SPEED World Challenge Focus.........Restoration

It's been rather busy round here with all these wheel sales so we haven't been able to attack the Focus as much as we'd like to. Still, wheels pay for race cars so we are not complaining. I took a few minutes to go through the spare parts that came with the car. Some interesting stuff:

Spare flared fender

Not sure it ran this though

Transmission cables

Intake

Fog light brake duct (now on CF duct)

OE throttle bodies and intake bells

Markers/turn signals

AP brake discs, full set

?

Rear SVT valence

Front bumper cover

Clutch, disc is marginal

Bumper foam. Not sure which end.

Rear bumper cover

Non-flared fender

Not a bad haul is it? I think there's some more stuff in there too.

chandlerGTi wrote:

Mitchell wrote: Do you need help making those Forgelines disappear?

Forgeline RS are my favorite wheels. They do everything well.

Me too. I had a set on my Galant Vr4 and I would get NSX guys asking me about my wheels and not caring about the car, then the poor people that owned Gvr4's would comment on the car but think the wheels were from Pep boys or something. Hilarious.

This will be a fun build.

On that pic request, yes, that thing. The top of ball joint mount, just under the axle. Is there any kind of head on that part the rod end is attached to? It would be on the side of the spindle away from the rod end.

I'm trying to confirm an idea I have for another car. I just would like to see how others may have solved the problem of roll center correction when the car is lowered so much. I pretty much have the same thing built already, I'd just like a little more piece of mind before I toss the car into turn 1 at Sebring at 95mph.

In reply to teamilluminata:

It keeps the heim joint in place if the ball pops out.

bgkast wrote: In reply to teamilluminata: It keeps the heim joint in place if the ball pops out.

Ah, I see.

jgrewe wrote: On that pic request, yes, that thing. The top of ball joint mount, just under the axle. Is there any kind of head on that part the rod end is attached to? It would be on the side of the spindle away from the rod end. I'm trying to confirm an idea I have for another car. I just would like to see how others may have solved the problem of roll center correction when the car is lowered so much. I pretty much have the same thing built already, I'd just like a little more piece of mind before I toss the car into turn 1 at Sebring at 95mph.

Do these help?

Perfect! Thank you. That is how I have a set made for a car, I was curious if the extra leverage the longer ball joint stud would create a problem.

Very cool, I remember watching this car race.

Awesome, awesome car. Thanks for sharing.

Our BRAID wheels came in. What do you think?

They are Fullrace A flowcast wheels in 18x8

http://www.teamilluminata.com/Shop/Braid/compflowcast.htm

We mounted the old Toyo RA1s on them for now but will source some new rubber once it's ready for the track.

I think it needs some big, white BRAID stickers on the side and some yellow vinyl. Or maybe we should get the engine running first.

Since we can't hear it run on the forum, I vote for stickers.

jgrewe wrote: Since we can't hear it run on the forum, I vote for stickers.

At last, a sensible response

Sorry it's been a while since we updated this thread. Been busy with sales, fixing cars and racing. We did have some progress on the axle front though:

I think we mentioned that the car came without axles. All we know from the previous owner was that Focus axles didn't fit and the car had a reputation for snapping whatever axles it does use. So where to begin? We needed to find out if something Ford does fit so we could perhaps have some custom or at least performance axles from that. A local chap on the GRM forum donated some used Focus axles so we could have a baseline.

Right away two issue were apparent with these: 1) our car came with a stub axle already mounted behind the transmission on the right side:

and 2) the diameter of our hub slines is bigger than the Focus axles, 27 splines vs. 25 too. Good news was that the left focus axle did fit into the differential so one out of four connection points nailed!

We did a bit of poking around on parts sites and figured out that Contour axles seemed to match our spline counts and did not come complete with an integral stub axle. They are a bit longer than Focus axles but that might be ok based on how much camber we have and the apparently non-Focus looking front track width. A pair of rebuilts were promptly acquired from Mr. O'Reilly.

Funny, they look shorter than the Focus axles!

But they fit the hubs

and the stub axle

and seem to be an appropriate length.

