Project Wraith - ST170 Powered Sonic - EKC0001

[skyquake]

Dear All,

My name's Mike, and I'm a Mechanical Design Engineer for a Specialist Vehicles Manufacturer based in Cambridge. Some time ago I posted up a thread called 'Sonic Wraith - Project Never To Be.' At the time, it looked like my project was never going to happen, as RTR had gone under, and the Sonic 7 was dead in the water.

Having had my build plans somewhat scuppered, I spent a few months flirting with other project ideas, like the Vortex V2 and the DJC V-Storm, but I just didn't like them as much as I did the Sonic.  The V2 looked too much like a soap box cart, and I just couldn't get on with the V-Storm's three seat arrangement.  RTR then re-emerged as SVE and the Exobusa was also on the cards.  While I liked it as a vehicle, and I liked the idea of the Hayabusa powerplant, I was never really willing to trust SVE with my money.

It was around about this time that Stuart put the Sonic design up for sale, and this certainly got me thinking. I did some maths, some spreadsheets and some pricing and decided that I could almost afford to take the whole thing on and start myself up as a manufacturer. I even got as far as going up to see Stuart and making an offer, but Angus from Equilibrium Kit Cars had slightly deeper pockets than me! I wasn't actually that disappointed, as it would have been a stretch for me to finance the venture properly anyway. The main thing however, was that the Sonic had a new owner, and was going back into production. So Project Wraith was back on!

I got in contact with Angus fairly early on, to touch base and get an idea for when the Sonic would be available again, and then got on with planning my build in earnest.  After my brief flirt with the idea of building an Exobusa, I spent some time looking into the possibility of powering my Sonic with a Hayabusa engine.  I quite like revvy cars, and fancied the extra challenge of incorporating this powerplant, not to mention the extra horsepower! However, after really drilling down to the detail I began to find that the amount of extras and additions I'd have to buy, such as a dry sump, diff, electric reverse and so on, were rapidly making the idea prohibitively expensive.

As a result, I opted to return to the original plan and go back to the ST170 powerplant. With that decision made, I could then get on with the rest of the concept design work, and try and work out exactly what the Wraith was going to look like.

If you haven't read the original Wraith thread mentioned above, the original design was inspired heavily by the stunning Hamann Aventador from the 2014 Geneva Motor Show.





The combination of matt grey, electric green and carbon fibre really worked in my opinion, and I saw no reason to change that. I wasn't however happy with some of the other elements I'd planned originally, so I dug out my CAD model and set to work.

The key differences I ended up with were a redesigned lighting scheme, and a large engine scoop behind the seats. I also put in a largely cosmetic rear diffuser, several air vents and played about with the dashboard. I also decided I preferred the Hamann Avantador's matt grey to the Gloss Black I'd originally envisaged, so I threw that into the mix. Therefore, without further ado, I give you the Sonic Wraith Concept:









So, this takes us around to Stoneleigh this year, where I got to meet Angus from EKC, and have a really good look at his demo Sonic. My mind had been basically made up for a year though, so it was more or less a foregone conclusion. As such, I placed my order, paid my deposit and became the proud owner of EKC Sonic Chassis 0001! Exciting!

Watch this space, more coming soon!

[monk]

Looking forward to following this project.

[skyquake]

Update 1 - The Man Cave

Ok, so while I was waiting for the kit to be manufactured, I wasn't just working on the CAD.  There were a few other preparatory tasks which needed doing.  Not having a garage to work in, the first task was the erection of a suitable man cave for the job.

A couple of years ago, when I restored the GTI, I did most of the rebuild on the front drive, using a normal garden gazebo, with somewhat disastrous consequences.  Having carefully stripped and lovingly prepared the GTI, she went off to be freshly resprayed in voluptuous Cherry Red.  When the shell came back, she went back inside the gazebo to begin the rebuild.  With something of a sense of foreboding, I made sure to secure the gazebo very well.  In fact, it had no less than 8 guy lines on it, in addition to a pair of wheels strapped to each of the four legs.  Despite this seemingly paranoid level of protection, just less than a week later, we had exceptionally high winds in Cambridge and I awoke at 5:54 one spring morning to a god-awful crash...



Apparently what had happened was when the gazebo worked its way free, it picked up the wind, and then came hard up against the shell.  One gust later and it had pulled the freshly resprayed clean off its axle stands.  Doh!  As it happens, it didn't do as much damage as it could have.  When it came off the stands it landed squarely on my mechanics inspection trolley, which cushioned it from the worst of the impact (giving its life in the process).  Had it not been for one of the gazebo legs signing its name on the bonnet, I would have got away with nothing visible.  In the end, I ended up doing a dent repair at the rear, and having the bonnet stripped and resprayed.  Annoying, but considering the damage if it had rolled the shell, I got off quite lightly.  Lesson learned. 

