FX's "Red Headed Step-child" Build Thread (56k Go and re-evaluate your life!!)

[igore.ST]

I don't understand the SVT badge.

[djwrg04]

Been Promising to update this for a nearly the past two and a half weeks, Everything exploded into chaos with getting me back to college and getting settled in but here goes....

Originally Posted by NBFocus

I will always have a soft spot for SPI sedans. Nice car dude. I wish I could have made mine look anything close to that when I had it.

Thanks NBfocus!

Originally Posted by UnbridledCarnage

FX!!!! your car puts a smile on my face every time i see it. love seeing a well maintained and REVIVED SPI! Whens the coil project going down?

Thanks Caleb, I try my best to keep her loved! You know when it comes to teh FocusXtreme crew I gotta reprezent!!

And keep the coil project shush shush for now, You'll see it all come together this winter hopefully.

Originally Posted by stealthzx3

that's genious. how did he clean it up that well? bondo work?

That's Dustin for ya, everything he does to his car comes out awesome, I'm definitely gonna hit him up for tips when it comes time to mod the SAP bumper to the 00-04 body so it stays flush with the trunk.

Originally Posted by 1sloho

while i like the car, i dont like the SVT badge. it isnt an SVT, therefore, no reason to have the badge. theres an 08 focus rollin around here somewhere with an SVT badge on it and id love to slap em.

So you're saying that since my car isn't an SVT I should get rid of my front bumper and my interior? jk

I know what ya mean. I saw a guy the other day at wall-mart with an escort that had in bright big letters across the top of the windshield saying SVT...

I had snatched up the last two or three SVT Piranha badges left over from an old group buy on here with the intent of using them once I had completed my SVT motor and everything swap, but I got impatient and threw the badge on the trunk anyway. Several months had passed and my plans for the car had changed then I just decided to keep it on the car instead of tear it up by trying to remove it.

I guess you could call me a "poser"? lmao

Originally Posted by Paladin

finally a tag to go with the other spi i saw at fitf! i know we talked for hours on some stuff. but cant remember what..... lol

Haha, Yeah I remember you. Just don't Remember what we talked about at FITF. Heck… I don't remember very much from FITF besides going to McDonalds with Disciplerocks, Ranger_Mclaren, Ryan, and my buddy Stephen to get some dinner for the girls then joking around about a mythical food called a "McGangBang"; Cheney and several of the focus guys "hooning" around Karl's yard; Zack wearing a dress while handing out rewards; and waking up with nobody else there but the FocusXtreme crew.

Originally Posted by blueflow94

holy crap. i remember reading about the background for the name of this car on fj. i didn't even recognize it. i kept asking myself "where did this car even come from?" but now i know. looks good man

haha, Thanks. I don't update that thread anymore because it seems like for someone to give input on a thread on FJ, The car posted in the thread needs to be either scraping subframe, pushing more than10lbs of boost, snapping axles, or rattling off license plates. And I know that I'm not going to fall into any of those categories…. At least not yet that is lol.

Update time!

So i got a lot done on the car since about two weeks ago. Thursday(the 17th) my best friend bought my dad's Lincoln LS as his first car and we did some work on our cars, then waxed them, then took lots of pictures of them.
I replaced my lower control arm that was cracking, rhino-lined it, cleaned up the rear sway-bar, cleaned all the mud out/off of the underside of the rear of the car, and took some rust off the Rear subframe. I plan on getting a set of DominantEngineering LCAs after seeing how adjustable and beefy they were when I put them on my buddy miragesmack's sedan. But that's going to wait until I have the money saved up.

Don't really feel like typing much so on with the pictures!!



New, Rhino-lined LCA. Thought I oughtta just do it and get it over with so I don't have to deal with rust.


I wire-wheel'd then por-15'd The sway-bar mounts which had started to show a some small signs of rust. PREVENTATIVE MAINTENCE RIGHT HEREEEE IN THIS HIZZOUHH!!!


Sway bar is new again…. With a hint of awesome!! I believe that I Rhino-lined this sucker, then rattle-cann'ed it with some silver for poops and giggles.


All nice and clean! No moar mud!




And now…. For the rest of this bizznitch!!







Hella-Shine!!!


Finaily cleaned the friggin wheels.





Here, you can see where I removed all the duck-tape residue from the underside of the hood (if you saw all of it at FITF).


Moar shiny!


After cleaning up the engine bay more.


My buddy Stephen gawking and his first car(my dad's old car which has been replaced by a very nice, new, 2012 Focus hatch).








This is what I consider to be the most photogenic angle for my car.
















