least fills the gaps left by the headlights without the car looking like a banger racer.

The metal plates that I bodged together before were never going to stay, they were basically a way of allowing me to see the contours of the front of the car and have a rough idea of how much I have got to play with if I did want to try and squeeze some spotlights or similar in there. Anyway that idea has now been well and truly binned off, and before I go any further with this build I wanted to sort something out once and for all.

Jamie gets to work on the Saph’s bugbear – the headlight area.

After hours of trawling the internet to see if anyone made any fibreglass blanks or anything that would be suitable to tidy up the front of the car the only thing I succeeded in doing was getting incredibly wound up, frustrated, and annoyed.

Then, after calming down a bit, I decided, “sod it, I’ll make my own poxy headlight blanks!”. So I stripped down one of the original units to remove the glass lens from the front of it, looked at it for a bit, and decided it would actually make a perfect mould for a fibreglass replica. A trip down to the local DIY store later and I was armed with all the fibreglass matting, litres of resin, and half the world’s supply of paintbrushes that I’d need to have a go at making what I now consider to be ‘custom composite headlight blanking plates’!

The fibreglass is surprisingly easy to use. I simply cut the matting to a rough shape, larded everything up with resin, prodded and poked at all the corners until everything was looking flush, and let it all dry. When it had dried I peeled the fibreglass away from the glass lens, and to be honest I was half expecting it to look hideous, but to my surprise it was actually quite good.

I then gave it a quick skim of filler and a rub down to make it all look smooth and I finally had something I could bolt onto the front of the car to fill the gaps and make it half resemble a car again! Yippee!!

Job done! Almost. Next step is to get some NASCAR-style fake stickers.

I also had to make a little piece to run under the headlights and across the top of the front bumper to replicate the original piece of trim which fills the gap under the standard headlights. Again, as I am now Mr. Fibreglass, I knocked something up to form a mould and got busy with the matting and resin.

I’m hoping that’s it now and I can finally put that issue to bed. I’m quite happy with the end result, and although it looks a bit pants now I can look past its current state and visualise what it will look like when it’s painted. I’m thinking of getting some Nascar style headlight stickers that will make it look like it has lights from a distance, and it has been suggested that I laminate the MoT certificate in the bonnet to show the numerous police officers that will inevitably pull me over when this thing finally hits the streets!

I’ve got a load of things I want to do to the Fiesta, including bigger brakes, uprated cams, remap, different inlet, and fit polybushes to name but a few, but the first thing on my list was to ditch the exhaust in favour of something more free-flowing.

The car already had a Janspeed cat-back exhaust fitted, which to its credit performed quite well. It gave a nice tone, and clearly helped rid the gases better than the standard item, but the real area to gain power is the restrictive cast iron manifold. Milltek offers a complete system including a 4-2-1 manifold for the Fiesta Zetec S/Puma, so it all fits with no fuss. Fitting was more of a pain than I expected, but this was mainly because I overlooked the fact that you need to remove the intermediate driveshaft to gain access for the old manifold and cat assembly to slide out, and allow the new bits to slot back in.

Milltek system lets the Puma engine sing.

With the manifold in situ (which although more time consuming than originally expected was actually a straight forward job) bolting the rest of the exhaust system in place was easy, and actually quite fun to do. All the joints slot together nicely and you get a real sense of satisfaction as you know you are simply bolting on horsepower!

When it fired up you could immediately hear the difference. It’s a bit louder than previously, but has a distinct rasp and is still quite bearable on long journeys. OK, so it’s no Bentley in terms of cockpit noise, but that’s not what I wanted, and at 70mph on the motorway it’s not too bad at all. Plus you have the added benefit of a very encouraging roar when you do decide to open the taps a little and drive a bit more adventurously!

That’s not the only thing I’ve got sorted this month either, it was that dreaded time of the year when my car insurance renewal came through. Like everyone else’s it had gone through the roof again (probably not helped by the addition of yet another three penalty points on my license!) so when it came to shopping around for quotes I was getting exceptionally cross and angry at just how much it was going to cost me.

