fiestaturbo.com

[jimmyesh]

Turbo Manifold arrived today, made me very happy despite having "man-flu"!

I'll be collecting my gearbox on Monday too, so stand by for a plethora of updates next week (and a big chunk of my budget blown on Beecham's powders! )

[jonboisescort]

will be looking forward to the updates

hope you pull through

[jmeBDC]

About time that manifold showed up!

[jimmyesh]

hope you pull through

So do I!

About time that manifold showed up!

Yeah, fair one mate - To be fair to Tony @ Pumaspeed he did say that it would take a few weeks and I'm still a long way from finishing this project anyway. It's a very compact piece of kit so hopefully the turbo won't be hitting the brake linkage bar!

[FRSJON]

great news...cant wait for the pics...

[jimmyesh]

Had a bloody mind-numbing 320-mile round trip today to collect the FRS 'box, but at least I used work transport and fuel!

Here's my new exhaust manifold resting on the studs at the moment (will be covering in heat wrap and fitting the turbo soon). As you can see it's not a funky "bunch-of-bananas" & equal length primaries affair, instead it's just cast steel and compact but perfectly adequate for my power needs



The couple of pics below are a useful reference if buying a 2nd-hand FRS 'box (just in case some uscrupulous scum bag tries passing off a normal MTX as an FRS item )

Here's the standard MTX 75 Open Diff (services no longer required!)



Compare and contrast with this, the MTX 75 Quaife ATB Diff



Here's a quick pic of the two different bellhousings, firstly the FRS Zetec/standard Ford bolt pattern:



...and here's the Duratec (Mazda) bolt pattern, vastly different:



Just in case anyone was in any doubt, the Mondeo MK3 Duratec uses the same gearshift setup as the FRS so that can all stay put (confirmed by Ford TIS too so there! )

Tomorrow I'll be swapping the bellhousings over and fitting the turbo if time allows

[Ram]

dunno how but that shade of green on the rocker cover work so well! im inspired now lol.

coming along great

[HCS PIMP]

yeh coming along nicely good work still waiting for the beat to run !!!

[jonboisescort]

looks awsome mate

manifold looks swish

[FRSJON]

hope to see it all in the car soon....

[Turboboy67]

Coming together now Jim,

Good work

[Luke1990]

So err how much will I owe you when this is all done?

I wish. Excellent work mate, keep it up

[M1K3Y_B]

Sorry if i have missed it, but what the total amount you have spent on this project to date?

[FlashXR2i]

Good progress Jimmy!

FRS gearbox is excellent choice..

[jayrs]

coming along nice mate

and its always good to use a work van and there fuel aint it

[jimmyesh]

Hi readers, BIG update today!

Firstly I added the "Turbo" to the Duratec so I now have a "Duratec-Turbo"



Here's where problems arose... I stripped the bellhousings of both the FRS 'box and the Mondy MK3 Duratec 'box, as you can see the bolt pattern on the "gearbox side" is slighly different even though they're both MTX 75 'boxes!



It became a bit more obvious when I attempted to fit the Mondy MK3 bellhousing to the FRS 'box - not very oil-tight!



Resorting to plan B I removed the standard "open" diff from the Mondy 'box...



...and replaced it with the Quaife ATB from the FRS 'box, along with new diff bearings.



Mondy MK3 Duratec bellhousing was then re-fitted, along with the SPEC hydraulic release bearing.



Quaife ATB now resident in the Mondy 'box.



Check out the difference in size between the FRS & standard Focus 2.0 Inner CV Joint housing!



Flywheel & bolts ready for fitting...



...and fitted!



Spec stage3 6-paddle clutch all fitted.



Lastly, I also had a modified MTX gearbox mount made today at work - just as I did with the "Manj". Basically the "tower" part of it (that bolts up through the mount) has been move inboard about 2" - this gives me some much-needed room to fit the gearbox mounting point to the n/s inner wing. It's very strong and has worked fine for me in the past, so hopefully it'll be ok this time!



Bye for now I'm bloody knackered!

[jayrs]

great update mate, shame about the gearbox but better you found a nice simple way round it

[Ratspeed]

tob job so far, thats a hell of a build!

[jmeBDC]

What an epic update! I dont know about you, but im getting excited now!

[jonboisescort]

great update thumbs up 2 all the hard work your putting in

[jimmyesh]

Cheers for the kind words guys, much appreciated - it's the positive comments on this forum that keep me going with this project when I start getting p*ssed off with setbacks etc

Hopefully I'll be dummy-fitting the whole powertrain and welding the mounting points in within the next week - tomorrow I'm going to thoroughly clean the engine bay to make that a more pleasant job!