With the Led's lit up.






Messing around with the camera to see if I can get any good looking dramatic effects.

















The vent's are perfectly symmetrically spaced and the measurements are spot on, its just an optical illusion that the longer one doesn't look as far back as the short one since it's longer (trust me, I spent like three days trying to get it to look right and botched the first "Test-Hood" doing it).



And here you have the interior shot's I promised everyone!












That little red flip switch next to the steering wheel is to manually control the IMRC (and open the runners instantly for better torque/performance) or let the ECU handle the operation of the runners (so I can get better gas mileage).



If you've made it this far, Congratulations! Both your computer and FocusFanatics have not overloaded and broken down from the large amount of pictures!

Now that all that visual eye rape is over, Let's get to the engine work I performed; but first… let me give you some backstory and explanation for everything so everyone is on the same page.




So my smoking problem was my valve stem seals.

Here's my rant for the week….

On my old engine, I had put my EFP (Escort-Focus Parts) Hi-RPM dual valve spring set on, Brand spank'in new. Well, when I blew the original motor back in early November 2011 by being an idiot after putting the 3k into it to "supe" it up, and running out of money before I could fix the valve seat issue… All while knowing for about two-three years about it and that it can honestly happen at any time… The valve-seat issue should have been the first thing I put my attention to besides the lightweight crank, flywheel, forged pistons, and all that other stuff…. But I didn't…. And enough moping over all that stuff.

The valve-seat went because the one radiator hose (the lower pass. side one) I didn't get to replace which had been on the car since new. Well, the hose ruptured while sitting in a parking lot waiting to meet some friends, and when I left, and I didn't notice my coolant temps rise… I the engine overheated, the head warped, and the seat dropped.

With me needing my car to get around and no time to spare, Anya was towed 136 miles back home. No time to get my zetec into the car so I bite the bullet and order a brand-new SPI to just quickly swap engines over.


My dad and I attempting to get Anya on to a U-Haul hitched car dolly so it could be towed home by my mom's SUV… long story short… it didn't work… So… we used my dad's AAA and got a flatbed for Anya!



Signatures from the awesome friends who helped me get the engine replaced. (they're still there and still look perfect!)


Wonderful gigantic chunks of engine block...












Putting new engine in.

After putting the new engine, breaking it in, and things returning to normal; about late January I put back in my EFP Dual valve-springs (the original seals, shims, keepers, and retainers).

I didn't think to replace the stem seals with new seals as I had taken special care to remove the Stem Seals from the blown motor, keeping in mind that they hadn't been on the car for more than a few months.

Well, the seals didn't like being put on another motor and let oil leak into the cylinders at idle-2500 rpm and while taking off and starting.
a few days after I had I put the springs and everything on, I noticed the smoking and figured out what was going on.

So I went to EFP's website to order new seals to use with the kit and found out that they had closed up shop and disappeared… I went through my email and went way back to find the email address, messaged the company seemingly billions of times hoping to get a reply from someone but nothing…. I dug out the instructions and scoured every single inch to find specification… and nothing… Searched up the numbers on there and...once again nothing… I turned to the knowledge of FEOA forums ( the Ford Escort Owners Association for those that don’t know) as they've been working with and modding the SPI engine (well, the CVH but same exact thing) since the mid-late 80's. But I still had no real luck…

Time was running out now and it was May 22.

I dealt with the smoking and lived with it up until May when summer break started…. I couldn't let myself go to FocusRising12 spewing smoke out everywhere. AutoZone was no help to find new seals, they ordered Eldelbrock valve stem seals which had a picture that looked identical to the special seals that came wit the kit.

When I went to AutoZone to pick them up, they were the same as the stock seals…

With that in mind, and my only real power-adding performance mod (on the engine at the time) on the line... I was not going to back down and swap back to a factory valve-train and loose my 8,300 redline!!
So I decided to modify the factory seals to make them work!

I'm gonna be verrryyyyy lazyy now and re-post what I had in my old build thread to show how I "Temporarily" fixed the smoke problem from way back in May before FocusRising12.
_____________________________________________________________________________________


Modified Valve-Stem Seals for EFP Dual Valve-Springs

I was/am determined to not enter that show-field billowing smoke like a fog machine so I had to take care of that issue promptly!

EFP(Escort-Focus Parts went out of business, I blew my original motor, and Thought it was a good idea to transfer the special made valve-stem seals from my blown motor to the new one with the valve-springs. After I did, the engine smoked like no tomorrow due to the worn valve-seats. I searched and searched and even compared seats but had no luck so I almost gave up... Until I realized that stock valve seats would work when modified!! And now Anya doesn't smoke like a fog machine every time I start her up!

