HOMEBUILT HERO: Mk1 Fiesta
16-valves, Starmags and more.
It was inevitable that 24-year old Louis West would become a fan of old Fords. At an early age he was thrown into building a Mk1 Escort with his Dad, brother and uncle and as the oval badged classic projects kept on coming, his enthusiasm for them continued to grow stronger.
“My Dad, Darren bought me this 1983 Fiesta Popular Plus as my first car, but my mum was having none of it due to the lack of air bags and safety features, “Louis smiles, “so when I passed my test, I bought a Ka.” Despite being a few
decades newer than he’d have ideally preferred, Louis added a few of his own touches and made his own mark on the Ka, which included fresh paint, lowering springs and a set of aftermarket alloys. A Zetec S came next, again it was modified with a stripped out interior and chassis mods, “I took this car around the Nürburgring the week before I sold it,” Louis laughs.
For any modern Ford fan, progress had been swift for Louis, yet his heart remained faithful to the classics. “We’d kept the Mk1 Fiesta and my Dad had begun tinkering with it straight away; it was bought cheap and we knew there’d be work to do, but it did at least have an MoT!” he recalls.
Louis’s Dad had wisely taken advantage of the currently redundant Fiesta sat on his driveway and had already swapped the engine to a 1360cc Crossflow with high-lift cam and XR2 carb. “It was quick for a 1300, but my Dad soon bought a Mk2 Escort to restore and after a short while, his attention quickly turned to that instead,” Louis explains. “Around the time of my 21st birthday with the Fiesta sat again not being used it was finally passed to me!”
Letting go
With the 1360cc Crossflow still in place, Louis ran the Fiesta on a regular basis and all went well until the Lakes Tour the following summer. “The tour itself went OK, but on my way home the bottom end went,” he remembers. The Crossflow’s failure at least now gave Louis the
chance to carry out a major overhaul on the Fiesta, though as ever he took things much further than he originally envisaged. “We’d recently completed my Dad’s Mk2 Escort which now had an ST170 engine transplant and my uncle’s Mk1 was running a similar set-up,” Louis points out. “They were both really happy how they’d turned out, so I decided to take a similar route with the Fiesta. We’d dubbed ourselves Westspeed as we were so busy with our cars.”
Before an engine transplants could go ahead, Louis stripped the shell to tackle any bodywork issues, some of which by now badly needed attention.
“I began by removing all the rust that had accumulated over the years which included some major work to the notorious Mk1 front wings,” Louis remembers. “I’d already bought a wide arch kit and once fitted, smoothed them in to create a cleaner look. Looking back, it didn’t take that long, but at the time it felt like forever.” The front chin spoiler has been blended in to match too while a skinny bumper
balances things out at the rear. The rear spoiler is certainly a little more unusual and we’re told it was bought back in 1994 and never fitted to a car until recently, but it looks right at home here. The same could be said for the USA-spec front grille. “I’d always wanted one and my fiancée, Eleanor managed to track this one down — she even fitted it without telling me and it took a day or two to notice,” Louis laughs. We should point out here Louis along with his family and friends like to tackle as much of the work as they can when it comes to these old Fords and the paintwork is no exception. “I chose Audi Nardo Grey as its quite unusual for a Mk1 Fiesta. It’s not perfect, but we’re proud we did it ourselves.”
STraightforward
After already having carried out two ST170 conversions, the West family were by now quite experienced in this field so swapping a similar engine into the Fiesta was a relatively straightforward affair. “It now has an advanced inlet cam, 1800cc Zetec sump and flywheel and stainless manifold,” Louis points out. “I chose to run with use Honda Blackbird 1100cc carbs with a Megajolt ECU.” A few of you may have spotted the unusual alternator which originates from a fork lift truck as space had become quite restricted with the ST170 in place, while the custom radiator with a much larger-thanstandard core was sourced from a recommended local specialist.
The old four-speed gearbox has given way to a stronger RS Turbo five-speed complete with LSD. With that extra amount of grunt on tap, Louis has sensibly uprated the suspension fitting adjustable Spax dampers and springs all round which certainly help out on the twisties.
Inside, Louis has opted for a semi stripped-out look with the rear seat removed and purposeful Sparco R100 bucket seats up front and he’s also fitted a suitable aftermarket steering wheel. That cool alloy centre console fabricated by Louis himself houses extra switches while a bank of gauges now resides on top of the original dash.
This project complete with its array of unique details is certainly one Louis can be proud of,
even more so as he continued to press on with the build after losing his Mum part way through. “She passed away very suddenly and at first it made things hard for me to continue, but working on the Fiesta provided me with somewhere to go to keep my mind active and busy” Louis recalls. “I had a couple of mishaps due to my head not being in the right place, but I remained determined to get things finished.”
More and more
And the end product wasn’t to disappoint: “My Dad said it scared the life out of him when I took him for a ride around the block in it while Eleanor just grinned from cheek to cheek with nervous laughter,” Louis smiles. “I’m still planning to add more power and bigger brakes, a turbo may be an option.”
Aside from these plans, this project is now complete but rest assured Lewis will continue to remain busy helping his family and friends out with countless other projects. It seems there’s no rest for the Westspeed crew!