FiST full of dollars: GRM $2000 challenge and motorsports build

[M-Sport fan]

That intercooler looks like a copy of the Wagner Tuning Competition one sold mostly in Europe/UK.

 

[Dusterbd13]

That intercooler looks like a copy of the Wagner Tuning Competition one sold mostly in Europe/UK.

It turns out it is, which is what I found out when trying to figure out why it wouldn't bolt in like the ebay ads claimed.
Seems some guys have ground the beam for clearance, but thats all I've found on actual install details.

 

[Stubborn Approach]

If you would like to avoid making camber adjustments from the camber plate, install camber strut bolts. These cars are caster & camber limited and you will likely need 1 or both strut bolts to be camber bolts to achieve the front camber you will need for the track with camber plates. The stock bolts are TTY btw.

 

[Dusterbd13]

Since im snowed in, im taking the time to build a 3.5 inch cold air intake for this. Mostly because I want the noise and looks. And the battery box is gone. And....

I paid 5 bucks for this k&n setup off a 90s mod motor Ford truck that was headed to the crusher. It's a good starting point with the large filter and nice bellmouth.

 

[Dusterbd13]

Needs more tweaking, but that'll work?

 

[Dusterbd13]

Previous budget: 842.46
New parts:
Used k&n from a90s? ford truck going to the crusher: 5
Another aluminum intake tube from some thing else going to the crusher: 5
Silicone reducer: 2
Misc shop supplies (like zip ties, hose clamps, scraps of aluminum, used bolts, etc) 20
New total: 874.96