I took the stock Stem Seals and cut them as small as I could removing the large shim at the bottom of the molded valve stem seal so that just the tip of the seal with the rubber inner section remained.







All in all, I solved my smoking problems. I didn't have the time to cut them all out so I only did tow of them on Cylinder-4 as that was the one with the worst oil leak/ had the most burnt oil on the spark-plug when I changed them.

When I pulled off the Valve Cover and took off one of the valve-springs, I found that the Metal band around the EFP valve-stem seal had actually come completely off the seal and the seal was just floating halfway up the valve stem not even sealing the stem to the head which is what probably caused most if not all of my oil burning problems.





-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That fixed my issue for about four or five days… then, the long trip to Carlisle for FocusRising12 un-did my work and the smoking returned… I Had been deemed "smoky" at FocusRising12. maybe it was the long periods of 7k+ RPM while going through Maryland's wondrously fun mountainous roads in a lower gear at a higher rate of speed (wink wink) and upon getting to the hotel… the car had been smoking worse than before.
I had began to believe that the rings could have been done… but that wouldn't explain why the smoking went away after putting the modded seats on.

After FocusRising12, I had given up and my more work towards other projects.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

NOW... FLASH FOWARD TO A WEEK(OR TWO) AGO!!

I'VE CURE'D ANYA'S SMOKING ADDICTION!!!!!!

Many of you, If you were at FocusRising12,FITF12, or part of FocusXtreme… You've probably seen me throw out a smokescreen or two when starting up my car… Well…. THAT HAS NOW CHANGED!!!!


It's hard to talk big game or show off the mods you've done to your engine and look like you know what you're doing when people ask you to start her up and it blows out a gigantic plume of smoke…. You look like a jack@$$ who doesn't know what he's doing.

Well, I have been in contact with Harland Sharp for a few weeks…. And I have sent them my ported head(the race-ported one with the valve job(race-ported as in hell of a lot more porting than the current head I have on right now lol)) for them to brototype something very nice for Anya while making a custom set of valve stem seals (okay… two sets lol) for the high-rev spring kit I have.

I'm currently driving around on my stock valve train and reverted back to the stock camshaft (Escort one is in the head I sent off) and even though I'm lacking in a large amount of power… I'm enjoying not smoking up the world. Only thing I miss is smoke-housing people in Priuses who sit behind me at a stoplight… but I can learn to live without that in my life.


Here's the stock and the EFP spring kits side by side.(EFP left and Stock right)


And these are the stem seals.


EFP spring fully assembled


Disassembly/assembly (took four flippin days due to me bending/snapping a couple compressor bars!!!!)


That's it for now, I plan on throwing up the pics from FX's end of summer bash sometime next week and whatever shenanigans occur!



I LEAVE YOU WITH THIS!!!!



Das Boostenhimen!

[matmatician]

Wow. VERY thorough write up. Very nice man. Pictures make my world go round! I'm glad you were able to fix this all yourself, my Duratec 2.0 had bad valves somehow (I dont think the previous owner knew that oil changes were required, or maybe they drove at 6k RPM's for 63,000 miles, who knows) and I bit the bullet and had a mechanic do it.

Unrelated to the rebuild, but what suspension kit do you have? Looks like the perfect amount of low.

[TheGlassMaker]

Nice build, I've had the pleasure of meeting her. Did your bottom end go out? I see part of a ring in there? I miss the sticker bombed center console.

If you don't mind I'll post up a few pics of our ladies together.








The last time our SPI's will be together.

[bluebullet]

not to bad
I like the hood, whees are to busy

[pyroinsa]

Sorry to see your engine go, other than that great progress!

[chaz493]

ok i gotta ask, where are the hood vents from? looks like they are from an 80s car, like a 280z or something

[Chick]

I have to say, I'm starting to like your car. I didn't at first but it's starting to grow on me. Not a fan of the spoiler though. It would look good with no spoiler or maybe a small lip spoiler but that's just my opinion.

[NBFocus]

I always really liked the SAP spoiler looks good in black too.

[djwrg04]

Originally Posted by matmatician

Wow. VERY thorough write up. Very nice man. Pictures make my world go round!

Thanks!

Originally Posted by matmatician

Unrelated to the rebuild, but what suspension kit do you have? Looks like the perfect amount of low.

It's got the perfect amount of low in the back (as far as I'm concerned that is), but the front just needs to come down by a bout a 1/4th of an inch. Probably going to switch to the really thin metal strut-top bearings and ditch the thick stock plastic bearings.

