Latest News
11th February 2010
I have spent some time reworking the rear wheel arches on the car as we had not removed enough of the original arches before fitting the Group 2 Fiesta arches. I have finished the drivers side and it just needs repainting and riveting the arch back on.
I have been busy sourcing some more components for the fuelling system, a 1 litre alloy swirl pot from SM Engineering, a second hand high pressure fuel filter with some JIC fittings for the fuel rail.
14th January 2009
My fuel tank has no fuel return on the sender as its originally from a base spec car. The fuel senders from a Supersport or XR2 have a return but are no longer available. As fuel injected cars need a return to the tank I ordered a JIC -6 Bulkhead fitting and nut from e-bay. I will drill my tank and fit this with some o-rings to seal it.
12th January 2010
I discovered that after bending my front tie bar to clear the engine it was about 15-20mm shorter than it needed to be and was making the track control arm hit the mounting point.
To solve this I decided to make the tie bar adjustable by welding in an adjuster I sourced from Rally Design. Its pretty simple to do and will make adjusting caster a doddle when I have the car set up in the future.
I have also started to manufacture in-situ adjustable Panhard rods for the Mk1 and Mk2 Fiestas, I can also make these to fit other cars so please e-mail me if you need something made up.
They can be supplied with or without the bushes and they are designed to fit standard Fiesta Panhard rod bushes.
23rd December 2009
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone, I hope 2010 will be a happy and prosperous year for you all
30th November 2009
I have finished painting the interior again so its all white, both seats are fitted as well as the handbrake and I now can select all gears although I'm not sure I have everything as there is nothing on the Honda gear change to stop it from flopping about like its in neutral although it stays in gear.
I painted my dash in wrinkle paint and I'm very happy with the results although its a little glossy so I'm not sure how it will be in the summer sun. (Pic's to follow)
29th October 2009
I have started to re-paint the interior floor of the car, as I wanted a hardwearing paint I am using smooth Hammerite, its not the best looking finish but it is a hardwearing paint and its a track car at the end of the day not a show car.
I have the drivers side finished and after letting the paint go hard over a week I fitted the drivers seat in. It felt very good to sit in the car although now I remember that a Mk1 Fiesta is tiny.
Will slowly do more over the next few weeks and will post up some more pictures soon.
22nd September 2009
I have been working slowly on the wiring loom, I have used a few AMP super seal connectors for the injector loom and the o2 sensor as I wanted to make the injector loom separate and I didn't have the Honda plug for the o2 Sensor. All I have to do is work out wiring up the ECU Plug to make sure it gets all the signals it needs.
I visited the Castle Combe Rally day 2009 on the 19th September, I took a few videos that I have put up on Youtube some of the driving was awesome and I cant wait to get my car out on track.
11th September 2009
I have decided that I am going to fit the car with a FIA Master Kill switch, this will be fitted in the car close to hand so in the case of any accidents the power to the whole car can be cut ensuring things like the fuel pump are not running if the car is upside down. Attached to the Key will be a pull cable so the kill switch can be activated from outside the car by a Marshall/rescue team member.
This one is designed to not damage the cars electrical systems if activated.
7th September 2009
I have been continuing with the wiring loom on the car and I now have most of the sensors connected, just the lambda and injectors to wire up.
I spent some time working out where I can fit the alternator so it clears the bodywork, I think I have found the best solution although I will have to move the radiator over and it is close to the exhaust manifold so will have to find some kind of heat protection for it.
I also began working on the first of the engine steady bars, I will need to reinforce the bulkhead for this one but its a start.
26th August 2009
My ECU plugs arrived from the USA, this means that I can work on completing the engine loom.
25th August 2009
I have extended almost all of the engine loom sensor wires so they will reach where I want to mount the Honda P30 ECU, I have a few more wires to extend as I need a new VSS (Vehicle Speed Sensor) plug as mine is damaged internally. Hopefully the wires will turn up in a few days along with a VSS plug.
I removed the complete wiring loom from the car with the idea of replacing all of it but under close inspection it is in fantastic condition and I see no real need now to re-wire the whole car. Last night I began stripping the loom of all of the unnecessary wires that would have been used for the original Ford 1300cc X/Flow engine that once lived in the engine bay. This included the alternator, Horn, Temp Sensor, Fan Switch, Starter Solenoid, Coil and Starter Motor wiring. Now the only wires are for the lights.
From the rear wiring I have removed the wiper motor and washer bottle feeds, from under the dash I have removed the heater and dash light plugs.