Then I spoke to the girls at Adrian Flux (after seeing a very competitive quote for our classified section) and got them to run a quote through their system for me. It was by far the cheapest quote I’d received, plus it covers me for all mods like-for-like and I know I will be totally legal if Mr Plod wants to pull me over and start snouting round the car.

I’ve also been weighing up what wheels I should I go for too. As I said last month the Wolfrace Ultra Lites were looking the favourite, and they still are which is why I’ve just ordered a set of 6.5×15 in satin black. And to wrap them I’ve just ordered some nice new rubber from Yokohama too: some 195/50×15 Parada Spec IIs. Nice! Can’t wait till it all arrives and I can get it fitted!

With everything having to be custom fabricated for this build it’s no surprise that when it came to working out how the water system was going to be plumbed in that I turned to SiliconHoses.com for a selection of their universal silicone and aluminium bends, straights, reducers, and couplers. Having used the same product to sort out the boost system I already knew what to expect; a quality product delivered the very next day.

I ordered some of the aluminium products from parent company Forge Motorsport first. You may remember last month I managed to fit both the universal header tank (in the area where the battery once lived) and the Cossie swirl pot. With those in place I could work out where all the hoses were going to go and what parts I needed to plumb it in.

We want to know what Jamie was writing with that pen that’s behind his ear.

So after some frantic scribbling (and serious head-scratching if I’m honest) I finally had a list of bends, bits of hose, and all the clips I would need to hold it all together. Then when that little lot arrived it was just a case of cutting everything to the required length, clamping it in the correct places, and effectively making my own custom silicone hose kit.

The good news is it all works. I even had Forge Motorsport make me up a one-off T-piece so I could fit the radiator bottom hose neatly without having to cut and join it, and I’ve also been to see my man Churchy at R&C Church Engineers again so he can turn me up a couple of aluminium takes-offs that fit into the manifold, which will save me using the dirty old one I’ve got, and will actually fit the required hose size for the swirl pot and header tank return pipes.

The coolers are mounting up…

I also found time this month to take care of another area that I’d totally forgotten about. It wasn’t until I was plumbing up the water system that I’d remembered I’m not actually going to water-cool the turbos, instead I’ll just leave them oil-cooled. However, with a huge great V8 and two massive T4 turbos as a heat source I thought it would be a wise idea to run an oil cooler somewhere! After speaking with Jason Lavender at Pace Products and explaining exactly what my dilemma was (didn’t want to have to water-cool turbos for the extra work plumbing them in and the risk of increasing the coolant temperatures too far) he had just the answer. A quick measure up later and this lovely Setrab oil cooler was soon on its way to me.

I decided to mount it right at the front of the car, behind where the grille originally lived. It should receive plenty of cold air there, and actually makes plumbing it in quite simple too. Top job!

It won’t be long before I can start pulling everything back out of the engine bay again (now I know it all fits somewhere), paint the bay and the rest of the car, and then hopefully have the clean, fun part of the build where everything bolts back together nicely!

Before that though I need to sort these poxy headlights! But hang fire, I have a cunning plan…

I hadn’t decided on whether to be sensible and look at uprating the brakes, or to be stupid and look at quenching my thirst for more power. Well, after Dan upgraded the Mondeo of Doom’s brakes to Focus ST stoppers, I promptly stole the Mk3 units to upgrade the Fiesta.

Coupled with Focus ST170 discs they will give me a 300mm upgrade on the cheap. I’ll be taking a visit to see Bigg Red shortly to get the calipers refurbed before I start the conversion, so watch this space.

On the power side of things, I’ve been speaking to Milltek about a full sports exhaust system including 4-2-1 manifold, which is the next logical step to increase the oomph. I’ve also had a quick chat with Cat Cams and they have a profile which sounds perfect for this car and what I’m using it for, so they’ll be ordered as soon as I’ve got some spare funds.

But first I’ve decided that the engine bay could do with a bit of a tidy. We threw the engine in over a weekend (see the 24hr fitting feature from issue 302) and since then the engine bay has remained untouched, and it’s fair to say isn’t exactly the neatest in the world.

Jamie gets the hoses to fit (eventually).