This week sees me with ten inches of snow, and a laundry list of things to finish.
20260201_102538 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260201_102948 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
First up was motor mounts. The car came with the rear motor mount inserts, and I bought the trans and passengers side mounts. Used the arbor press at work to push the rubber out of the rear, sandblasted and repainted the trans, and put it all together. I’m looking forward to seeing how it drives.
20260128_164401 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260128_173009 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260131_153030 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
second was the battery relocation. I connected the 4 gauge with butt splice and my hydraulic crimps, bent up a piece of scrap 1/8 aluminum that was taken off the floor of my Winston cup car as an ECU mount. I also used the ecu mount as a place to mount the battery stud. Used 3/16 rivets to do that. When I tested everything, I got error codes for not reconnecting the battery monitoring system. After a little head scratching, I cut the negative post down, mounted it to a stud behind the ecu mount, and plugged it all back together. I still need to tidy up the wiring, and make things pretty after the intake is finalized. But the battery monitoring system is happy, and there’s all sorts of room for activities now.
20260131_153013 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260201_173811 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
To finish the battery, I wanted a trunk floor. The car had come with the factory flooring for the hatch. So I made a cardboard template and cut the floor to clear the battery box. By the way, it’s a neat resin impregnated corrugated cardboard like substance. Cuts nice with a jigsaw. Wound up having to shim a corner of the battery box with a plywood scrap to make it sit level.
20260202_132618 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260131_162157 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Built an a-pillar mount out of some scrap 1 inch aluminum stock, a j-nut and some time.
20260126_145038 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260131_092546 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260131_092814 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260131_093200 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Then, I mounted up the rally armor mud flaps that came with the car while I was reinstalling the inner fenders, and test fit the spacers that came with the box of parts as well. those, coupled with the 225/40 on the SVT wheels make the wheelwell STUFFED. Looks great. I also was able to get three degrees negative up front between making out the camber slots on the coil overs and the camber plates up top. I finally decided not to cut the strut tops. The final decision for me was that to use the camber plates, id still have to remove the cowl. So it didn’t save me a lot of effort in making adjustments. Current alignment specs are -3 up front, 1/16 toe out. Factory rear setup. Whoosh coil overs, white line rear bar. Upper brace in the back, front of the front control arms toed together with a brace.
20260202_144811 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260202_144759 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Mounted up the race seat to finish the interior. I still haven’t received my side mounts, so I’m still rocking it in the manner in which TB set it up. Good enough for the first event. And it really shows why I did what I did with the roll bar….
20260201_173748 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260201_173733 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Took the tint off the headlights, which made me sad. And spent an hour with 3m adhesive remover cleaning the residue off. Then polished them. Hopefully this makes night driving less treacherous, as my chosen work assignments are always at the very start of the even doing waivers. I’m up at 5am anyway, may as well get to the track! Before putting the headlights in that I took no pictures of, I repaired the broken mounting tab on the cowl. TB had glued it together, and that had failed. So first I tried the soldering iron, then reinforced with the hot stapler.
20260202_163451 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260202_170708 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Lastly for this update, I wanted a different intake. Partly because im a 90s kid, and partly because the factory one had nowhere to mount anymore. As the GRM challenge makes for strange happenings, I made things work.
First up, the parts: I buy all the cold air intakes and cone filters my scrap guy gets. He charges me $5 a pop for them. I figure they’ll come in handy for something someday, and over the years they have turned into intercooler piping, a Datsun 280z cold air setup, supercharger intake piping, you get the idea. I have also collected random free leftpvers from intercooler piping kits and such, for the same reaspoins. Id assume most reading have the same kind of stash of parts. Im just more organized, with amore understanding wife and more space for hoarding.
Anyway, I started with a mod motor ford (90s I think) k&n setup from a truck. Even had the MAF on it still! This is 3.5 inch diameter. I also had a random aluminum tube that looks honda-ish, and is 3 inch. Add in a blue reducer valued at 2 bucks (junkyard price) from 3 inch to 2.5 for the turbo intake elbow, and some hose clamps from my bucket of used hose clamps, and we have the start of something hideous. I apparently didn’t take before pictures in as purchased condition of either intake. Sorry.
20260131_144831 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260201_092122 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260201_094335 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Cutting the “honda” tube down to make it a 45ish and ending straight got us to the above picture. Close. You can see the maf housing has a nice bellmouth that bolts to it for that giant filter, and I wanted to retain all that. However, it’s full of cast in crap, and my maf in the fiesta is a rectangle. So I had to MacGyver some shit up.
Started by cutting the majority of the crap out of the tube with a Sawzall, then chucked the housing in my 50s era atlas benchtop drill press to make the beginnings of the slot.
20260201_145903 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
After that, I dremeled the protrusions in the bore of the maf housing the best I could for airflow and structure, and made the drill press series of holes a rectangle via a series of files and a lot of effort.
20260201_160635(0) by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
What bit me at that point was the rpund hole for the original maf sensor. It was slightly outside the o-ring seal for the fiesta maf. Couple ideas presented themselves, but the most bulletproof solution I could think of was making a more solid flat plat with a better hole and attaching it to the top of the 90s ford maf housing. So, I used a scrap of the cut-up aluminum form the floor of the cup car that I made my ECU mount out of, and made another rectangle hole in a chunk roughly shaped like the flange of the factory 90s ford MAF.
20260201_160642 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
I then drilled and tapped two 10-32 holes in the patter of the fiesta maf through both the plate and the 90s housing. Slightly crowned the plate, slathered a LIBERAL amount of RTV around, bolted the fiesta maf in to clamp the plate down, and then since I’m a belt and suspenders kind of guy I clamped it some more.
20260201_163224 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260201_163228 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr

Once that all cured, I went and got my hose box out (all those leftover scraps of hoses at the end of a project? I keep them. Same with the random hoses in silicone hose kits that don’t fit whatever the hell they’re supposed to, the good hoses from part outs, etc. they go in the box. This box used to be three boxes, I recently purged). Out of the hose box I used some scraps to tie in the evap line and the valve cover breather that had gone to the factory intake tube. It took a bit of fuckery, but we got there.
20260202_170032 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260202_172254 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr

All buttoned up. I think I’m going to take a chunk of aluminum and tie one of the bellmouth bolts to the motor mount bolts to give it a secure bracket. Id love to come up with some heat shielding too, but that’s a future me problem.
20260202_172240 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
The most important thing: it makes intake and blow off noises now. That makes the 90s kid in me happy.

