How It Stands Today

Lets be honest, this is why you’re here, right? So, lets start off by showing off how the car stands as of today, with 67450 miles on it. Well, rather than explain it all, here’s a copy of the show board I bring with me to car shows. Not the most powerful, or even most highly built car on the road today, sure. However, I spent years trying to find the perfect mash-up of parts to make this car feel OEM while still feeling modified.

Now, for the real car nerds, keep scrolling. This car’s story is one to tell.

The Story So Far….

This is a story about a little red car that, seemingly, couldn’t catch a break. Reposessed from the first owner, bought as a learner car for a new driver, then sold twice with a litany of mechanical issues. From 2009 until it’s redemption arc in 2020, this car has had quite a rough life. This story is ever-changing, so be sure to check back to see what she’s been up to.

In The Beginning

Unfortunately, I do not have a very detailed history of the car in it’s early life. However, this is what I’ve been able to piece together, through old forum posts and through the vehicle history report. Things start to become clearer around 2008.

This SVT rolled off the assembly line of Hermosillo Stamping and Assembly Plant in Hermosillo, Mexico in July of 2002, destined for a Ford Dealer in Delray Beach, what is now known as Greico Ford Of Delray Beach. The car was sold to the first owner in October 2002, but the first owner quickly abused the car. A Nitrous Oxide kit was installed, and must have been used quite a bit (this will be relevant later).

By 2005, the first owner fell behind on the payments and the car was reposessed in March of 2005. The car was sent to auction, where it would float around in their systems for over a year. Then, in August 2006, it was sold to the second owner, all the way up in Minnesota.

Third Time’s A Charm? Well…

This is the time when things start getting a lot more clear. Owner #3 was the first time this car had been given some proper love. However, that love was short lived…don’t worry, I’m getting there.

In April 2008, this car was fully in the possession of the third owner, who quickly got to work making the proper repairs to the car. By this time, the car had accumulated 54K miles on it, but was already in need of a complete suspension and brake overhaul, a new clutch, a new front subframe, a new upper radiator support, tires, and axles. The third owner put all of this on, as well as installed a Powerwerks Supercharger. But there was something sinister lurking. Remember when I said a nitrous kit was installed on the car sometime between 2002 and 2005? Well, apparently that had done some kind of internal engine damage, and after only 1000 miles, the engine blew up. I have spoken to this owner, and he said that a rod literally went shooting out the front of the engine. Unfortunately, he does not have any pictures of the carnage from this engine replacement (don’t worry, there’s 1 more engine we haven’t gotten to yet).

A used, low mileage engine was acquired and installed, but the car never ran quite right even with the new engine. It seemed to either be off time or had a compression issue. So, here the car sat, on jack stands, from about September 2009 until December 2014, where the car was sold to a mutual friend of ours. Owner 3 had to sell the car to make room in the garage for other projects, and since this seemed to be the never-ending project, he decided it best to just cut losses and sell it to someone who may have the time to look into it.

4’s A Crowd

Unfortunately, this owner did not have a lot of time to really dig into it too much, either. In Spring 2016, my friend had spent some time with some other knowledgeable people to try get it running. The injectors had been sent off to get cleaned, and the timing was checked and re-checked, and re-checked again. The SVT’s 2L Zetec is unique in that it’s an interference engine. The forged pistons inside the block have relief cuts in them to make sure the valves have enough clearance. It also has a oil pressure driven variable cam gear on the exhaust cam. If when doing the timing belt, you do not release the residual oil pressure inside the gear, it will spin backwards after timing has been set, and then you’re timing will be off. These cars are sensitive to timing, even half a degree of timing can cause catastrophic engine damage.

The team of people were able to get it to idle fine, but once it had any sort of load on it, the car would either sputter and die, or just stall out entirely. That is when they busted out the compression tester, and saw that all 4 cylinders were low, some down to under 50PSI. These engines do read a little on the low side to begin with, but 50 is a definite sign that there’s significant damage done to the pistons. Odd…because Owner #3 was sold a “running” engine back in 2009 when the new engine went back into the car. Too many years had passed to do anything about it by this point, but still, it seems as if Owner #3 was seriously ripped off.

The car was then pushed to the side to be the “eventual” project, and sort of forgotten about at the back of the shop, with other projects taking up more time and attention.

However, in Winter 2018, I spotted it, and decided that I was going to figure it out.

A couple months went by, I picked up my engine stand, and was finally able to get the engine apart. I spent one Saturday in spring taking the rotating assembly apart, being sure to do so carefully and sorting all the bolts into bags by part. This was my first engine disassembly, so I wanted to make sure it was done right. I had (falsely) assumed this engine would be going back in the car, so I didn’t want to loose anything just in case.

After everything was all apart, I started to gently hammer the pistons out with the wooden handle of a mallet. At first, I didn’t notice anything strange, about the pistons themselves, but the bearings were TRASHED. All four of the main bearings and all 4 of the rod bearings were spun. Later that evening, I was cleaning up the pistons to really see if I could see any damage on the rings, and a chunk fell out. One of the ringlands between the main compression ring and oiling ring had cracked and a 1 inch chunk had fallen out! I went back out into the garage, and sure enough, the other three pistons were all cracked in the same way.

Let The Games Begin

I spent the next almost year and a half collecting parts. The great thing about limited production cars…limited production parts. It took quite awhile, but I gathered everything needed for the build-off.

Unfortunately, while the car had been left sitting…mice found their way inside.

Well, great. Guess I’m now stripping the car down to literally nothing.

So…that’s what I did.