[bhansali_hardik]

Wow! Just amazing, was glued to each little detail that you have put in.
An amazing build in process, with an amazing write up. Threads like these, are gateway for newbies like me to get some inspiration and the passion that you have put into it, made my eyes numb! Taking away many life lessons from the thread, already!

[PratikPatel]

Originally Posted by r.K

Would also love to hear your experiences on your various motorcycle mods! Cheers!

Will not be right to post links of another forum over here, so you will need to search with the keywords 'Ninja San' on xbhp forum for my bike experiences.

Meanwhile here are couple of links on this forum are here:

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motorb...ml#post3626872

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motorb...ml#post3661110

[Rachit.K.Dogra]

Originally Posted by PratikPatel

Will not be right to post links of another forum over here, so you will need to search with the keywords 'Ninja San' on xbhp forum for my bike experiences.

Meanwhile here are couple of links on this forum are here:

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motorb...ml#post3626872

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/motorb...ml#post3661110

Wow!! Now I recognize you.
Have been a fan and a keen follower of the Ninja San thread.

If that is anything to go by, this will be very interesting.
I am hooked to this thread too brother.

Very best of luck for your this project as well.

CHEERS!!

Rachit

[racerdabba]

Love it Love it Love it.

Youre living the dream. In a world where everyone goes FI (Read Turbo), you come here with NA tuning.

To be honest, this thread is going to be my benchmark when i start NA tuning my Baleno 1.6. The documentation in your work, and the way of doing things empirically is just apart from anything else ive seen here.

Subscribed and looking for ITB's.

[norhog]

Grateful if you could explain in a bit more detail regarding how the cams were fitted and timed.

[PratikPatel]

Originally Posted by norhog

Grateful if you could explain in a bit more detail regarding how the cams were fitted and timed.

This video will do a better job than I can (a picture is worth a thousand words ):

https://youtu.be/IL5P7wEIymM

Note: Mazda & Ford share the Duratec line of engines for their products.

[ritedhawan]

A wonderful thread. It should go down as a classic thread. I thoroughly enjoyed the way you have set forth in detail the initial modification process for your Ford Fiesta. Your knowledge of how these things work combined with the ability of your companion to bring into motion what you expect from your Fiesta would surely result in a provident effort. Some things, I liked about your thread:

I. The comparison between a particular OEM part and a modified part and what advantage the latter would provide to the overall package.

II. Providing a list of parts at the very beginning is like setting up the stage for the modification process to begin and as the journey continues, the modified parts serving their purpose for which they were bought in the first place.

III. The details interspersed with relevant photos to augment the understanding of the modification process.

Earnestly waiting for the next episode.

[KartJ]

Hats Off for your technical knowledge. A nostalgic reading on my part as my late father was also a automobile enthusiast (Professionally a well known Mathematician). Whether its a two wheeler or four wheeler he used to disassemble and assemble his vehicle on routine basis. A long list of vehicle is there. In Two wheelers he initially had Fantabulus then Bajaj Chetak then Kinetic Honda. In Four Wheelers he had FIAT Premier Padmini and also a long list of Mopeds which my sisters used to drive viz Luna, TVS Eco and Others. When i bought my first vehicle a Hero Honda Splendor, it had a strict notification from my mom not to touch it. I still remember when we bought TVS Eco, first day he opened the entire moped just because of his curiosity.I generally used to work with him as supplier of tools and cleaner of detached parts.
Currently I also own a Ford Fiesta 1.6 S Duratec and man what a vehicle it is, a true drivers Car. It is rightly said by you that people are afraid of doing any actual modifications on this car, reasons unknown.

[PratikPatel]

Custom made SS304 Headers, Exhaust, Magnaflow Pre-muffler & Muffler

A well-tuned car is like a superbly tuned musical instrument. Also much like a well-tuned musical instrument, a properly tuned car will sound like music for the soul. Why an engine sounds the way it does has everything to do with the combustion in each cylinder, the pressure wave in the intake and exhaust systems, the length of the exhaust, the thickness of the material of exhaust pipes and not the least the material used to make these exhaust systems. To add to this soup is the crucial factor of engine rotational speeds; as the engine moves through the rev range so does the pitch increase and decrease accordingly.