 

[Dusterbd13]

So, long time no real update. Mostly because of life on life’s terms.
The scheduled autocross test and tune was weathered out. So instead, we teamed up with a friend of mine to co drive the car in XB for the season opener with CCRSCCA. 10 runs back-to-back, taking first and second in XB. The car, despite the changes, still didn’t want to rotate. However, it was way less pushy! We kept adjusting tire pressure trying to make it better, and nothing seemed to help. We were only putting the car in sport mode.
20260307_093915 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260307_093928 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Screenshot_20260307_160655_Chrome by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
After learning about the button hold, I went out to do some midnight roundabout testing, and the car came alive with all the nannies turned off. Amazing difference.
So, we ran with it!

I decided to try to add more mechanical grip to the car at that point as I had the parts and the challenge was coming up. So I got new LCA from ebay to put the powerfex caster bushings in that came with the car. the arbor press at work is more amazing than my harbor freight hydraulic at the house. Just far more control and accuracy.
Screenshot_20260411_193206_eBay by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260321_063059 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr

The front bushings that powerflex supplied had an ID of the sleeve that was too small for the FIST control arm bushings. So I tossed the sleeves in my drill press vise and kept grabbing bigger and duller bits until the bolts went through. Not a good picture, but it’s a late 50s Dunlap drill press.
20260329_080724 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Got those in, and put the rear camber shims in. in the process of reinstalling the rear camber shims, I did SOMETHING to piss of the right rear ABS sensor/tone wheel. Its shut down the ABS/TCS/stability control system due to faults now. Cant figure out what happened, and honestly I’m counting it as a win so I don’t have to remember to turn the system off!
Then came time to make the car presentable. The passengers seat that was not included in the challenge budget came out along with the Subaru undereat sub, all the cubbies and door pockets were cleaned out, and I pulled a piece of broken ¼ sureply I found on the side of the road out of the corner. (I drive 50k a year around the charlotte area for work. I find a lot of interesting shit on the roadside)
20260321_171323 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Made a cardboard template of the rear seat area:
20260320_183901 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Transferred it to broken paneling. Then trimmed for a better fit. And used a piece of broken pallet from work for front “legs”
20260329_100138 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Wrapped with the cheapest speaker box carpet from amazon and retained with a single drywall screw in the center (weight!!!)
Screenshot_20260411_192020_Amazon Shopping by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260331_163009 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
After this, I scrubbed the car with iron remover, adhesive remover, a claybar, a scrub brush, and various other implements of grime destruction before using the close enough touch up paint I scored from ollies.
20260415_184127 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Used almost the whole bottle of touch up paint over the course of a couple of days. Regardless, I put the blue wheels back on after cleaning and ceramicoating them, and then polished the cars paint.
20260318_185725 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260320_190048 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260320_190230 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Then it was on to make it more visually interesting. Silver just isn’t, if were honest with ourselves. Its inoffensive at best, bland and urban camouflage. So we needed to spice things up.
I tried channeling the 1969 boss 302 mustang
20260318_185049 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
I tried temu special
20260319_064236 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
I photoshopped commercially available options:
Gemini_Generated_Image_7xo9bl7xo9bl7xo9 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
In the end, I decided to get flamboyant and embrace my gen x-ness.
199606_4 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
So I ordered a roll of blue gym floor marking tape in 2 inch, and purple in 1 inch.
Screenshot_20260411_191926_Amazon Shopping by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Screenshot_20260411_191915_Amazon Shopping by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
And freebased the hell out of it
20260322_162820 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260322_164734 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260324_210156 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260325_170615 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Finished up with detailing the car. vacuuming, VRP on the interior plastics, cleaning windows, ceramicoating paint, etc. trying to make the best shitbox I could.
20260408_170420 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260408_170429 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260408_170456 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260408_170502 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260408_170830 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
20260408_170906 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr

Car and truck are all loaded up for the challenge. I leave tomorrow at lunch. I don’t have all the contingency decals in place yet, ill do that in Florida. But ill be competing in half budget, with some other awesome guys. Hopefully ill do well, and come home with a still running, still shiny little autocross car! I’m guessing high 13s in the quarter, mid pack autocross, and 15points concourse. Total budget, with everything that is currently installed in the car, is 654.45 with 880 recoup
20260415_171147 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr

 

[Dusterbd13]

Challenge post that’s long overdue….

