Aussie MK6 Fiesta XR4 rally car build
Discussion
Not really sure if I should start at the beginning, as it's now several months after "most" of the car is "finished" 
Ideas welcome.
making sure it will work as a rally car (Goodyear eagles on gravel)
Lots of wires...
Removing sound deadening the hard way
Looking tidy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnCiihYnhYc
Making noise in the forest
Ideas welcome.
making sure it will work as a rally car (Goodyear eagles on gravel)
Lots of wires...
Removing sound deadening the hard way
Looking tidy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnCiihYnhYc
Making noise in the forest
ThatFlyingXR4 said:
Not really sure if I should start at the beginning, as it's now several months after "most" of the car is "finished"
Ideas welcome.
Definitely start at the beginning would be good to read the back storyIdeas welcome.
Why did you pick that car? - regulations are favorable or cheap & cheerful and plentiful sources of spares
Thanks guys!
So the story...
It all started early this year, having spectated for the last three years of our local rally (almost past our doorstep) and bouncing around our local forest, starting to enjoy going faster than most, we realized we (I and another family member) could do this too!
So we started doing research, joined a local motorsport club, -which turned out very good- found AGI cages, they do high quality bolt-in rollcage kits. And started looking at suitable cars.
(We liked the idea of a bolt-in cage, as we where in a hurry to get rallying, do as much of the work ourselves... and it's cheaper...)
As a family we've always had 4wds (Land Rovers since I was too short to reach the pedals
), with the odd practical car, so due to living in a less populated portion of the Earth, with 10km of gravel roads whichever way you go, and a super rough front "driveway", this would be the first "performance" car bought in a long time.
So the car had to be something fast-ish (obviously), something that AGI Cages had already dealt with, and, as I did most of my early driving in an Astra, fwd was the logical way to go.
It didn't take long to settle on the mk6 Fiesta, apart from fitting the above requirements, the styling was to our liking. We bought one soon after, this past autumn, an XR4, which is identical to the facelifted ST150 in the UK, and waited a couple of months for the rollcage to be completed.
At this point we'd settled on the Bega Valley Rally as our first event (one of the bigger events in the southeast, over two days).
By this time we'd become too attached to the first (aha, slippery slope...) Fiesta as a road car, so stretching the budget, ("we can always sell the first, later"...) a second nearly identical joined the first in the car park.
Stripping it out was done rapidly, leaving A/C, sound deadening, electric windows, all glass, and factory door cards.
A previous owner had installed a aftermarket immobilizer, which incidentally didn't work, but took some tidying up.
We where now meeting more experienced rally people (including a chap, who used to be the M-Sport distributor for Australia) and getting lots of (mostly) helpful advise.
One of the next bits was making up a bashplate, I used 6mm 5000-somthing alloy treadplate, with a tubular steel frame bolted under the crash bar to the main rails, and threaded plates welded to the rear of the subframe (I can weld, which helps a lot with rallying, even if the cage was too much for me).
Tractor made useful bending it to shape 
A side exit exhaust (saved a lot of weight, but not eardrums), entered Khanacross with it, happened to have both XR4s side by side on a single carriageway highway, late at night (empty 4km straight)
Shopping for seats
Meantime a real UK ST150 import popped up at Pickles, the biggest salvage car auctioneers here, since sold to a local mechanic, after I fitted a used wing and headlight.
Hope this looks OK, possibly too many pictures...
So the story...
It all started early this year, having spectated for the last three years of our local rally (almost past our doorstep) and bouncing around our local forest, starting to enjoy going faster than most, we realized we (I and another family member) could do this too!
So we started doing research, joined a local motorsport club, -which turned out very good- found AGI cages, they do high quality bolt-in rollcage kits. And started looking at suitable cars.
(We liked the idea of a bolt-in cage, as we where in a hurry to get rallying, do as much of the work ourselves... and it's cheaper...)
As a family we've always had 4wds (Land Rovers since I was too short to reach the pedals
), with the odd practical car, so due to living in a less populated portion of the Earth, with 10km of gravel roads whichever way you go, and a super rough front "driveway", this would be the first "performance" car bought in a long time.So the car had to be something fast-ish (obviously
), something that AGI Cages had already dealt with, and, as I did most of my early driving in an Astra, fwd was the logical way to go.It didn't take long to settle on the mk6 Fiesta, apart from fitting the above requirements, the styling was to our liking. We bought one soon after, this past autumn, an XR4, which is identical to the facelifted ST150 in the UK, and waited a couple of months for the rollcage to be completed.
