NA to FI Focus, slow and solo

So I've got an old Ford focus and a turbo, why not mash them together?

I'd normally just list out all my mods but the list has gotten a little long. So for the ones that matter:

-Full poly or aluminum bushings up front

-koni yellow c/o conversion

-eibach front and rear sway

-back yard turbo kit

Hoping to get some focus rs sparco seats, wider 8" wheels and maybe a cage.

For equipment I'd like to get a couple hans devices for the wife and I before we hit up the any of the fun stuff here. We have a couple motorcycle helmets that should be fine in a crash. Other than that tracks are considered toll roads over here, kinda crazy compared to that states where safety equipment is required to 40 mph in a parking lot.

I'll try to get pics up soon

If there is one car I immensely regret selling it was my powerworks supercharged SVT focus. I have a good friend that just finished building a custom turbo kit for his zx3 project car, its quite quick as well. Excited to see some pictures.

Running errands right now, I would have preferred a supercharger but for the cost and availability... This was the way to go

car in question

turbo kit... little habenero eh?

made an egr block off plate. first i took some unused pipe and smashed it flat

drill a couple holes and cut a general shape and whamo, block off plate achieved.

unfortunately while i was trying to trick the egr sensor i broke the dang thing, i went out and bought a new one from the local wreckers.

thankfully the to do list is getting shorter! yes the idea was from RK but it was quick and handy at the time. phone list is annoying to work with while you got greasy hands

ill try to update with some pics of where i already am at a later point today... maybe.

all posts come with 50% more pics! lol here is whats installed so far... pretty much all the major plumbing and turbo are in. i DO plan to remove the hoonigan that the previous owner painted on, i think that hoonigan stuff is tacky.

Wow you work fast! Progress looks good, I'm digging the ST170 lamp and grill. Looks like a stock FoST cooler?

I do work fast! Though I gotta admit I cheated... Haha joined this a few days after I started. Most of that time was honestly spent modifying the DP to fit my needs. Also iirc yes that's a standard fost intercooler

Once the ground is a little less frozen I gotta modify one intake tube and that should be the last big ticket item for me. I suppose you could look at my list instead of reading my droning on. BTW I found out the random bolt in turbo is actually a exhaust sensor. You wouldn't know if those happen to have a standard thread/bolt size would you?

I wish I had the blacked out Euro st170's unfortunately I just have the facelift ones, fairly common around here. Really want the euro facelift bumper or RS bumper. Later though XD

I do have the st170 grill still in the packaging. Considering selling it but may paint and keep it.

I usually keep my instagram as a more accurate log of what I do. If you care I'm @slow(underscore)solo(underscore)focus

Great build. Love the home brew boost. I saw that for sale on the Focus Facebook for sale page. Looks like you already have the SVT cat. What other mods does the car have?

Is this a us or euro spec car? You said you are in Germany?

SVT cat was from my NA stuff, lol got it a lot cheaper than many other kits so i feel i paid a fair price for it. i may use an ebay exhaust kit in the future to try and attain AC as per OEM. if i find the right stuff the only things i for-see re-doing are modifying ebay DP (again), a little cold side right off the turbo, and the oil drain line. nothing TOO out of the way.

the car is US spec but i am looking for fun euro spec stuff. facelift/RS/another aftermarket bumper only really avail over here bumper, RS sparco seats, RS steering wheel maybe and some other little tid bits. a few of which i have but have yet to put on.

mods list is a little long so i dont think the formatting will be nice here. nor will it be super accurate but its close enough:

Toms Tune

SVT Snorkel and Lower Airbox

Drop in K&N filter

SVT MAF

Iceman Intake Tube

BBK 65mm Throttle Body

Early '00 TB Port Matched Intake Manifold

SVT Header Swap w/ DIY flex pipe

DIY 2.5" Catback Exhaust w/ Thrush Muffler

Blue Ford Racing Wires

ZX2 Coil Pack

Fumoto Oil Drain Valve

CFM Fully Adjustable Short Throw Shifter

eBay Hero Coilover Conversion Kit

Koni Yellow Dampers

Rear Shock Shims

Eibach 22mm Front Sway/25mm Rear Sway

Focus Sport Strut Bar

FSWERKS Lower Front Stress Bar

FSWERKS Rear Stress Bar

FSWERKS Front LCA Polyurethane Bushings

FSWERKS Dog Bone Motor Mount

VF Engineering Poly Motor Mount

VF Engineering Poly Trans Mount

Nitto Neo Gen Tires

Ingalls 1* Camber Plates

SPC Rear Camber Arms

SPC Rear Camber Bolts

Advanced Track Rear Disk Conversion

CFM Steel Braided Brake lines

CFM 180* Thermostat

WB Wideband O2 Kit

Kenwood Front 6x8 Speakers

Kicker Rear 6x8 Speakers

Pioneer BT 6500 Deck

maybe later ill tell the story of the car, something ive thought about doing for awhile. from 16yrs old-present, cheesey? yes. will i? depends on how well i prorastinate

well, ive done it. im writing this stupid essay about my car. my first car, lol prepare for the gay.

Part 1

flash back to 2011 time frame. im 16, had my drivers license for a hot minute and needed to stop driving my dad's old e30. sure i could have driven my sisters chevy tracker but it always smelled like mold and dog poo. im not kidding either, only way i could stand it was by rolling the windows down, even on hot summer days. besides, i was picky about it.

i wanted something that looked alright, was fun to drive and a manual. i avoided automatics like the plauge, i had it in my mind at the time that only "real men" drove manuals. that narrative probably came from my fathers light hearted joking, but for whatever reason young adult-ish me took everything way too seriously. Pa, the resident car nut, was out to find me an old ratty car fun and reliable car; younger me, wanted something with a decent interior but still fun and of course manual. my grandparents just wanted me to have a car, didnt matter what; as generous as they are and as grateful as i am, are a bit more superficial than what i consider healthy. despite the grandparent-peer pressure, i held out with fun, manual and reliable. all else be damned!

it was a fairly long journey for me to find my car, i wasnt about to settle. the hunt started in tucson, mostly with my father iirc and i said no to anything with tears in the seat... which was the majority of the ones i remember seeing. today i see rust and gravitate like a fly to the light; plus defects are to be used to score a better deal but i digress. my mother, grandparents and just about everyone else went the conventional route. local cars, family cars, their old cars that they wanted to dump onto me, problem was that they were all auto and for the most part just plain old not fun. Everyone still pressed on, even dad with more rat sheet filled cars; ok the rat sheet one was only one car, i still remember it.

summer break was out now and my grandparents offered up a road trip to SoCal with a friend, why not? away from parents, grandparents are still pretty cool people all in all and my best buddy could tag along. while we enjoyed our time there buying long boards and cruising around on those my family still pressed on, still car shopping. to much of my surprise my grandma found this little red ford focus at the right price, with a manual transmission. i remember being weary of it at first but in an age of auto's i thought i might as well take a look and give it a test run. i still remember my grandma going woohoo! with a clap saying "we found one!" i didnt think i was that picky, but it was a 4-6 month endevor at the same time... maybe i am a spoiled brat..?

to the test drive, we show up at the dealer ship and ask to drive the car. i remember there being two ferrari's, a lamborghini, a boxy mercedes SUV, some old roadsters and a plethora of other REALLY expensive cars on the show room floor. what in the hell are they doing with a freakin ford focus? perplexed but not really caring i wandered around all the cool machinery while my grandfather was talking to the sales person. grandma was finding the back story on the two ferrari's, some dentist wanted to see a couple variants of the spyder before he chose the one he wanted. yeesh, i wish i became a dentist instead right? from the entrance i heard "alright! we got the keys" and off to the all but empty lot we went. guess a focus nearby doesnt look as good with 6 figure plus cars for sale does it. apparently the prev owner parked it under a tree at 90k miles and forgot about it until it took up too much space in the driveway; not sure how accurate that was but the car was in good shape, looked clean inside and most importantly, was a five speed. good enough for me to get in the drivers seat.

grandpa drove it away from the salesperson as we all piled in only to play magical chairs around the corner. i remember getting in the drivers seat with a relatively open mind and pulling away. the motor was responsive enough and steering seemed to be real point and shoot for me at the time. maybe i had a knack for finding fun cars or i just lucked out, but as i drove more cars later on, my foci turned out to be a real fun car. we drove back on with my seal of approval and my grand mother relieved i finally chose one, my grandfather played hard ball negotiating to knock off an extra grand off the sticker price. the rest of the time in SoCal was on a long board and doing typical teenager things, mission accomplished i guess. fun fact, when i pulled off to let my grandfather drive back onto the lot we couldnt figure out how to put the thing in reverse. LOL ended up pushing it to get it out.