Therefore, while it may seem that engines of one type (e.g. 4 cylinders) all sound the same, as a matter of fact they do not. There are added complicating factors like firing order of the engine, the mixing of frequencies produced by multiple cylinders, shape of combustion chamber, etc., that pay a role in the sound produced by an engine.

In the above mentioned soup, along comes the Noise, Vibration, Harshness (NVH) engineer, who based on the design criterion for the said car will decide which frequencies will be allowed to be heard by you and which should be suppressed. Base on these design criterions he and his team will decide factors such as body shell, exhaust layout, insulation, thickness of sheet metal, etc.

Therefore, while a Ford Fiesta 1.6 and a Chevy Aveo 1.6 have a similar engine displacement and layout, they will sound very different from each other.

However, there is a dominant frequency in each and every engine. This dominant frequency is built on the root note on which its musical note is built on.

Experienced tuners can isolate this dominant frequency and tell a lot about the health of an engine by how it sounds. I am sure that most of you will have seen movies and documentaries where an engine tuner uses a stethoscope and will have laughed a little at the scene. Sadly in a world of electronic diagnostic equipment, this art is being lost.

It is something akin to some of the medical stories that my mom used to tell me about during her residency. She mentioned a particular one wherein she and a senior visiting doctor were traveling by Jeep to visit a patient in a remote village in Gujrat. While in the Jeep, the driver started coughing. By just analyzing the sound of coughing the senior doctor told the driver that he has throat cancer and should immediately go to Bombay. He wrote a note for the driver and sent him to the Hurkisondas Hospital, Bombay. It turned out that the driver had early onset of throat cancer. By the way, the senior doctor was my maternal grandfather.

What I am trying to highlight with the above example is that the art of medical diagnosis has now been replaced with tests and reports. I have nothing against evidence based medicine, on the contrary, I am all for it, however, as a society in our pursuit for evidence based medicine we are losing the great and invaluable skill set of the art of diagnosis. There are times when tests and reports fail (it is not as rear as you may think), and the art of medical diagnosis plays a vital role at such times.

The above is also true for engine tuning. With the advent of On Board Diagnostic tools, very few tuners take the time and effort to listen to the engine. The reason I am mentioning this is to highlight the importance of having a good tuner on your side. A good tuner is worth his weight in gold. I am not exaggerating one bit here. Finding a great tuner is like finding El Dorado. It can literally make or break your build. For me, I found that great tuner in Vikram of Motozone. Any undertaking of this type is going to be a partnership between you and your tuner. If your wavelengths do not meet and gel, the results will be less than optimum. So invest some time and effort in getting to know your tuner and let him know you. Do not treat your tuner as a mechanic. Just because he works on engines does not make him one. Just as a surgeon who moves through the hallways of the hospital is not a ward boy. Ask yourself this; will you allow a ward boy to perform a surgery on you or someone you know? If not, then accord the same respect and importance you will extent to a surgeon, as the tuner is going to be working on your precious car.

Till date I had not heard the Duratec engine at full throttle from the outside of the car. Insides of the car do not give a real feel of how the engine sounds due the NVH insulation. When the car was put on the dyno for the baseline dyno runs, I heard the Duratec at full throttle. And let me tell you that it is a very sweet sounding engine. Vikram too was surprised by the sound of the engine. Whereas I kept my initial impression to myself, Vikram mentioned that engine has very nice tone and sound great. Just by the tone of the engine he was sure that we would get good dyno runs. As we went through the dyno runs, he was convinced by the sound of the engine that we were on the road to a great build.

