FIT AN ST 'COOLER

Step-by-step guide to fitting a Pro Alloy Fiesta ST intercooler.

The Mk7 Fiesta ST is something of a revelation. While fast Focuses seem to have as many haters as followers, the fiery little Fiesta ST has always won people over. And no wonder; the latest bolt-on tuning kits see the little 1.6-litre EcoBoost jump from 180bhp to a whopping 300bhp-plus!

And this can be achieved without having to remove the engine and replace it’s inners. Instead, this crazy performance can be achieved with some clever recalibration of the ECU and well-designed bolt-on performance hardware upgrades.

One of the OE components that definitely needs a helping hand is the stock intercooler, which starts to struggle at anything beyond a simple first-stage remap. At the other end of the scale – the motorsport end – we have custom fabricated parts that have been designed from the outset to offer uncompromising performance. And that’s what we have here.

Developed with SCC Performance, using their competition and Time Attack cars, Pro Alloy have come up with a, quite frankly, astounding intercooler upgrade for the humble Mk7 Fiesta ST. What you get is a 62mm core that’s simply massive; 670x410mm, in fact. It’s so big that Pro Alloy have even had to design a new bumper crash bar as part of the kit, to work with an intercooler this size.

The resulting kit is therefore aimed mainly at the competition market, and anyone fitting to a road car needs to be aware of

the structural changes made to the front of the car when installing this intercooler. But for competition and track cars, it really is the bee’s knees. Offering a whopping 210% increase in external surface area, and a mind-bending 175% increase in internal flow area compared the OE intercooler, the Pro Alloy Competition-spec unit has been proven to perform on various race and track cars, including SCC’s very own Championship-winning Time Attack racer as featured in the October 2018 issue.

So, it looks amazing, performs well, and sets the basis for turning your ST into a real little pocket rocket. But how does it all fit together? To find out, we followed SCC’s Charlie Oldman as he upgraded their own ST demo car ready for a full 330bhp conversion. Here’s what’s involved…