So, the kit car needed to be build somewhere a little more professional.  As such, I waited for one of Machine Mart's VAT free weekends, and purchased myself a Clark Heavy Duty Instant Garage. £230 for 4x6x3x2.4 of quality man space. All with a proper metal frame which can be securely screwed down. I was extremely impressed; the girlfriend, less so. Apparently there was some issue with me blocking the entire driveway for, as she put it, 'the next 8 or 10 years' (bah!), and blocking all the sunlight into the lounge.

As it happens, I had always intended to do a substantial dry build, in order to work out where everything needed to be/get everything lined up neatly, before stripping down, painting everything, and reassembling. This had been on the cards for a while, and I'd even ordered the chassis/wishbones in bare metal for this purpose. Therefore, the girlfriend didn't have to twist my arm too much in order to change the plan such that the first half of the build is done in the back garden, and then only the second half (which should hopefully be quicker), on the front drive. Incidentally, this also gets me nearer to my shed/workshop in the back, and reduces the likelihood of the neighbours repossessing and eBaying my tools.

Building it took me longer than I expected; it took a whole weekend, by the time I'd laid the floor, but totally worth it!











As you can see, I opted to put a groundsheet down, and lay a chipboard floor, to give me a nice surface to work on.

The next step was lighting. I wanted to put some semi-permanent lights in, so that I didn't end up trying to work with head-torches and inspection lamps. Most normal halogen worklights and things like that would be far too hot for the tent to handle, and the LED ones are really expensive. In the end, I used 12v led striplights from eBay. At £7 for 5m, they're an absolute steal, and provide more than enough light for me to work with. All I had to do was rig up a 12v PSU and a switch. These lights were originally intended for automotive underfloor lighting, so maybe I'll file that piece of information for much later in the project!



Finally, I dusted off the welder and set about reminding myself how to weld, by making up a pair of kit car trellises, intended to rest the chassis on while I do most of the build. I didn't do too badly, as I only had to re-make one of the two!



A coat of paint, and some taped on pipe lagging, and they were ready for service!

Next update: The Donor!

[kerob1labs]

awesome!! someone around here!! I'm in Cambridge as well, I got Sonic chassis and building on my own with ST170. I had a couple of mods in the chassis to fit an off the shelf stainless exhaust...this is an old photo



this one is the most recent:

[skyquake]

Ok, so finally gotten around to the next update! Too busy getting stuck in with the car rather than writing posts!

So, the donor. As mentioned above, I wanted an ST170, and I spent quite a bit of time shopping around. I had decided I wanted one with less than 100k miles on the frame, and couldn't bring myself to buy a fully working nice car just to break it up. A couple of really tidy ones popped up in the Cambridge area for less than £900, but I just couldn't bring myself to vandalize them!

Eventually, after posting an add on breakeryard.co.uk, I was contacted by a chap with a Cat C write off with just shy of 90k on the clock.  It had sustained a fairly good nudge on the front driver's corner, resulting in a trashed wing/sill, buckled wishbone and flat tyre.  Otherwise the car was pretty tidy looking.  I was advised that it there was no damage to the engine (it is after all, a cast iron block!), and that I could the engine running before parting with my hard earned cash. 







The chap was kind enough to drop it round for me, reversed it off the trailer (having replaced the wishbone and inflated the tyre, without being asked), and 10 minutes and £500 later, I was the proud owner of a 2003 ST170.   With it on the driveway, I gave it a good going over, and found that aside from the obvious, there wasn't a lot wrong with it that a wash and hoover wouldn't solve.  The key bit, the engine looked pretty tidy, and I couldn't see any sign of any damage to it as a result of the crash.  In fact, the radiator and a/c condenser both appeared to be holding charge, so really, the thing wouldn't have taken much to get it back on the road.  'Twas not to be though, as I have no conscience about pillaging this one for its parts!





In order to make completely sure I wasn't breaking down a lemon, I replaced the oil + filter and ran a tank of injector cleaner through it.  I couldn't see any problems with it, and although I obviously couldn't take it for a road test, I did run it all the way up and down the gears with it sitting on the axle stands, listening for any alarming noises; all good.  Perhaps crucially however, I neglected to take a good look at the coolant..

Anyway, a couple of weekends later I got stuck into breaking down the front end and extracting the all important hoofing great powerplant.  I found the focus pleasantly easy to work on, with few silly security screws or funny tools needed.  A nice contrast from my 91' 205 project was that very few of the fixings were rusted to hell, and I only had to fight with one or two (Hint: penetrating oil, an impact driver and the old thermal shock trick [heat with blow lamp, spray with water, repeat] are your friends here).