All in its saved probably half a kilo in weight but I am going to extend the wiring on the fuse box and replace the old ceramic fuses with modern blade fuses.
20th August 2009
The order from Vehicle Wiring Products arrived within 24 hours of placing it, I am very impressed with their service and I will definitely use them again once I have worked out what connectors and wires that I need to rebuild the lighting loom in the car.
18th August 2009
I have ordered the wire from Vehicle Wiring Products to make up most of the loom, I need 36 different colour wires to match the Honda Loom.
17th August 2009
As the welding and Fabrication stage draws ever closer to completion I have begun looking at the wiring, As I need to strip out the wiring that once ran the x/flow I am contemplating rewiring the whole car from scratch. Seeing as its all almost 30 years old I don't want any issues with the harness.
I stripped the old Honda loom apart and worked out which plugs go on which sensors, this will enable me to order the correct colour wire as I want it to be as close to the original Honda loom to help with fault finding in the future. As the original ECU Harness plug was melted I ordered a replacement one from the US, hopefully it will be here soon so I can continue with the engine harness.
I also need to take into consideration a number of other systems that the P30 ECU needs that my car doesn't or wont have so I can work around the issues.
10th August 2009
Yesterday I finished the Roll Cage gusseting, I'm planning on adding a few more bars to the cage for strength and if funds allow. I also fitted the engine to make sure it clears everything before the bay gets painted.
8th August 2009
Sorry for the massive delay in updating the website with the latest news, I have moved house, changed computers and had a beautiful baby daughter all since the last update so things have been a little busy.
The Honda B16 Engine proved to be problematic and difficult to install in the tiny Mk1 Fiesta engine bay but I stuck with it and its now in on its mounts waiting for me to complete the steady bars before I can paint the engine bay.
Some pic's of what needed to be done to get this monster engine in.
23rd April 2008
I bought the new engine home from my work today in the boot of my Volvo 855 T5. I'm so pleased that it is home and we can begin to work on mounting it in the Fiesta. Sorry for the crap picture but I only had my phone on me.
15th April 2008
I ordered some new Ball Joints for the front suspension, hopefully they will be with me in a few days so I can finish building up the front suspension and brakes.
12th April 2008
We sold our cross flow engine and LSD gearbox today, We still have quite a lot of Fiesta/cross flow parts that we are selling to free up some space in the workshop. After a bit of a tidy up we will look at squeezing the Honda Vtec engine into the fiesta engine bay. We will have to cut the shell to make it fit as the Fiesta engine bay is 34inches at its widest point and the Vtec engine is 35 Inches. We are also planning to triangulate the roll cage to the front suspension turrets to improve he strength of the shell.
Hopefully there wont be too many issues but we are still without an ECU to run the engine, our engine needs a P30 ECU to run properly but we may end up using an aftermarket ECU like megasquirt.
5th April 2008
Wow what a time since my last update!
Firstly I am now Married to my wonderful partner Debbie, we wed on the 15th March 2008 at Haldon Belvedere in Devon. We Honeymooned in the Maldives - its very beautiful and I would recommend anyone to visit there before it disappears due to the rising sea levels.
I'm also going to be a father, Baby is due on the 1st October 2008.
So enough of my personal life and onto the car stuff.
In February 2008 we purchased the remnants of a burnt out Honda Civic Si, This car comes with the famous JDM B16A engine, fortunately for us the engine was not damaged and has a few Type R bits fitted along with a Tubular Manifold. We are going to fit this into the Fiesta so we are a bit more competitive against the much newer and bigger budget machinery.
14th November 2007
I have built up the drivers front suspension and brakes so we can start to investigate what wheels will fit over them without having to use spacers. I hit a problem with the top bolt on the calliper fouling one of the bolts that join the hub to the suspension strut. This was overcome by milling a slot out of the bracket and using a bolt 15mm shorter.
You can also just see our adjustable TCA's in the picture too.
9th November 2007
To bring the car into the more modern era and to save a bit more weight, we joined in on a XRTwo.com group buy for a Heated windscreen, this means that we will no longer need to carry a Heater unit and the associated pipe work. This saves about 1-2kgs of weight at the front of the car and the heated elements in the glass will clear faster than any fiesta blower will. All it needs is 2 live 12v feeds for it to work.