back home in arizona i made the promise to NOT modify the car, lol fat chance of that happening, especially if you know my father. his favorite saying when i got the damn thing was "wheels, drop, exhaust." it was almost like brain washing with the frequencey of it, but trust me, i was strong. i did NOT modfy the car... for like 3 months LOL. believe it or not HE went out of his way browsing the craigslist ads for SVT springs and went out and BOUGHT THEM. Without any consultation from me! before i knew it i was pounding away getting those freakin things on hiding the work from mom and the grandparents. didnt get caught for that one, it was the next stunt after the bug caught on that did us in. man i loved the way the svt set woke the chassis up, no i didnt know words like chassis then but its what actually happened.

the trouble project started when we took a trip down to dons hot road shop for some exhaust tubing and a muffler. Mom was in on this one, she just refused to acknowledge it until it was too late. armed with a welder, angle grinder and a lot of tubing we started the job with derek, my best bud at the time, under the car with some pizza always near by. we actually got pretty far into it working out the portion where it goes over the rear subframe when disaster struck. grandparents made a surprise visit and i was caught red handed, oops... father had a lot of explaining to do since they were both PISSED. only some obnoxious guilt tripping came of the ordeal, which i guess was warranted; i did promise that i wouldnt do something like that.

beyond getting caught i really didnt do a whole lot for awhile, i was happy with the ricer noises and reasonable, though exceptional at the time, handling. grandparents laid off the guilt tripping quickly since the housing bubble bursted ended up affecting us too, all in all, pa lost his job. i went off and did more normal teenager stuff for a year, find a job, a gf or two and doing awesome fun dumb things with friends. i started back up when i had a little money put away and the ricer in me re-emerged, maybe it had something to do with trying to impress the new girl hanging around but i highly doubt it. im rice to the bone. ya know that sounded cooler in my head, similar to how that zz top song goes. LOL

new girl and i end up getting married later in life but thats not whats important right now. subs are important, rattling the car windows is whats cool and bad right now. thats right baby, audio! time to get ripped off from your local d-bags and drug dealer in car entertainment shop! loved talking to some fat cholo bragging about his escalade and planned vegas weekend showing me how to hooker shop and calling to make reservations by bragging about his large male parts. girl on the other side ended up only caring about his money and was quite a 'female dog.' go figure right? typical blondes.

for tha actual audio part i ended up over paying for a headunit but later got it installed for free, so that worked out. ran the sub wires i bought from them myself, i remember hating that and hoping it was going to be worth it. got dual 10" competition subs, the box enclosure and a 1000 watt amp for free from a friend as he was quitting the work place. i loved the results for about two years and kinda just enjoyed life for a bit.

i dont remember the exact time frame but i wanted to get back into modding, i think the iinspiration was mighty car mods short throw shifter video. ended up buying one and getting a throttle body that xmas. money was tighter since i tried to move out right at 18, bad roomate left me in a tough spot so cheap yet effective stuff was my narrative until i moved back in with my parents. didnt do a whole lot for the next few months until my finances were back in order. yet pa comes along again to harvest the mod bug that really and i mean really kick things off.

now i dont really remember where this fits into the time frame but i got addicted to it faster than a hooker gets all caught up in crack. autocross. oh my god all my ricer dreams come true, heavan i tell you. i felt like a fat kid getting served cake; love, life, happiness.

stay tuned for part 2, maybe. depends if i write it.

So I got bored and did a little experimenting, car is waiting on parts I bought to arrive.

So I took a set of the European mirrors I had and popped the colored covers off. Did the same to my boring usdm mirrors and got to work.

Snapping off all the protrusions with a set of pliers (everything in red circles) and a little forcing produced a better looking mirror imho.

I'll be off to paint when it warms up, rather the color match the car

Well after many times of, work a day and wait weeks for parts, progress has been made!

The intercooler piping is finished!

Gotta finish tightening the random bolt in the turbo hole (waiting on a 22mm wrench to arrive), install the boost controller, finish installing all the guages and lastly the oil drainage.

Then it's off to be tuned and some minor maintenance. Little suspension stuff, get proper tires on the new 7.5" wheels and let her rip!