After we had completed the installation of the PiperCams cam and flowed head we were a little bit disappointed with the results. While there was a noticeable increase in power, the car was not revving freely through the power band. The rev climbing somehow felt sluggish and lethargic. I was a little taken aback and wondering where we made a mistake. Till that time Vijay of Motozone and I tested the car and our ‘feeling’ were based on our seat of the pants experience of the drive. The Vikram took to the seat and took it for a spin, immediately after coming back he said the problem was with the stock exhaust system and fuel maps. The sharp increase in the initial stage shows that the head and cams are working properly, the stock exhaust system was becoming a bottle neck and the added flow due to the changes in the head need to be compensated with a new fuel map.

It was decided to run the car for a week to ensure that the head assembly was proper. We checked for oil and fluid leakages and any other problems. We found everything solid so it was now time to work on the exhaust system.

The first decision that we needed to take was the type of exhaust system to make. For 4 cylinder engines there are 2 types of setups that are broadly popular. The 4–1 system (the stock one is this) and the 4–2–1. There are other variations like the 4-1-2, but such systems are few and far.

The stock manifold is made from cast iron and while it may look crude, believe it or not, it is a highly efficient design for the application it is designed for. As mentioned during in our previous posts, the inlet side out mounting of the engine leaves little room between the engine and the firewall. Hence, the Duratec uses what is known as ‘shorty’ headers. These headers have a 4-1 setup where the headers collect to a very short collector pipe. The short collector pipe connects to a huge catalytic converter. The design up to this point seems to be perfect. The equal length short headers collecting into short collector pipe and a catalytic converter that is as close to the exhaust is inline with the current thinking in engine design. Such a setup gives consistent torque curves from every cylinder. In addition to the close placement of the catalytic converter to the exhaust ports, Ford has selected place the O2 sensor band at the merger point of the shorty headers. This placement allows the O2 sensor to take more accurate reading of the exhaust gases thereby allowing for more accurate fueling.


Stock Exhaust System


Note the position of the O2 sensor

The problem starts as the exit point of the catalytic converter. There is a sharp 90-degree bend at the outlet of the catalytic converter, which is attached to a flexible joint. The flexible joint the joins to a mid section pipe which is attached to a pre muffler. The pre muffler then bends from the left of the car to the right into the huge muffler before ending at the end of the car.


Stock 'shorty' cast iron header system with cat con. Note the 90 degree exit.

The 90-degree bend is a huge bottleneck for efficient scavenging of gases and left us a bit foxed as to why Ford would do something like this. The answer is constrains of space and clearance. It also highlighted something that has puzzled me for sometime; aftermarket exhaust manufactures of systems for Ford, especially for Fiesta and Focus, such as Miltek, Mongoose, etc., claimed huge gains in power compared to stock system. Some of them as much as 15% to 20% increase. The derestricting of restricted flow is the reason for such increase.

Right from the outset I had discussed my requirements with Vikram. While I wanted a good exhaust system I did not want one that would wakeup the whole neighborhood. It should be smooth melodious and something that I can live with on long drives. Of course the purpose of a custom made exhaust system is that it should it should enhance the performance.

Vikram did the calculations for the exhaust system based on various parameters including the flow data and cam timing. He discussed with the pros and cons of the 4-1 and Tri-Y system (4-2). The Tri-Y system offers a boarder overall torque and power spread. It makes for better drivability in low and mid ranges. Therefore, we selected Tri-Y system.


4-2 Tri-Y




Magnaflow Pre-muffler






Magnaflow Muffler






The complete exhaust system was fabricated for SS 304. I was very specific about this requirement. However, now Vikram claims that this will not be the final exhaust system. When we reach stage 3 of the build, Vikram plans to build the headers in Inconel to the final specifications (Vikram has already built full bike systems in Titanium).

We also had to decide where to place the O2 sensor as in the stock system it was at the merger of the 4 short headers. We decided to install the O2 sensor on the header of the number 3 cylinder.


Headers: Nice gold colour. O2 sensor attached to No.3 cylinder.


Once the exhaust system was fabricated, it was installed onto the car without too much of fan fair along with the Magnaflow pre-muffler and muffler. After the system was installed the battery terminals were disconnected for about 10 minutes to reset the ECU.