12th April 2007
Because we have adjustable suspension going on our car we will be able to adjust the ride height for different venues, from high above the ground for rough rallies all the way down to floor hugging for smooth race track type surfaces. This can cause an issue on the fiesta with the location of the rear beam, the mk1 and mk2 fiesta uses a panhard rod that is of a fixed length stop any sideways movement and the lower the suspension the further out the passenger side the panhard rod will push the beam. So we can have the car set up properly and the rear beam correctly located we decided that an adjustable length panhard rod would be required. An in-situ adjuster was duly purchased and a length was cut out of the bar and the adjusted welded in place. Now the rod can be extended a little bit longer than the standard bar and quite a lot shorter.
25th March 2007
The Reservoirs and Brackets have arrived from Rally Design.
I also got some alloy bars and set about milling the brackets to fit, they are now complete and after tests will fit inside 13inch wheels although they must have sufficient caliper clearance. At the moment I have only found Compomotive CRX's will fit but I am pretty sure I can get some Peugeot 14inch wheels to fit without using spacers. As soon as I have one I will let you know the result.
Anyway on with the Pics.
If you are interested in purchasing the brackets or having us custom build brackets to your requirements please contact us darren@orbitalmotorsport.co.uk
15th March 2007
I ordered some new Brake fluid reservoirs and a bracket to mount them to the car from Rally Design. I also bought the brake pads to go with the Wilwood calipers.
Some time ago I was given a small milling machine and so last night set about making the brackets for the Calipers, once I have them completed I will post some pictures but its not really much to look at right now but a bar of ally.
7th March 2007
Spent the evening welding the inner arch to the outer arch on the drivers side of the car, just needs finishing off. Debbie my partner put the first coat of hammerite on the bottom of the car. Its great having a painter and decorator around when you need stuff like this done! ;)
1st March 2007
Wow almost a 3 year break from building the car! Well a lot has happened in that time, I've restored a 1983 Ford Sierra XR4i from the ground up for concourse which was sadly stolen before I had the chance to complete it. Darren the Co-Driver has been busy making babies and is now the father of 3!!
So what have we done to the car?
Well it moved from my garage over to my dads and is currently wrapped up nice and warm, its still a shell but we are working on it.
As you can see from the pictures the rear beam is removed and I am preparing the underside for paint.
I have also been spending my hard earned cash on a pair of wilwood Midilite 4 pot calipers for the front end, I just need to make the brackets to fit them.
10th October 2004
Finally all of the welding is complete on the car, a friend of mine Rob (a.k.a Taps) drove down from Essex to do the job for me. now it just needs painting and all the trick bits bolting back on.
24th September 2004
Well not so much of a productive today on the fiesta as I had a few jobs to do on the AX before tonight's road rally.
Well the front wings are now complete and ready to fit permanently onto the car. Also we planned where to fit the battery cut off switch and fire extinguisher pull cable.
As you can see some of the pic's of the bias pedal box and the wiring loom that needs sorting out!
23rd September 2004
Well today was quite productive on the build of the car, all 4 group 2 arches are fitted and just need extra fibre glassing to the car to add strength. We had the car up on its side today and I spent some time getting rid of the surface rust before the underside gets painted. Im just waiting on a phone call from a friend who does our welding to find out when he can come and complete the job. All that's left to do is tidy up the rear panel, weld in the front part of the cage and the welding is complete.
We have entered a 12 car rally for the 24th of September using my Citroen AX GT, its our first road rally as a team and should be good fun. Hopefully we wont get lost!!
6th September 2004
I have booked some time off work for the end of September in an attempt to get the build of the car back on track. Its now 2 years since I rolled the old car and its about time we had the new one on the road.
28th April 2004
Put a few coats of gloss onto the inner arches so it will be easier to clean in the future.
27th April 2004
Managed to get a little bit more work done on the car tonight before the rain came, both the front inner arches have been painted with some anti chip paint and I will finish off with a couple of coats of gloss.
18th April 2004
Congratulations to Darren the co-driver and my sister on the birth of their baby boy Bradley, he was born on the 16th April at about 3am.
Back to the car we have now mounted the co-drivers seat and painted the co-drivers inner arch, over the next few weeks I will paint the rest of the inner arches.
I have contacted the welder and he will come back and finish off the welding so we can crack on and paint the car.
23rd March 2004
I popped round to my dads shed tonight to get some photos of the wheels for you all to see, instead of taking the car I thought I would ride my bike. I have discovered just how unfit I have got in the last year!! Looks like some trips to the gym for me before I even think of rallying again.
21st March 2004
Well work is starting on the car again this Tuesday. We have had a few very busy weeks, my 28th Birthday and the party put paid to a weekends work and my Dad has been rebuilding a pair of old Perkins diesels out of a boat. He had to use our trailer to move them from the marina to his garage they were massive.