We took the snap rings off before test fitting so they are not fully seated but don't seem too stretched or suggest they will bind. They will probably snap at the first clutch dump but at least the car should move under it's own power now. Well, once we get the engine fired up. Maybe next update.

I machined those hubs to accept a Contour outer bearing, the actual shafts are hybrid units from GKN. Nothing is off the shelf. They were having alot of problems with axle/boot/joint durability so we tried some mix-n-match to improve the situation. I might still have the prints for those particular axle assemblies, but I would approach it a different way today as compared to a decade ago. Sorry I forgot to respond about this, I only look at this forum stuff during lunchtime otherwise am very busy. I have lots more info you if you want to contact me here: motorsport-studio.com - my time is very limited nowadays so I'm sorry I can't be more proactive.

This is indeed interesting information.

Thank you

grpb wrote: I machined those hubs to accept a Contour outer bearing, the actual shafts are hybrid units from GKN. Nothing is off the shelf. They were having alot of problems with axle/boot/joint durability so we tried some mix-n-match to improve the situation. I might still have the prints for those particular axle assemblies, but I would approach it a different way today as compared to a decade ago. Sorry I forgot to respond about this, I only look at this forum stuff during lunchtime otherwise am very busy. I have lots more info you if you want to contact me here: motorsport-studio.com - my time is very limited nowadays so I'm sorry I can't be more proactive.

What a wild project. Clearly a rather high end build bought for what I'd assume to be pennies on the dollar. Big dollar R&D already in place is as helluva nice feature!

We've been busy with our 911 and dealing with a 50% increase in sales this year but we managed to move the Focus project forward a little, mostly by adding it's first official TIM stickers:

We now declare the project complete!

No, just kidding; a long way to go yet. With a view to firing up the engine we have to fix this fuel leak:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8nc9YsLRfs&list=UUID6AciwFXFct3HiWQk8BIQ

I'm not familiar with these kind of performance lines. Are they prone to leaking?

the rubber insides of the braided lines goes to hell after a while when dealing with fuel. there is much better options out there now, i just dont remember what they are. i want to day theyre teflon lined.....

Dusterbd13 wrote: the rubber insides of the braided lines goes to hell after a while when dealing with fuel. there is much better options out there now, i just dont remember what they are. i want to day theyre teflon lined.....

So we are going to have more leaks then? That's a bit disappointing.

Little progress lately due to priority switching to our UR Quattro http://www.teamilluminata.com/cars/urq/urq.htm

However, this did happen last week.

Oh, and it may have acquired some yellow vinyl.

LOVE the braids.....yellow, not so much.

No progress but we did move the Focus into it's new home.

To celebrate moving into the new showroom we thought it about time the Focus got some BRAID decals:

Well, Snapfish didn't work for long so photos are now here:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/team_illuminata/albums/72157675062456295

We've actually been working on the car recently. You know how we said it used to be owned by Oakland University? Well a group of students from there were visiting the shop, saw it and got very excited about fixing it up. How could we say "no"? So what did we achieve? Well we got the engine running with a lot of help from our friend Fabrizio of  Racing Tech. Well, sort of:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/AjHCWfx7d6k?rel=0

This resulted in us compiling  a long list of things to take care of before attempting to get it running properly:

Some of which we have been working on. First, the leaking fuel cell:

We bought a replacement from ATL but it came without the built-in surge tank and the hole is not in the center.

Not to worry; we think we can make it work. Stay tuned.

Sorry to have to report we sold our World Challenge Focus. We didn't mean to but someone made us a good offer at the right time so we decided to let it go. We've had it a good few years and it has done a wonderful job of looking cool in the showroom but it was never a priority for us so moving it on will ensure it lives once again. The new owner is very enthusiast about racing it in 2018 so hopefully we will get to see it in all it's glory soon. We are also hoping to link to his build thread on here too but he has to start one yet.

Final pictures:

The last thing we did to the car was get the air jacks to work. Although a little tentatively.

The new owner

Sees daylight for the first time in years.

They look so good together

Going......

Going....

Gone :(

Now we have to find something to fill the space.