To kick things off I ordered a full set of Samco hoses. Now anyone who’s ever fitted silicone hoses will know that no matter what the car/engine in question, it can be a ball ache of a job. And no matter how careful you are you arms are always going to look like those of a self-harmer by the time you’ve finished.

But when you are finished, and you stand back and look at what you’ve just done it is well worth the effort. It’s always surprising how a small, simple modification can make such a difference. The only problem is it has now highlighted how scruffy the rest of the bay is. Which means I’ve now added ‘tidy the wiring’ and ‘paint the engine cover’ to my ever-growing to-do list.

Another thing I managed to get round to sorting this month was ditching the standard CD player for something a bit more up to date. No one listens to CDs these days, if you haven’t got iPod connections, USB ports, or SD card readers your stereo won’t cut it.

Thankfully Kenwood has a comprehensive range of good headunits. I’m not a gadget-fiend but I do like my tunes, so when I had a quick squiz on Kenwood’s website and saw that the KDC-4751SD plays not only mp3s but WMA files too, and has an SD card slot, a front USB port, and an auxiliary 3.5mm input as well as CD-R/RW playback I’d pretty much found the headunit I wanted.

With 4x50w output it supplies a decent sound, although I’m thinking about some more powerful speakers to make the most of it, but I don’t want to chop the interior about to fit them.

I’ve also been hunting for some new rims, and whilse I’m yet to make a final decision the new redesigned Ultra Lites from Wolfrace are looking pretty cool and I think a set of those in satin black would actually look right at home on the little ZS. Busy times ahead with the Fiesta – I hope I can squeeze it all in.

I never thought trying a stupid V8 twin turbo conversion was going to be easy, but it’s now starting to fight me every step of the way. The problem I’m talking about is this poxy headlight issue. It’s become somewhat of a stumbling block, and while there are other things I can focus on, the headlights are an area I really want to get out of my hair now.

I’ve been out and bought several different sets of lights, some from a Mk2 Golf, some from an E30 BMW, and another set from an E21 BMW, and have had no luck with any of them. After a week solid of messing about with blanking plates and chopping up second hand lights I’m still no closer to solving the problem. Either it won’t fit, or it just looks rubbish.

Not to be put off I decided now would be a good time to finish a number of jobs that I hadn’t quite got round to finalising. The nature of this build has meant I’ve been jumping from one part to another without ever finishing stuff, so this month I had a good look round parts I’d already started that I wasn’t happy with, made a list of them all, and started to attack them.

The first thing on that list was the brake lines underneath the car. When I was fitting it all up I ran out of P-clips, so there was a section of brake line about three feet long that was unsecured and every time I jacked the car up it plagued me.

Another niggly issue involved the sills. While the shell is fairly straight and solid (actually one of the better ones I’ve ever seen) there were two rust patches that had started to develop along the sills at the front of the rear wheel arches. After fitting the wider arches I knew I wanted to fit Cossie side skirts to tie it all in together, but before I could do so I needed to weld up the sills.

A couple of days welding and a quick spray over with some underseal later and the sills were solid once more. Paul Linfoot at North Yorkshire RS Spares had a set of skirts on the shelf which soon found themselves being riveted to the Saph, and that was another little job ticked off the list.

With those bits out of the way I poked my head back under the bonnet (which after cutting my hands on for the umpteenth time I final got round to skinning too) and started looking at how I’m going to plumb in the water system. I ordered a universal header tank and Cossie swirl pot from Forge Motorsport and a selection of bends and straight pipes from sister company Silicon Hoses.com. I couldn’t order everything as I didn’t know where it was all going to live, but ordered a few bits to be getting on with.

Finding somewhere for the header tank to go was a bit of a head-scratcher though. I liked the idea of having it mounted where the battery used to live, but it was slightly too tall. Then my old man came up with the ingenious idea of counter sinking it and using the existing wiring loom holes as a way of getting the pipework to re-enter the engine bay. Sorted!

One of the mods already on it was a slightly lower ride height thanks to a set of lowering springs. I’ll be fair to them, they actually worked quite well and the car wasn’t too bad. But fitting lower springs on standard dampers is never going to be as good as a matched set of springs and dampers that have been designed to work together.