My niece is two tomorrow and we have had a little party for her today, it seems to be so easy to find other things to do than work on the rally car!!!!
Congratulations to my co-driver Darren and my sister who are almost about to have the birth of their second child in a few weeks!!! It looks like they are preparing a future team of their own!!!
Still we are hoping to have the car finished in the next three months as both Darren and I are pining to get back out on the stages as soon as possible. We also have a few plans for this car and swaying away from the norm!! This is a little secret and details will be revealed some time in the future.
16th January 2004
Well happy new year to everyone I hope you had a great Christmas and new year!!!
As you can see I now have my computer up and running and updates will be done on a far more regular basis than they have been done. So I bet your thinking that the car is built and ready to go? well you would be wrong. Unfortunately progress has been almost non existent but with the new year I promise we will move along.
So what have we been up to in all this time? Well I (the driver) have a couple of new road cars. The first one is a Ford Sierra XR4i for a bit of weekend fun, this is being converted to a turbo car with the aid of a Turbo Technics kit which should see me a power figure of well over 250bhp!!!
The other is my daily run about of a Citroen AX GT, this car has actually surprised me and is great fun to drive!!!
So onto what your really interested in - The Rally car!
The shell is still in the same condition as it was last June but it will be completed shortly, all of the brakes, suspension and bolt on items have been stripped, repaired and re-painted and is ready to bolt back onto the shell once it has been painted.
The engine is in the shed ready for some more modifications to get more power out of the little 1600 x/flow.
We managed to get our hands on a set of 14inch Revolutions in Mk2 Escort offset and have restored these to their former glory (photos will follow soon).
So that's all for now please keep checking back for more updates!!!
15th June 2003
Ok, im sorry about the lack of updates but I am having a rough time at the moment with some quite major personal problems. As with most other things the car was put on hold until the problem was sorted. Im almost there and the build will begin in earnest in the next few weeks as we are planning on entering the Bomb along stages in September. This is the event where I rolled the car last year so we will be doing it to exercise some demons and get on track for a Championship next year.
I will post some details on the championship we will be doing later in the Year and there will be lots of updates coming as the build of the new car speeds up.
13th April 2003
The rear part of the cage is now welded into the car along with all of the required strengthening plates. Unfortunately our Mig welder was not really designed for continual use and kept overheating making the job take a lot longer than anticipated. This means that the front part of the cage is still to be fitted and will be done once the seat mountings are ready to be welded into the car.
As you can see by the photos below the front arches have been fitted to the wings and removed to be fibreglassed into place. We have fitted the arches in this way to provide extra strength incase I hit anything.
11th April 2003
Another day spent working on the car, everything is ready to be welded into the car tomorrow. I painted the roll cage in pieces as it will be difficult to paint it once in the car. I have to paint most of the inside of the car first thing tomorrow morning before the cage goes in.
As you can see the front splitter is now on the car but will need to be blended into the front arches so it looks good.
9th April 2003
We have spent 2 days working on the car and its coming along nicely. The strengthening plates for the Roll cage have been made and are ready to weld into the car. Anyone owning a mk1 Fiesta will know that the floor isn't exactly flat and so a lot of work has to go into making these plates fit. We have decided to weld the cage in this time instead of bolting it to the floor, unfortunately I have had to promise to not roll this car for the foreseeable future! A friend will be welding the plates and the cage in this Saturday.
The wheel arches are also being fitted to the car and aren't actually a bad fit, the front splitter is another matter and will require a lot of work to make it look good.
Unfortunately the batteries on my camera were flat today so no pictures.
4th April 2003
I have booked next week off work so we can get all the welding completed, the cage fitted and the wheel arches on the car. As soon as this is completed then we will get the paintwork done and then its a race to get her finished. Hopefully in time for the Abingdon stages later this year.
16th March 2003
The doors were removed from the car today so they can have the rust removed and prepared to be painted off the car. We also began to prepare the fiberglass bonnet and boot for painting. In the picture below you can see the bonnet in primer ready for paint.
You can also now find a guest book page here as well, if you would like to leave some comments please click on the link to the left.
3rd March 2003
Sorry its taken so long since I last updated but I have been a bit busy doing other things.
Well the rear beam has been cleaned up, re-painted and assembled ready to go onto the new shell. We have made custom brackets to fit the calipers and have used standard Ford calipers that can be found on most models using rear discs.