At this point we'd settled on the Bega Valley Rally as our first event (one of the bigger events in the southeast, over two days).
By this time we'd become too attached to the first (aha, slippery slope...) Fiesta as a road car, so stretching the budget, ("we can always sell the first, later"...) a second nearly identical joined the first in the car park.
Stripping it out was done rapidly, leaving A/C, sound deadening, electric windows, all glass, and factory door cards.
A previous owner had installed a aftermarket immobilizer, which incidentally didn't work, but took some tidying up.
We where now meeting more experienced rally people (including a chap, who used to be the M-Sport distributor for Australia) and getting lots of (mostly) helpful advise.
One of the next bits was making up a bashplate, I used 6mm 5000-somthing alloy treadplate, with a tubular steel frame bolted under the crash bar to the main rails, and threaded plates welded to the rear of the subframe (I can weld, which helps a lot with rallying, even if the cage was too much for me).
Tractor made useful bending it to shape A side exit exhaust (saved a lot of weight, but not eardrums), entered Khanacross with it, happened to have both XR4s side by side on a single carriageway highway, late at night (empty 4km straight)
Shopping for seats
Meantime a real UK ST150 import popped up at Pickles, the biggest salvage car auctioneers here, since sold to a local mechanic, after I fitted a used wing and headlight.
Hope this looks OK, possibly too many pictures...
Edited by ThatFlyingXR4 on Saturday 24th December 10:45
mattvanders said:
No such thing as too many pictures…
Interesting to hear that the st was badged up differently in other markets
Thanks! Interesting to hear that the st was badged up differently in other markets
Ford Aust already had the XR8/XR6 (Ford Falcon, V8/V6) so I suppose it was logical to have the MK2 Focus ST as the XR5, and the Fist as the XR4
The next generations where the same as the UK I think, just ST. RS Focus was never re- badged here, though I don't think we got the mk1... Alas.
Back with the Rally car, an interesting job was to remove the steering column lock, which is a reg requirement. (but common sense too, its un-needed weight, and the thought of it engaging over a yump or something is not pleasant...)
It's not a hard job with the column on the bench, but the security bolts need something delicately welding on top, after punching out the steel pins that hold them in, and still mess up the threads in the soft alloy casing.
One issue that was surprisingly hard to remedy was a gear shift cable breaking, after I made my own short shifter. when the replacement arrived, it was never the same, despite lots of tweaking.
I've since fitted another cable, and it's finally back as it should be, but that resulted in a few missed gears in the first rally.
A quick job was fitting RS vents into the bonnet, my biggest mistake was not shielding the windscreen from the grinder sparks properly
I can still see the marks, though luckily I've never notices them while driving.
Lesson learnt.
Next up was the rollcage. At this point it was only a week or two to the Bega rally, so we where working rapidly towards a safe, but not really a high performance car, more time would allow it become faster, our top priority was to simply get out there.
Fitting the cage was surprisingly easy, though getting the main hoop into position was a bit of a struggle, then just a matter of bolting it together, drilling the body, removing it again, painting/tiding the body, and refitting. The double door bars are a very stiff fit into the rest, needing a big ribber mallet...and patience.
Then the door cards needed modifying, as this is as close to shutting as they would get!
We almost melted them trying to get them to close. Some trimming of the lower edge, and taking the base out of the map pockets, and lots of heat, allowed it to work, but it was not ideal, they still needed to be slammed shut. Regs mean we must keep the original door cards (which may be lightly modified around the cage) or use 0.5mm alloy sheeting, which isn't really compatible with moving windows.
Another requirement is obviously the cut off switch, one in the cabin, which was already done, and a remote on the slam panel. This needed some thought, as it's tight between the bonnet, windscreen, wipers, and the master cylinder underneath.
Not mandatory, but an advantage, is moving the battery to the back of the car. To save on cost we compromised with a dry motorbike battery, mounting it on the drivers side, just forward of the spare wheel well, in commercial battery box.
Then comes belts (6 point), pretty simple, exept this outside lap belt on both sides, would ideally be mounted to the cage, regs say no.