Jamie slots in some shiny new Koni Sport coil and damper units.

But as the car is my daily driver, I needed a decent set of uprated dampers and springs. Ideally I wanted something that had some level of adjustability in damping levels too, which would allow me to counter for the slightly heavier Puma lump up front, and to tweak it to my driving style.

After looking at the options available I found that Camberley Auto Factors offers adjustable Konis for the ZS. Having experienced Konis in the past I knew they would be the perfect suspension set-up for this car and what I plan to use it for.

The kit comes with perfectly matched springs and dampers, and the dampers are adjustable too which means I can have a play around with the settings to help tweak the balance even more.

As for fitting, that was a doddle. It only took me a couple of hours from start to finish. Fair enough I did have the luxury of a ramp and a spring compressor but anyone who is competent at swinging spanners should be able to do it in half a day without any problems.

With the new suspension fitted the car now sits better, but more importantly handles better too. As I said it wasn’t bad previously, but you really can feel the uprated dampers working to help keep everything stiffer and flatter, especially through long sweeping corners. What’s more is that although the dampers are harder than the standard ones they replaced, the ride comfort is still bearable. In fact it’s actually quite pleasant. It feels ‘sporty’ enough to let you know it’s there if you want to have a play when the mood takes you, but is also soft enough not to be uncomfortable on long motorway journeys or the monotonous daily commute to FF Towers. Basically, it’s spot on.

As for what’s next I’m facing a bit of a dilemma: the sensible me is saying get the brakes sorted (and I’ve been looking at 300mm upgrades), but my insatiable thirst for power is saying 125bhp really isn’t enough and a decent exhaust, cams, and remap are all looking very appealing. Sensible or stupid? Find out which route I take next time…

Now this is an area I’ve been pondering over for some time. Do I fit an aftermarket system in the boot area, or run with a standard Cossie fuel tank? Both have their merits, and both have their disadvantages. In the end I opted for the Cossie fuel tank. It’s easier to fit, I know of 500bhp Cossies running them on track with no fuel surge issues, and it has a decent enough capacity so that I won’t empty it as soon as the huge V8 fires up. Also, fitting an aftermarket tank would have been quite tricky in terms of getting a tank which is large enough to hold all the fuel a 20min track session will burn into the boot area without yet more chopping about of the shell. Also, this way the weight is kept nice and low too.

New Cossie tank bolts into place with no hassles.

So the hunt was on for a Cossie fuel tank, and after a quick post on the Fast Ford forum, Alan from Lloyd Motorsport came up with the goods. What’s more is it was like new, having only recently been fitted to a car that Alan was breaking for parts. A trip up to Coventry and a good gander at various other Cossie parts Lloyd Motorsport has on the shelf later, and the little Fiesta was loaded up with the Cossie fuel tank and heading back south.

When it came to finally fitting the tank all that was required was a handful of shiny new nuts and bolts and a new strap. Thankfully the fuel tank strap is one of the few items which is still available from body panel suppliers and only costs around £15.

With that all fitted up and fixed in position I can now start to look at what parts I’m going to need to finish off the fuel system. Things are going to get very expensive very soon.

Removable steering wheel’s great for safety and security.

So while I still had some spare cash I thought I’d better try and sort out another niggly little thing that has been irritating me for some time, the steering wheel. It may sound stupid but every time I go to move the car I have to look at the quite frankly hideous standard steering wheel. I already had a really neat quick-release boss which I got from Brown & Geeson a few months back, but needed a decent steering wheel to fit it to. A quick phone call to Rally Design and I soon had a 350mm suede steering wheel and Sierra boss ready to fit it all, so I did. The removable steering wheel is not only a massive safety feature should the worse happen, but it’s also a great security feature too, no-one’s going to steal a car without a steering wheel are they?

More good news too, in the shape of a box of goodies from Forge Motorsport/SiliconHoses.com which has arrived. It contains a header tank, and a load of silicone hoses, joiners, and bends which should mean I can get the water system plumbed up. If I can get that done soon I will be happy chappy, as it will mean another major part of the build checked off the list. Good times ahead I hope.