Sriracha is 6 weeks old. It’s at Stage 3 now. Mario has no chill.

Seriously though, he can’t really be blamed for it. Sriracha has big shoes to fill and with Sunday School coming up time can’t be wasted – but it’s still amusing to think about just how young the car is and how much has been done already.

Last night I popped by Mario’s work as his new FSWERKS exhaust had just arrived and he would be installing it. This is a relatively brief update but it helps keep the site current; I haven’t been to many meets lately with the weather we’ve been having, and am still busily clearing out parts of Ketchup and coordinating the sourcing and purchasing of everything needed for the swap anyway. Mario is actually looking after ordering what should be the last big batch of parts needed – a big thank you goes to him for taking care of that – and Mike at RDC is working on the new wiring harness that will be required. I then need to go through everything and ensure that we have all of what we will need before Mustard is torn apart so that the process can be as fast as possible. Sunday School is just over a month away now and I have personally never taken on a project of this magnitude, let alone this close to such a major event. If all else fails, we’ll tow the sedan to the show! Haha

Anyway, let’s move on to today’s quick update on Sriracha. While only the exhaust was installed yesterday, it had been a couple of weeks since I had last photographed the car so there were a few more parts on it that had yet to be seen on the site post-install.

First up is the evap canister skid plate that was mentioned in the last update – Mario got this from the same FiST that his CPE intercooler came from. The canister sits under the rear of the car and is surprisingly exposed so this skidplate will offer some protection and especially some peace of mind, considering the cost of a replacement.

Just before leaving for Victoria Mario had installed the Mountune front lip, which had been freshly bedlined in the last set of photos.

It’s amazing how much of an impact just the addition of the lip had to the car’s overall appearance. The fifteen52 wing extension still has to be installed, but with just the lip and the wing risers so far the car looks considerably better, and it was already pretty handsome from the factory.

A few days prior to the exhaust install, with help from Dave and Derrick the stock downpipe made way for a Mountune replacement and apparently it was not a fun process. Apologies for poor photo here, but I had to use the harsh flash since there was so little light under the car.

With the downpipe in, the last piece that had to be upgraded for Mario to run a Stage 3 tune was the exhaust, so that’s why the FSWERKS system was ordered. Goodbye still almost-new stock exhaust!

Currently Mario is using the stock exhaust hangers but after seeing how soft they are it looks like Cobb hangers are now in the plans. These will work for now though, of course, but the exhaust has more play than it should.

After some fine-tuning of the exhaust tip alignment everything was double checked and the Fiesta was set back down on the ground.

Unfortunately it had just started to rain as Mario finished up, but it was still pretty light at this time. We hopped in and went on a quick test drive, and I can say that the car felt very strong from the passenger seat! Boost is fun.

We didn’t hang around much longer after the test drive but I made sure to grab these last two shots to include here. I had cut some Instagram handle decals for Mario and they are now on the car – each quarter panel window received one, with a third being stuck on the banner which I really like. It features a slightly different shade of purple as compared to the banner (yes, intentionally) so it helps highlight it a little bit.

And last but not least, window visors! These have surely been very useful with all of the rain we’ve had recently and are just a nice little accessory to have period, in my opinion.

With the deadline for the first phase of modifications getting closer, the to-do list keeps shrinking. The last big step is to make the car suit its license plate a little better, so a switch to some new shoes and an altitude adjustment still need to be addressed. If Mario can keep this pace up though it shouldn’t be a problem!

-Bill