And the seat mounts, using the existing mounting points in the shell, with a (heavy) frame. Just a couple a days before we take it up to have it's pre-logbook inspection done.
On route to Canberra, for the pre-logbook inspection. Looks almost like the UK
Our inspector doing his job
And here it is, at the Bega Valley Rally.
It rained on the second day, but still having fun:
Edited by ThatFlyingXR4 on Sunday 25th December 00:51
Edited by ThatFlyingXR4 on Sunday 25th December 00:55
The Bega Valley Rally was a very enjoyable, frustrating and fatiguing couple of days!
Basically what we had was a standard road going XR4/ST150 with all the safety gear, on rally tyres. Even the suspension was still what was installed in the factory...(story behind that was, our suspension builders still had another month or so the finish our order, and the stand-in Bilstein B6 ordered out from the UK hadn't arrived.)
Both of use where pretty worn out by sundown on the first day, and got lost on extremely long transport, thus missing out on the last few night stages. We rejoined on the on the second day (now with DNF as our guaranteed 'result') and had a much more successful day, doing one stage 9th from the bottom, and we where proud of it!
Only mechanical problems where minor, like no rear wheel scrapers meaning this:
And a problem with side exit exhausts on gravel
From then on it was the start of the never ending job of making the car (and ourselves) faster, and more competitive. First thing fitting the new custom built gravel suspension, we'd come to a compromise with this, the best you can get down here is MCA Golds, (just one notch off Rieger, so extremely good) which is what we settled for, but without the remote canisters, bringing it just into budget. The biggest negative is the only adjustment is rebound.
The rears needed spring locators,which MCA quickly made up for us, and as we're using the oe top rear mounts, these need taking from an M6 to an M10 hole, for the new rear shocks.
Finally all sorted, you can also see the bracket for a wheel scraper, mounted off the lower shock bolt.
I also did this spreader plate, which incidentally gives 6mm more droop
The fronts where super easy, slotting right in.
Here in Australia you can do rallies on a special UVP (unregistered vehicle permit) or under the Rally Rego scheme. we'd used the former for the first rally, but but a rego allows for testing on public roads, so long as you are actually testing all the time-- setting up the car, and then popping down to Maccas with it, for lunch, is not! So a local mechanic (and very successful Subaru rally car builder) did the first inspection in the long process of getting the rego. He passed the car, though with a few things to change before we next saw him, mostly grey areas, like washers under the nylocs in roof sections of the bolt in cage. And mving the side wireing looms to the inside of the main hoop and front legs.
I also took out unneeded wiring at the same time:
Basically what we had was a standard road going XR4/ST150 with all the safety gear, on rally tyres. Even the suspension was still what was installed in the factory...(story behind that was, our suspension builders still had another month or so the finish our order, and the stand-in Bilstein B6 ordered out from the UK hadn't arrived.)
Both of use where pretty worn out by sundown on the first day, and got lost on extremely long transport, thus missing out on the last few night stages. We rejoined on the on the second day (now with DNF as our guaranteed 'result') and had a much more successful day, doing one stage 9th from the bottom, and we where proud of it!
Only mechanical problems where minor, like no rear wheel scrapers meaning this:
And a problem with side exit exhausts on gravel
From then on it was the start of the never ending job of making the car (and ourselves) faster, and more competitive. First thing fitting the new custom built gravel suspension, we'd come to a compromise with this, the best you can get down here is MCA Golds, (just one notch off Rieger, so extremely good) which is what we settled for, but without the remote canisters, bringing it just into budget. The biggest negative is the only adjustment is rebound.
The rears needed spring locators,which MCA quickly made up for us, and as we're using the oe top rear mounts, these need taking from an M6 to an M10 hole, for the new rear shocks.
Finally all sorted, you can also see the bracket for a wheel scraper, mounted off the lower shock bolt.
I also did this spreader plate, which incidentally gives 6mm more droop
The fronts where super easy, slotting right in.
Here in Australia you can do rallies on a special UVP (unregistered vehicle permit) or under the Rally Rego scheme. we'd used the former for the first rally, but but a rego allows for testing on public roads, so long as you are actually testing all the time-- setting up the car, and then popping down to Maccas with it, for lunch, is not! So a local mechanic (and very successful Subaru rally car builder) did the first inspection in the long process of getting the rego. He passed the car, though with a few things to change before we next saw him, mostly grey areas, like washers under the nylocs in roof sections of the bolt in cage. And mving the side wireing looms to the inside of the main hoop and front legs.