So, I had a great time. When we left off, car was striped and loaded on the trailer. Left work on Thursday at lunch, and made it to the host hotel by dark. I was the first guy there. Waited around until Brett and Aiden got in, and then headed to bed.
20260416_203727 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Friday morning say many old friends at the hotel. It was a good, relaxing, social day. Rett and I took the cars and trailers to the track early to get them out of the hotel lot, as the hotel was sold out, and stampie introduced us all to Cuban. Cuban food was good. Id never had it before, and it was definitely different than the standard NC Mexican stuff! Registration opened at 5, and I got the required stickers and such. And applied the stickers to the remaining magnet material. We went ahead and applied that and the windshield banner in the morning at the track. Spent the rest of the night just hanging out with friends, helping on last minute things like aligning an ex grand am Sentra SE-R race car on a trailer, just enjoying a party where a race breaks out. If you’ve never been to the challenge, just show up. Get involved, find your people, and become a part of it.
Saturday morning, omlettes at the hotel and headed to the track early/ stampie helped get the car ready and dry, and get the magnets and stickers on. He had the idea of randomly loading them into the van failen livery at various points aligned with the stripes.it was a perfect idea, and really made it look the part.
Tech was no issue, and I walked the course a few times before drivers meeting in between helping other guys.
I was first car in grid, first car out, and subsequently led great tire narrow budget (200tw, under 225 width, under $2000 budget) for most of the morning.
20260418_092221 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr

At the challenge, we have the option to use pro drivers if we are not good autocrossers. I am not a good autocrosser, so I tend to use them. I took the first run as a check run, and because I wanted to post a time. At the far end of the course, if you fucked up hard enough, there was a section of asphalt that made a yump. I’m pretty sure that I got all 4 wheels off the ground on that, and that it would haunt me for the rest of the weekend.
This year I got RANDY freaking POBST. Yes, THAT Randy Pobst for my pro driver. He’s amazing. He managed to make my beater with a heater third overall in GTN$ by only a few tenths. To college teams on new tires with gutted, caged, dedicated cars. Not a dual purpose carlike mine. Especially not a half budget entry!!
Fair waning: none of these pictures are nine. Some are GRM staff photographer, most are eastsidetims
Image00004 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
104753142-2026_04_18_73951 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Image00011 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
End of the morning session, there was a NASTY noise coming from the drivers front corner. Upon inspection in the pits, one of the powerflex caster adjusting bushings came out of the control arms. Not much I could do track side about that, so I decided to sit the afternoon autocross session out and run the drags.
I didn’t sit the session out.
Screenshot_20260418_170610_Chrome by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
We got DAMN close to hitting with the dedicated cars going into the drags. I figured if I could find grip, I could make that up with drag times and claw back up in the dynamic standings.
Image00337 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Image00341 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
There was no grip to be found. Ultimately I came in with a 15.4 at 94 blowing them off through first and second. It got scary when the other bushing came out, and you never knew which way it was going to be pointing after you shifted. The tires were moving enough in the wheel wells that the mudflap hardware cut grooves in them….
20260420_084916 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Sunday morning was concourse. The magazine had asked me to do a detailing seminar, so stampie and asa stepped in to help me get the car ready, swapping over wheels and loading the truck and everything. I’m grateful to have them as friends. I also used the grand am car, as Andrew was cool enough to let me. It’s a neat car. randy pobst attended my presentation, and I got a lot of audience participation. As a guy that hates public speaking, I feel it went ok. Way better than last year.

So, end of the day we took first in half budget, 2nd concourse GTN$, 3rd GTN$ autocross, and 10th overall. Out of 72 cars. On last years tires. With bolt ons. And balls. I’m pretty proud of that.
20260420_090723 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Screenshot_20260420_054711_Chrome by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Now that I’ve been home, the stock front seats are reinstalled, the gym floor tape has been removed (took a little paint and left a lot of residue for me to clean up), and I fixed the control arm bushings. I apparently didn’t take a picture of the bushings being spot welded to the arms. Sue me.
20260502_163937 by Michael Crawford, on Flickr
Next event is the 24th with triad at rockingham speedway, then the 30th with CCRSCCA at zmax.
I need to get the AC fixed ASAP.