Sharpening up the FiST before doing stage 1 or 2

[M-Sport fan]

I doubt any additional bracing will change the chassis strength enough to matter. You simply can't generate enough grip with street tires to deform the chassis and the braces that are on the market aren't nearly strong enough to do much. They make your wallet lighter and car heavier. Now, if you are running ultra sticky R compound tires with extensive suspension modifications, you may see an improvement. Tires don't produce enough traction to induce the forces needed to deform one of the strongest cars on the market nor will the stock bushings allow for that much force to go into the chassis. Forgot the braces.

THANK YOU, once again I cannot agree more!

I will even go further in that IF I were to ever add weight to this car for 'bracing', it would also serve the purpose of making it race organization legal at the same time with a full-on DOM steel cage (or at least an extensive, harness mountable, multi-point, roll bar).

It is just VERY vague as to the federal, state, and local vehicle inspection laws concerning the legality of full cages being installed in street driven cars (and yes, I have heard all of the warnings against cages being used on the street, and without wearing a helmet 100% of the time, even with 2" of padding around the bars near your noggin ).

 

[Goingnowherefast]

Fourth I'm going to likely upgrade the factory bypass valve and possibly the wastegate actuator. These are ALWAYS a shortchanged stock part on turbo cars from the factory. The ones that came on my Audi 1.8t were a joke and that was not a cheap car. I don't know what way I will go but a blow-off valve is not exactly "age-appropriate" for me on a daily drive, I'm old and have kids. Back in the day I can remember strapping a duck call to one on a friend's Supra, hilarious.

While the wastegate actuator is a good idea (and it's clearly been identified as a weak point in the system), I just don't understand the logic behind changing the DV/BPV/BOV without any data saying that's it's not effective. Comparing your old 1.8T's DV to your new Fiesta's ST is completely apples to oranges. That's like saying old B5 S4's have weak turbos, so I'm going to swap my FiST's turbo out just to be sure. Until there's concrete data that reveals a legitimate performance gain from a different DV past stock turbo, I'd say hold off. For instance, MAP performance found the OEM BPV to hold up until 26 PSI. For 99% of OEM turbo guys, you will never see those numbers and it will be a waste.