I also took out unneeded wiring at the same time:
Great read, fair play to you and your relative OP for the work done getting the car to where it is 
Looks great fun and driving on loose surfaces is something everyone should try at some point - looking forward to further updates!
Also - the pic with the Landrover 110 towing the Fiesta, it almost looks like the UK, except over here there would be torrential rains and possibly gale-force winds
Looks great fun and driving on loose surfaces is something everyone should try at some point - looking forward to further updates!
Also - the pic with the Landrover 110 towing the Fiesta, it almost looks like the UK, except over here there would be torrential rains and possibly gale-force winds
Interesting to see this content, thanks OP!
I've been toying with the idea of stripping out my 2014 Fiesta ST. A mate went to the local Ford Stealer recently and told me about this ST150, which is like yours:
https://www.luxauto.lu/fr/occasion/ford-fiesta-fie...
EUR2,900 and much of the work's been done already.
If insurance wasn't so bloody expensive here, I'd probably snap it up for a silly car.
I've been toying with the idea of stripping out my 2014 Fiesta ST. A mate went to the local Ford Stealer recently and told me about this ST150, which is like yours:
https://www.luxauto.lu/fr/occasion/ford-fiesta-fie...
EUR2,900 and much of the work's been done already.
If insurance wasn't so bloody expensive here, I'd probably snap it up for a silly car.
Chunkychucky said:
....except over here there would be torrential rains and possibly gale-force winds
Well, we have had our fair of that too this year! Wettest on record in many places in my state And thanks for the kind words from you all
I had a good look at that ST at the stealer, that's an interesting cage, no way it could be entered in a rally here (not that it's meant to be, I presume) , but does like like good fun on track! We never got the pre-facelift here, only the 1.6 at that point. Nor any diesels.
Happy new year!
Back to the build. Obviously the gearbox needed work, I was amassing parts for the first stage, just a lower final drive (4.571 for now, original is a 3.820) Gripper diff, and steel caged diff bearings. The final drive was a pig to get hold of, no one seemed to have one.
because of that, for now the 'box was going to have to remain standard, and with the week points of the IB5+ in mind, would need careful use to keep it in one piece.
Trying to think what else I did to the car at this point.... We went down to an ARC (Australian Rally Championship) event in Victoria, and spotted this AWD, turbo, locally made Fiesta, competing in the VRC:
Fitted a light duty fuel tank gard, mostly just to stop gravel rash, short wheel base means it's not too vital:
Power was still the standard ~148hp, to avoid smashing the IB5, or bodywork through my inexperience at the wheel.
I originally fitted DS2500 pads on the front, with standard roters, leaving originals on the back, but now fitted DS2500 on the rear as well.
Some sponsorship! (free alignments and tyre fitting):
Another thing was getting the car a AMSAG logbook. AMSAG is a kind of secondary rally organization here, which was founded when some blokes wanted to to enter their older/basic cars into Motorsport Au rallies, and were told their cars weren't up to spec! So events are much more lax. Scutinearing is almost more fussy though.
That went fairly smoothly, so now we all set to enter our second rally, the Rosewood Rally, run (you guessed it) by AMSAG, and over the other side of the Snowy Mtns, near the small town of Tumbarumba.
It includes night stages, so I added a third light bar, now two smaller 5700lm units at ~10 degrees out to the side, and a 8500lm one pointing ahead. As it tuned out this really worked well.
It looks far worse on camera than in real life. Slower too...
We got a surprise when we found we'd won the fwd class! No speech prepped or anything!
This was partly due to the fact there was only a handful of of cars in class, and my performance on the last stage. I think I must have been lucky I didn't come off, we soon started to catch the dust of a Subaru in front, which somehow got me angry. I overtook mid-stage and came out 9th overall on that stage. Still not sure how I did it, and the cameras had gone flat. 1st car was Nathan Quin (Quinny), ex ARC champion, I got to have a chat with him at the preso afterwards, really nice guy
The DS2500 rears made a huge difference to balance under brakes, I got the hang of rotating the car with left foot braking, very satisfying! Overall, speeds where in the 70 to 150kmh range.
After this came the Narooma Forrest rally, on the next weekend, so no time to do anything except a wash and check over. Talk about reliable
Really fun roller coaster-style roads.