[jayrs]

cerdit where its due mate, you doing a great job and i cant wait to see it finished mate

[pauldolman]

look a great project, well done

[FRSJON]

great progress jimmy... ... is there any difference in ratio's between the two gearboxes??.. could you swap the whole frs gear kit in to the mondy box?.. any benefits?.. cant wait to see it in the car and up the strip...

[heeman10]

Talk about being a step up from the Manj! This is a great project matey, I've been following each update when I come online and love it every time This'll be huge fun with no more than 1 bar, let alone the rest!

[muz]

WOW Looking awsome Jimmy. At least someone hasn't lost interest with the cold weather

[trebor]

this is a awesome project love looking at the updates cant wait to see its finish. top work mate

[Excursion]

Fantastic

[jimmyesh]

Cheers again guys, always a morale-boost!

Things took another turn for the worse today in the transmission dept

As you know from the last update I had to fit the Quaife ATB Diff into the Mondeo MK3 'box due to differences in the two gearbox castings (despite them both being Ford MTX 75's ).

Before I left last night I noticed that the diff was very hard to turn with the driveshaft fitted (much more so than when it was fitted in the FRS 'box) so this morning I stripped the box down again and started investigating...

I noticed that it was only the diff that was tight, both mainshaft and input shaft rotated fine, also the problem with the diff was only present when the bellhousing was fully tightened down, everthing was fine when it was opened by 1mm or so.

I know that the diff bearings (and mainshaft/input shaft)of these 'boxes have to be shimmed correctly to eliminate end-float so I assumed that, as I still had the Mondy diff shim fitted then that could be the culprit? I removed the shim and re-fitted the diff bearing, the diff itself then the bellhousing - STILL too tight!

One thing I noticed about the FRS 'box is that it has a thin metal gasket between the bellhousing and gearbox casing - no other MTX 75 has this, so perhaps they knew there was clearance issues with the Quaife? On the other hand Quife list the same ATB diff part number for all variants of MTX75 and there's no mention of any gasket required

I've emailed Quaife this evening so hopefully the can be of assistance...

My other idea was to make my own gasket at work out of 1mm thick copper and make shims up of the same thickness for the main & input shafts (thereby keeping their end-float consistent), then I can check the Diff endfloat too and hopefully it'll be ok...

Why can't anything ever be simple?!

[jonboisescort]

hope you sort the problem

[Ruishy1]

Sorry for laughing mate, but it was the comment "why cant anything be simple"

YOUR WORKING ON A CAR !!!!

that should explain it all there, things never go to plan.

But hats off to you, this build thread is amazing

[Alan12112]

you're doing well mate and welcome to the duratec turbo club

There's only a few of us ATM!!

[Excursion]

Looks like you may need some lock-Jew on the gearbox. Maybe a shim will do the trick, or maybe a strateigally placed rolled up copy of the sun inside somewhere will work?

[jimmyesh]

Things are looking better today after some graft at work

Recieved an email from Quaife this morning and they reckon that, as they designed their ATB Diff for the earlier "Ford bolt-pattern" MTX75, that the bellhousing casting for the Duratec MTX75 might not be as generous with regards space around the main diff body - bloody Ford!

This afternoon I fabricated a thin copper shim/gasket that would hopefully create the required clearance:





I ended up making two of the bloody things but the diff works just fine now

By the way, does anyone else here end up eating absolute crap when they're busy grafting on motors?!



I consigned the original FRS speedo trigger wheel (mounts to the diff) to the Biffa as I originally thought it was the culprit (as late MK3 Mondys didn't have this fitted I thought the casting may not allow for it...) so I visited the Ford parts desk earlier and paid £7.50 for another one.

Tomorrow I'm going to shim the input & main shaft bearings by the same thickness as my gasket to keep the original tolerances, then I'll check end-float of the diff and shim that as neccessary

Once I have the speedo trigger ring I can reassemble the 'box and get it mounted to the engine...

Bye for now!

[Smo]

Glad you sorted it, Jimmy

And what is Tuc?

I'm actually not too bad when I'm working on cars - tend to end up going to a local supermarket and buying rather healthy sandwiches

Although my next engine adventure will be this winter hopefully (as opposed to usually being in the summer!), and I'll probably be on the bacon rolls trying to keep warm inside