I took time to carefully label every electrical/water connection which I removed (trust me, this will pay dividends later!), so it took me a full Saturday to get the engine lifted out.













At this point, I should just point out that upon disconnecting the coolant system I was in for a bit of a shock.  I was expecting something a bit murky perhaps, but not what I actually ended up with, which was a 63% rust water solution.  My guess is that it had been sitting with nothing by tap water in it for quite some time.  Eeek!



On the Sunday, I pulled some of the ancillaries and the gearbox off the engine, and was pleasantly surprised to find a virtually brand new LUK clutch and DMF.  That was a bonus I wasn't expecting, which has virtually paid for the cost of the donor!  Then it was all relocated to the ManCave for further stripping.  I will be stripping the engine pretty well all the way down, mostly to check for issues, but also to give it a seriously good tarting up!















On the whole, the engine looks pretty tidy.  Again, I only had to fight with a few bolts here and there, so that's all good.  I'm not sure that I've gotten to the bottom of the coolant issue yet, but I did notice that the oil water cooler appears to be well and truly rusted to hell.  Hopefully this is the source and there's nothing more major.  Obviously I won't know for sure until I've pulled the head off of it, but that's a job for another day (once I'm sure I know how to put it back again!)

Watch this space, more to come..

[skyquake]

Hi Kerob1labs.

Many thanks for your post. Great to know you're in Cambridge too, and you're a bit further along than me!

I do have a couple of questions for you. Firstly,it looks like you've increased the height of the cross bar which holds the steering wheel, in order to create more clearance between the steering wheel and your legs? I was contemplating whether this was something I would need to do. Do you have a plan for how to fit the bodywork around this?

Secondly, where did you mount the Inlet Manifold Runner Control Actuator?

I you don't mind, it might be useful for me to pop around and take a look at your handiwork once I've gotten a bit further along?

Cheers,

Mike

[kerob1labs]

Hi Mike, it's Marcio here. Of course you can come around and have a look. Spot on, I moved up the cross bar because of my seats. If you use GRP seats (lower) you won't need that. Ah, if you change the bar, then the original Sonic body panels won't fit. That's my case, but I'm going to make my own body panels.

Extra: I'm using front vented discs, I had a special order from HighSpec: vented disc + Rally Design upright and HighSpec callipers. I also ordered a custom tank, you can find my post somewhere here in the forum. Because of my seat the front bulkhead had to me moved to give more room, played around with exhaust. Well there are loads of changes, one because of the other lol.

The IMRC is under the battery. You can almost see it. I built a 'L' shape bracket so the battery tray, the bracket, and this flat bar coming from underneath the battery are all bolted together.



Cheers,
Marcio.

[snowbird1]

Hi skyquake, I'll be following your build with interest, I'm planning a Sonic build in Arizona. I've just bought a salvage Californian ST170, haven't seen it yet, I'm still in Wales, it's registered and drives well but had a bump up the back, looks OK but it was hard enough to trap a rear door. Great pictures of the donor strip, itching to get started on mine.

[casesensitive]

Sept 21, 2016 22:57:19 GMT skyquake said:

I took time to carefully label every electrical/water connection which I removed (trust me, this will pay dividends later!), so it took me a full Saturday to get the engine lifted out.

I'd say this took me about 3 months of Sundays, fair play to you.

I made a list of parts I flogged from my ST170, and what I got for them, might help you to identify what's worth putting on the market first. Local used stuff site first, then ebay for a few other bits.
Interior, lights, mirrors, radio are a good place to start.
Oh yeah, don't sell the bloody clock, it's not vital, but it has the PATS indicator light in it, so get a replacement LED first.

[skyquake]

So, the donor strip is continuing, and I am currently about half way to the end of the seemingly endless focus wiring loom! Now I've never had anything good to say about the dodgy French wiring in my 205 GTI, but compared to what Ford have done in the focus, I'm starting to warm to the french! It goes on forever, and it goes all directions! I sure hope I'm not going to need all of that junk!

In other news, I've been spending quite a bit of money trying to buy in all of the major components I'm going to need over the coming months. I've got hold of most of what I want, but I've managed to get myself totally confused regarding the gear lever! Now I know that there are several threads on here about this topic, but they're all a bit different, and I am totally baffled!

So, a question for the pros on here. Which gear lever should I be using for the ST170/Getrag powerplant, so that the cables come out towards the rear and everything works properly? Any assistance much appreciated!