My suspension setup is pretty basic, AGX Adjustible shocks, FRPP springs, Prothane Isolators, Moog replacement ball joints, and a Steeda 28mm rear sway bar.

A few special thing's I've noticed:

1. Without the steeda rear bar, and keeping everything else exactly the same, my rear ride height goes down by about 9/16ths of an inch. My only guess as to why it dropped it lower after removing the bar is because when the suspension is loaded, the bar has a pretty good ammount of tension and tries to pull the LCAs towards each other which keeps the car raised up that small ammount.

2. Replacing a steering rack/front sway bar for the first time is an evil B#!%h of a job… Especially when you don't know wth you're doing.

3. The stock Ford rear coil Isolators give much more than the prothane Isolators (it's a given with it being foam vs. polyurethane lol). Factory isolators when car is on the ground and the suspension is settled will drop the rear just a very slight amount from the rubber/foam compressing. It's barely noticeable, I don't remember the measurement off the top of my head… but I think it was something like 5/64ths of an inch. I guess you could also say that the prothane isolators will raise the rear 5/64th of an inch too lol.

Originally Posted by ranger_mclaren

Nice build, I've had the pleasure of meeting her. Did your bottom end go out? I see part of a ring in there? I miss the sticker bombed center console.

Originally Posted by ranger_mclaren

If you don't mind I'll post up a few pics of our ladies together.

The last time our SPI's will be together.
[IMG]file:///C:%5CUsers%5CDavid%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_image001.jpg[/IMG]

Thanks James, I forgot about going to Micky D's after FITF. The bottom end didn't go out… well, not yet that is. The pictures you saw of the engines and all that wonderful metal in the oil pan was from way back in December/November of 2011 when the seat dropped.

And I think I do see a chunk of ring in there?? lmao

I took out the Sticker-Bomb'd console a lot sooner than I had planned as I thought I was gonna sell it to Dustin but I haven't heard back from him on the console since like summer.

I took all the stickers off so I could send him pics of what the part looked like stock and I regret not waiting until I knew whether he wanted it or not. But t's all good.

It's gonna be lonely now in FocusXtreme being the only SPI,
It's really sad to see your engine go, but thankfully you're stepping up to a Zetec rather than doing what I did and sticking with another SPI.

Originally Posted by bluebullet

not to bad

Originally Posted by bluebullet

I like the hood, whees are to busy

Thanks!

Originally Posted by pyroinsa

Sorry to see your engine go, other than that great progress!

Yeah, I was pretty P.O.'ed/sad when the original engine went, especially when I knew that it was bound to happen and that I could have fixed it… but I was stupid and decided to gamble with it and hold out instead of fixing it right then and there.

Btw... totally unrelated but the background on my computer this week is your car. It looks clean man!

Originally Posted by chaz493

ok i gotta ask, where are the hood vents from? looks like they are from an 80s car, like a 280z or something

Pretty close chaz, they're from a 70's (I think `76?) datsun 280z turbo.

I need to look into getting a new driver side vent soon as mine is beginning to crack in half from being 40 years old. Hopefully I can find a remanufactured brand new vent ( probably just gonna get both vents anyway) from somewhere that makes Datsun restoration parts .

Originally Posted by Chick

I have to say, I'm starting to like your car. I didn't at first but it's starting to grow on me. Not a fan of the spoiler though. It would look good with no spoiler or maybe a small lip spoiler but that's just my opinion.

Thanks Chick! I regret putting a spoiler on my car in the first place as my car never came with one… but in high school I was stupid and put a stock one on thinking it would look cooler… so instead of wasting the time and money getting the trunk patched I went with the SAP spoiler.

Originally Posted by NBFocus

I always really liked the SAP spoiler looks good in black too.

I got the spoil at FocusRising12 from the guy parked one car over from me with a 08-11 black Coupe.
Real nice guy, just can't think of his name… anyway, he had it on his car and I was originally gonna Color-match it but after throwing it on, it ended up looking much better than I thought it would.

Once I get back to Louisville after classes today I might try out (if time permits) doing the center section of the wing flat-black/satin black. (more than likely I'm going to indulge in the evils of plastidip lmao)

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So, what are people's thoughts on turbos? I've already have a "top-Secret" forced induction system planned out, but the more work that gets done on it, the likelihood of it working and being reliable keeps getting slimmer….

so I'm gonna keep an open mind and consider going turbo.

Any suggestions on what I should use? I'm hoping to have it spool by the power-band (4,200-7,400) and run a max of 14PSI.