FIESTA ST TURBO
Crazy power, 475bhp turbo’d Mk6 Fiesta ST road-and-track monster.
When you’ve been through every imaginable upgrade for your naturally-aspirated ST150 and it’s still not fast enough, what’s the next step?
Many would part-exchange it for an ST180 or Focus ST, and some might do the unforgivable and buy a Megane or something equally hideous. But a very tiny minority would persevere with their beloved Mk6 Fiesta and throw the kitchen sink at it in the quest for ridiculous performance.
Adam Ford is that minority. And we mean that literally, because we can’t think of anyone who’s gone this far with an ST150.
“I had a Mk6 Fiesta as my first car, and even though it was just a 1.25 I really clicked with it and liked the way it looked and drove. I guess that eventually led to where we are today,” Adam reminisces.
As his passion for the Mk6 continued to grow, he developed an obsession with Frozen White STs, mainly due to looking at pictures on Ford-based internet forums. And although the new ST180 was on the market by then, with its seductive tuning potential and one of the finest hot hatch chassis ever, Adam was hooked on the oldergeneration platform.
He says, “It looks rawer and driving
it is a lot rawer,” he adds. “My brother has a 360bhp ST180 and it’s an awesome thing, but my car feels like the last of the old-school analogue hot hatches.”
With his dream white ST on Adam’s driveway, it was treated immediately to a set of lowering springs and quickly became a regular drainer of his bank account.
“As soon as I had money, I’d buy parts for it. I didn’t really have an end goal as there weren’t many big ST builds out there, but I did know that I wanted to go faster,” he laughs.
The first jump in power was to 165bhp, consisting of an induction kit and exhaust flexi pipe. Before long, this was raised to 185bhp with some aftermarket cams, and the ultimate naturally-aspirated incarnation was achieved with a proper Cosworth inlet manifold and Mountune map, giving the car a solid 200bhp.
But it was still not enough for Adam, as he shares a common story of butt-dyno desensitisation: “You could feel every stage, but I always got used to the power quickly. Plus the car was fitted with BC coilovers by then, so it was handling on rails and became very obvious it could handle much more power.”
This perception of being underpowered is probably the biggest and most common gripe with the ST150, but luckily there was a solution because after many years of playing with and racing them, Jamsport had developed a supercharger kit.
Adam says, “Jamie at Jamsport was known as one of the best tuners for the Ford ECU, and he did all the brackets for a neat Rotrex install, so I left the car with him and picked it up a few weeks later with an extra 130bhp.”
This was a pure bolt-on conversion with no modifications to the standard engine itself, and Adam absolutely loved the end result.
He says, “I beat the living daylights out of it every single day for a long time, then one day I was kicking its head in as usual and it dropped to three cylinders before completely dying. It sounded like a very sick Subaru.”
Rather than being upset, Adam viewed this as an opportunity to rebuild the engine with better components and get his next adrenaline hit.
He says, “It was time to forge the engine. I thought ‘if I’m forging it I might as well go big power’. It just goes like that, doesn’t it?”
One company was making a TD04 turbo kit at the time, but this would have given the Fiesta around the same power as his
“I beat the living daylights out of it every single day for a long time, then one day I was kicking its head in and it dropped to three cylinders before completely dying. It sounded like a sick Subaru”
“I only wanted 350bhp, and after DWR mapped it we ended up with 475bhp and 350lb.ft of torque at 1.5bar of boost. Third-gear pulls are just insane”
supercharger, so Adam started to look for a custom option with a bit more headroom.
“Word of mouth led me to Elliott at Unit 10 Performance,” says Adam as he points to the purposeful-looking engine bay. “He has a great reputation for one-off fabrication and he ended up hand crafting the exhaust manifold, screamer, downpipe, boost pipes and pretty much everything needed to fit the GTX turbo.”
In parallel, Mikey at Pumabuild was building the forged engine, mating it up to a much stronger MTX75 gearbox and getting it into the engine bay before DWR Performance made a custom wiring loom for a Link ECU.
If that all sounds a bit easy, it’s because it was. No real snags were hit, which is testament to all of the companies involved and their skill. The only pain was having to wait for parts to arrive from various manufacturers. In all, the car was off the road for 18 months, but boy was it worth the wait.
“I only wanted 350bhp, and after DWR mapped it we ended up with 475bhp and 350lb.ft of torque at 1.5bar of boost. Thirdgear pulls are just insane. It can scare me on the road, so that’s why I decided to use it more as a track day car,” Adam says.
The transformation from road rocket to track weapon started with Adam spending days scraping off the sound deadening, not only shedding weight in the process but also revealing rally-car-reminiscent bright white paint throughout the interior. He continued the theme by chopping the dash to lose
even more weight and ditching the heater. But it’s still got a heated front screen so even if he’s freezing cold, Adam will still be able to see the apex.
A roll cage and bucket seats with harnesses completed the interior upgrades, and the mechanicals received a bit of rethinking too.
“I used to have a Quaife diff, which was okay for the road, but I was advised to go for a plated-type LSD for the track, and the improvement was as comparable as going from the open diff to the Quaife. You can really feel this Kaaz one working,” Adam explains.
New AP Racing front callipers with 315mm discs were squeezed under the 16s, joined at the rear by 280mm ST170 discs, made achievable by using ST170 carriers with the standard ST150 callipers. Everything is all properly fitted and set up, the brake bias valve giving Adam the ability to adjust front and rear braking balance on the move. AN fittings and fluid lines run through the car and engine bay as neatly as you’d find in a touring car.
This motorsport-style attention to detail continues on the outside, with a quick-release front bumper and splitters dotted around courtesy of TRC. It’s a no-nonsense exterior – a very serious-looking package to the trained eye but an innocent Fiesta to the untrained, which has brought a fair share of embarrassment to more expensive machinery.
Adam says, “I like it that way. I like surprising people. Anyone could beat me off the line, but once it’s rolling it’s pretty devastating.”
As you can tell, this stage of the car’s evolution really thrills Adam. He wants to change the suspension and get some adjustability into the chassis for track work, and there is also a small mention that if he sleeves the block and turns the boost up to 2.2bar, this thing could hit 550bhp.
But does that mean Adam’s bored again, even with a 450bhp-per-ton ST?!
“Actually, no,” he admits. “I’ve had it for over a year at this power level and I’m not bored
“I like surprising people. Anyone could beat me off the line, but once it’s rolling it’s pretty devastating”
yet, which given the amount of different phases it’s been through is a miracle.
“I actually enjoyed my journey through all of the different tuning levels, but if someone asks me if turbocharging is the way to go with an ST150 from day one, I’d say go for it – one drive, and you’ll be hooked.”