Now for the moment of truth. The car was started and left to idle for about 15 minutes while the whole system was checked for any leakages. The sound was a deep smooth growl. I had been apprehensive that the quality of sound. Upon hearing it, I heaved a huge sigh of relief, as it was exactly what I wanted. It was really smooth and you immediately know that this is a well-tuned car.

We took the car out for a spin. Lo Behold, what a transformation!!! The car was revving so freely, the tachometer was now bouncing off at 7,000 rpm where it is cutting off due to the rev limiter. There is still more to come if the engine is allowed to spin higher. The gearing now feels under geared. One does not feel the need for the 1st gear at all. We are going to have to give serious thought to the gearbox in our next phase of the build. Now the changes in the head and the cams are becoming apparent. We can’t wait to get the car on to the dyno again. However, it will need to wait till we complete all the other pending work, which includes custom fuel map that should enhance the performance even further.

The bottom-line; extremely happy with the way things have turned out. The sound is soulful and the performance is breathtaking.

Next: Weapon X Ignition Coil & MSD Ignition Wires

[petrolhead_neel]

Thanks a ton for this thread Sir! Being a Fiesta(Classic) 1.6 owner myself, I cannot thank you enough.

I have a similar dream as of yours, of tuning the car to my taste for more performance. From your thread, it is really evident that the Fiesta 1.6 is a nice platform to tune on. I have never seen or read about a Fiesta with such extensive modifications to the engine as yours. Would be really interesting to see how far and how well the whole process goes.

And the level of details in your posts is impeccable! Thanks for explaining every part (after market or stock) so lucidly. I really know my car better now. Thanks!

The 1.6 Duratec is a beast in its stock form. I am really eager to see what the modifications can do it and how the overall performance gets boosted after that. I agree with you, the engine sounds really nice. I haven't heard many engines that sound this good in their stock form.

Also, are you going to do anything other than the tyres to improve the handling? Do you think it will be necessary after the added power gains? Is the stock setup enough to keep up with it with good shoes on?

Best of luck to you and your tuners. Waiting for the next update.

Regards,
Neel

P.S: This is our car.

[deetjohn]

Originally Posted by PratikPatel

A well-tuned car is like a superbly tuned musical instrument.

Great going Pratik! And thanks for taking the time out to share all this with us. That post on engine sound was pure gold!

Originally Posted by PratikPatel

There is still more to come if the engine is allowed to spin higher. The gearing now feels under geared. One does not feel the need for the 1st gear at all. We are going to have to give serious thought to the gearbox in our next phase of the build.

You know the build is good when one by one, the adjoining stock equipment becomes the limiting factor to fully realize the benefits of the modifications being done.

Please do share some videos on how the Fiesta sounds now.

And keep enjoying the great work!

[extreme_torque]

Incredible amount of detail there. I cannot wait for the next update. Heck I think I am going to ignore updates in this thread so that I do not have to read it piece meal.

[pramodpk]

Originally Posted by PratikPatel

The bottom-line; extremely happy with the way things have turned out. The sound is soulful and the performance is breathtaking.

Congrats. Could you please post a video of the drive and sound of the exhaust?
I own a Fiesta 1.6 and the sound of the stock car itself is good. Really curious to hear the modified car.

[S2!!!]

This is one of the best project stories that I have read so far. The level of insights this thread gives is incredible. I love the way how you're unfolding one chapter after another and I want to read more and more about this project. Kudos to you and your writing style.

In my mind I've already created an image of your car - Aquarius Blue paint with a Fiesta S body kit and multi-spoke white alloy wheels. And it goes without saying, this is going to be one fast Ford.

It would be a pleasure to come and check your car out in person Pratik.

[PratikPatel]

Originally Posted by deetjohn

Please do share some videos on how the Fiesta sounds now.

Originally Posted by pramodpk

Congrats. Could you please post a video of the drive and sound of the exhaust?
Really curious to hear the modified car.

Will create videos once the 1st phase is completed.

Originally Posted by S2!!!

It would be a pleasure to come and check your car out in person Pratik.

Most welcome sir. Will extend a invitation personally once the 1st phase is completed.