Generating a bit of interest in the service park
Only problems where caused by my driving, namely swiping a extremely prickly shrub with the rear left:
And side-swiping some saplings (it had started raining, on clay...) with the right flank of the car, which put some miner dents in the drivers door, tore the right of the back bumper, and pushed in the sill slightly:
Your next installment will include: a diff, bigger tyres and more power
Once again best wishes for 2023!
By now I'd amassed all I'd need to get anther gearbox built, and got it to my m-sport guy (who did a A1 job incidentally) so after sorting some damage from the Narooma Rally, like a rear DS2500 pad that disintegrated after sticking to the disk:
I started to think (well I'd ready been doing that for months...) about more power. A CAI with a basic airbox to prevent heat soak:
And an ebay downpipe while I waited for more exhaust stuff out of the UK:
SD A/C delete pulley and a size up in tyres -185/65R15 medium Hoosiers, a top spec tyre, getting the lower final drive meant these would work fine.
Then a Dreamscience map, I was up an extra 10-15 bhp, from the standard stifled feeling engine to near free revving, and it pulls like a train
As we neared the next event, our local Monaro Rally in November 2022 (the one that inspired us to get into the sport, and build the car) the weather took a turn for the worse, nearly cancelling the event, but thanks too a dry couple of days, it went ahead, albeit slightly shortened.
A local creek that's normally a trickle:
Fitting the gearbox a couple of days before the event, I didn't feel confident doing my first just days before our local event, so got a local garage to do it:
I struggled to get up a good pace in the rally, coming 16th outright out of 32 finishers. Learning the diff is interesting, never haven driven a fwd with one before, and I'd gone for a 30/60 ramp set up with 120nm preload, quite stiff.
We also had camera issues, so didn't get much onboard footage.
I started to think (well I'd ready been doing that for months...) about more power. A CAI with a basic airbox to prevent heat soak:
And an ebay downpipe while I waited for more exhaust stuff out of the UK:
SD A/C delete pulley and a size up in tyres -185/65R15 medium Hoosiers, a top spec tyre, getting the lower final drive meant these would work fine.
Then a Dreamscience map, I was up an extra 10-15 bhp, from the standard stifled feeling engine to near free revving, and it pulls like a train
As we neared the next event, our local Monaro Rally in November 2022 (the one that inspired us to get into the sport, and build the car) the weather took a turn for the worse, nearly cancelling the event, but thanks too a dry couple of days, it went ahead, albeit slightly shortened.
A local creek that's normally a trickle:
Fitting the gearbox a couple of days before the event, I didn't feel confident doing my first just days before our local event, so got a local garage to do it:
I struggled to get up a good pace in the rally, coming 16th outright out of 32 finishers. Learning the diff is interesting, never haven driven a fwd with one before, and I'd gone for a 30/60 ramp set up with 120nm preload, quite stiff.
We also had camera issues, so didn't get much onboard footage.
Hi, resurrecting an old feed here but would really apprecaite some insider knowledge here.
I'm hoping to take my '04 Fiesta endurance trialling soon (Land's End Trial) and trying to source longer travel suspension is proving far more difficult than I thought. Everything, even kits described as 'Rally-Spec' lower the car, rather than what I'm looking to do which is signifacntly lift the car, ideally 3".
Where did you source you springs and dampers?
I've reached out to few places, Koni, Bilstein & BC Racing, on the off chance they might know a different set that'll still fit so far best I've managed is 20mm bigger springs (limited by the standard length dampers). Managed to find 1.52 poly lifting blocks but rather do it with springs for better travel.
Awesome build btw - Cheers!
I'm hoping to take my '04 Fiesta endurance trialling soon (Land's End Trial) and trying to source longer travel suspension is proving far more difficult than I thought. Everything, even kits described as 'Rally-Spec' lower the car, rather than what I'm looking to do which is signifacntly lift the car, ideally 3".
Where did you source you springs and dampers?
I've reached out to few places, Koni, Bilstein & BC Racing, on the off chance they might know a different set that'll still fit so far best I've managed is 20mm bigger springs (limited by the standard length dampers). Managed to find 1.52 poly lifting blocks but rather do it with springs for better travel.
Awesome build btw - Cheers!
Edited by REUBS1215 on Monday 12th February 15:04
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