Many thanks,

[mawdo81]

Is the gear connector on the donor above or below the pivot? You need one the other way around to what you have. Probably one from a mk1 focus with an ib5 box.

[casesensitive]

Oct 2, 2016 19:27:11 GMT skyquake said:

So, the donor strip is continuing, and I am currently about half way to the end of the seemingly endless focus wiring loom! Now I've never had anything good to say about the dodgy French wiring in my 205 GTI, but compared to what Ford have done in the focus, I'm starting to warm to the french! It goes on forever, and it goes all directions! I sure hope I'm not going to need all of that junk!

I used the donor loom too, and my build thread is full of terrified attempts to tackle the two Ikea bags of looms (there are at least 3 individual looms).
I've written up all the engine and ancillary components and connectors that are needed in this spreadsheet.

Oct 2, 2016 19:27:11 GMT skyquake said:

I've got hold of most of what I want, but I've managed to get myself totally confused regarding the gear lever! Now I know that there are several threads on here about this topic, but they're all a bit different, and I am totally baffled!

So, a question for the pros on here. Which gear lever should I be using for the ST170/Getrag powerplant, so that the cables come out towards the rear and everything works properly? Any assistance much appreciated!

The correct gear selector for the Getrag box is the Focus 1.8 lever. I built up quite a collection of wrong and even rare ones before I arrived at this,. I phoned RTR in the end, and it turns out the answer to my problems was the cheapest and most available of all the levers. I think it was about a tenner.

[skyquake]

Many thanks Mawdo and Case, that's ace!

Case, your spreadsheet is going to be invaluable!

[skyquake]

Ok, so apologies the the lack of updates recently, but I haven't been posting updates as I've been too busy working on the kit (or more accurately, the CAD). I've ended up making my life somewhat more difficult than I needed two with a couple of the parts I've chosen, which have resulted in a lot more chassis work than I had planned in originally!

Anyway, first things first. The build has been progressing steadily. I carried on pulling the engine apart by stripping off the remaining ancillaries and ripping the head off of it. Had a bit of a game with the VVT actuator, which I hadn't realised would be full of oil (lesson learned), but on the whole it came apart pretty well.

One thing you've got to love about ford, is that I've got a 90k mile engine, and you can still feel the honing marks in the bores! Aside from a couple of tiny areas of wear, the engine was perfect inside.



So, having given the block the once over, the whole lot was given a thorough cleaning down with Gunk (magic stuff!) and a wire brush. It will all be getting painted up nicely later on, but not at this stage. It'd only get chipped and scratched as I put it in and out of the chassis.



With the cleaning done, the new headgasket went on, and I rebuilt and re-timed the engine. The idea here being that I can get it into the chassis and positioned properly, and do most of the building around it. I don't expect I'll actually fire it up during the dry build (I may; haven't decided yet!) but for the time being I just need it to show its presence!





I have lots of nice shiny new parts for the engine as and when I rebuild it fully. One advantage of working somewhere with their own ford dealership, is I get very good staff prices!



Just while we're on that note, I would be interested to know from any of you ST170 buffs whether there are any special procedures I should go through when recomissioning the engine, particularly with things like the VVT system. Do I need to pre-fill anything with oil or anything like that?

Next job was to start looking at positioning the engine. To do this, I fitted the RH vibratechnics engine mounting and dropped the engine in, locating on the driver's side. I knew from other people's threads I was going to need to raise the gearbox mounting by approximately 20mm in order to get it level, so I fitted the gearbox engine mount on some temporary spacers, to get the height. At 20mm, the engine seemed to be pretty much level. I then used a combination square from the engine bay front cross member, in order to square the engine up.









This took me a little while, as the engine needed to come back a fair bit more than I was expecting. In the end the engine mount ended up so far rearwards that I'm going to have to do a bit of a redesign on the vibratechnics mount. Obviously I was planning my own spacers, but I think I'll design a completely new plate to replace the black one supplied with the mounting.



My chassis had been supplied without the lower torque link brackets fitted, (Angus has supplied them seperately), which allowed me to position them correctly for my engine. I did this by clamping up the brackets on the torque link, and them tapping them forwards until the engine was sitting at the correct angle for the RH engine mounting. I then tacked it in place and fully welded.





With this all welded up, everything seemed to be sitting in pretty much the right place. I had a nice finger's width of clearance between the sump and the chassis, which is plenty, and the gearbox was sitting nicely forwards of the rear lower wishbone mounting. Important lesson for all though, make sure you think about which way around you put your bolts in!





Another update coming very soon!

[snowbird1]

Thanks Mike - great pictures of engine cleanup and install!