Since finding out that it is quite easy to fit RS turbo brakes into a 13inch wheel we set ourselves the challenge of fitting Mondeo calipers as these use a bigger brake pad and should therefore slow the car down a bit quicker. Considering the Mondeo calipers and brackets are more common than RS turbo ones its a much better option for us although there are a few problems. One of them is the cost of Ferodo DS3000 brake pads as they will cost a bit over £100 per set, the other is the clearance inside the 13inch wheel! As you can see from the photo below there is approximately 1mm clearance between the caliper and the wheel. On a road car this probably wouldn't be a problem but on a competition car that has to handle rougher terrain this just isn't enough clearance. Bearing this in mind we have decided to step up to 14inch wheels.
6th February 2003
I took some photos of the almost finished new front suspension compared to the old, as you can see the 2.25inch coil over setup is far more adjustable and easier to change the springs. For those who don't know the old strut is the blue one and the new one is the red one.
You can also see a picture of the rear disc brake mock up, new calipers and discs have been purchased and once the rear beam has been cleaned and re-painted then it will all be trial fitted onto the shell.
I have ordered the new clutch from Rally Nuts as well as some other small bits and pieces. The clutch is a 4 paddle cerametallic AP clutch to replace our almost worn out old one.
1st February 2003
We have managed to fit 260mm discs and the caliper form and Escort RS turbo which has a 2.5inch single piston in our 13inch wheels. Its quite a major job to do and requires modifications to the caliper to make it all fit but they do and they work. This means that the 4pots are no longer required but will be a modification carries out in the future. These brakes will be a vast improvement over fiesta brakes which means we can brake later than we could before.
The rear brake set up has been changed to include the obligatory handbrake cables that are required to pass an MOT in the UK. The calipers that we used to use did not have the facility to accept cables so we will be using the calipers from the Sierra/Granada that uses rear discs. We will use a handbrake cable from a RS2000 4x4 and will make a bracket for this to fit onto our car. Don't worry though as we will continue to use a hydraulic handbrake and the cables will be loosely fitted in case of emergencies.
11th January 2003
Well I hope that you all enjoyed Christmas and New year as much as we did!
The build of the car is coming along slowly, our spare front suspension has now been converted to 2.25inch coil overs. Its actually quite easy to do and now allows us to make easy adjustment to the height of the front of the car. I will get some pics and let you know how it is done in the next week or so.
We visited the Autosport Show at the NEC yesterday and spoke to lots of people about brake setups and Wheels, we even bumped into a few people that I knew and the co-driver of the car just in front of us when we rolled at Oakington. Talk about a small world! I took some pics at the show so see below.
We are also fitting Escort RS Turbo front rakes onto our Hubs, now for all of those that said it cant be done and keep a 13inch wheel watch this space as we are halfway there already.
16th December 2002
Well the brakes still aren't ready and im not too confident that they are going to be any better than the standard kit. when I spoke to the guy he said he was going to use a 230mm disc and a mk4 Escort RS turbo Caliper. When I told him that the standard XR2 brakes use a 240mm disc he was a bit surprised. I shall have to wait and see what he thinks up next, especially as I told him I want a minimum disc size of 260mm.
Since that time I have been investigating other options and have found a few manufacturers that make a kit fir the Mk1 that uses a 280mm disc and retains the 13inch wheel.
I am currently looking at some Wilwood calipers and discs so keep checking back to find out what we end up with!
I am still overhauling bits of the old car to get them ready to fit to the new car, pics below are of the front struts and the engine cradle.
5th December 2002
Wow, such a lot has happened since my last update.
We bought some second hand Bilstein suspension for the front of the car, its the same as what we already have but a slightly softer damper. These will be converted to 2.25 coil overs using a conversion kit we bought a long time ago. Converting these will enable us to set the car up and easily change the springs for harder or softer ones.
The Welding on the car has been started finally the pics below show the strengthening where the TCA mounting meets the inner wings, this is a weak point on the Mk1 fiesta and by welding the car here eliminates any problems of the car splaying under stress.
As you can also see one of the doors has been lightened by removing all of the window winder and runners for the window. The supports that held all of the above in place has been cut out as its no longer needed. Now your thinking how are we going to re-fit the window? Well the answer is we will be replacing all of the glass except for the windscreen with polycarbonate, this will be riveted into place and as such the windows wont open. There will be a small slider in the window to allow air in and the co-driver to pass out the time cards without opening the door.
The new brakes should be ready for collection tomorrow so I will update you on what they are.
