A few weekends ago we shared Part 1 of Keith’s Fiesta ST build, taking a look at the wheels, tires and mechanical upgrades that the mini ST had seen. At the end of the post it was promised that a coming Part 2 would document a group of parts intended to make the car a little more visually distinctive and that’s exactly what we have for you tonight! Granted, one final “performance” modification was included in the parts pile as you’ll see below, but generally speaking all of the new installs were to help level-up the appearance of the car so that it matched the newfound power increase.
To go along with the written entry covering this stage of the build we did also film some of the work as it happened to be the first proper Garage Day we’d had since 2019, and so we were very happy to be able to have the chance to do so. However, as anyone who read Part 1 probably wasn’t too surprised to find, the video did have to end somewhat abruptly without the inclusion of any proper video clips showing the car in its completed form. That will all be addressed as well in this post, but at the end. For now, let’s get into a bit more detail regarding the parts that Keith had selected for – and we installed on – the FiST.
Here’s most of the collection, with a couple more bits shown in the next photo: all together there were eyelids, a front lip, and side skirts all from Maxton, a Velossa Tech Big Mouth snorkel and diffuser fins, Hella horns, and the stencil for the FMIC (which was shown in the last update but not yet used).
One thing’s for sure: Keith came prepared. Not only did he have all of the parts together so we could tackle everything in one single (*cough* 12 hour *cough*) install day, but even brought some supplies to help with some of the jobs! I keep a pretty healthy stock of various supplies/materials/paints/etc but Keith came with his own set to ensure we had just about everything we needed.
He even brought Callie with him – admittedly because we knew it’d be a long day, but it was awesome to have her around.
Anyway, teardown began! We decided to get the bumper removal out of the way first as there were a number of jobs which all necessitated it being off the car, and with all of the fasteners underneath (as well as the silly fender-to-bumper bolts) we knew it’d be the most tedious task of the day.
While we were working through teardown Robyn was outside prepping a few parts for paint so that those could be sprayed and left to dry as we worked through the rest of the installs. Keith wanted the horn faceplates, snorkel mouth, and COBB logo to all be in a specific – and matching – shade of blue; so yes, in case you were wondering, the already-blue snorkel mouth was resprayed a different blue.
Back inside, the upper shroud was removed so that the main body of the Velossa Tech snorkel could be slid into place. The original plan (as noted in the video) was to trim and refit the shroud later on, but ultimately we left it off as the final placement of the horns would have necessitated much more trimming, and we weren’t too concerned about just omitting it entirely.
Speaking of the horns, it was decided that they’d be mounted behind the grille so that they could be seen through it, and for the job we were able to reuse the OEM horn bracket which made it easy.
To clear part of the car’s structure the bracket had be reshaped slightly, but it was easily handled via a bit of muscle and some pliers. I’m sure if Doug is reading this he’ll be quite disappointed that I don’t yet have a bench vise for times such as this; it’s on my list! Haha
The other “modification” required here was to cut a small slot into the plastic framework, next to the hole we’d opted to use for fastening the bracket. With only one mounting point, Ford included the little tab on the bracket to keep it from spinning when bolted in its original location and so we reused it for that same purpose here.
With some jobs out of the way by this point we then turned our attention to the front lip, marking and drilling its mounting holes so it’d be ready for some double-sided 3M tape and final install later that day. Low-profile front lips like this are things we keep going back to when it comes to the ST/RS builds as they’re all you need for a bit of visual aggression, and don’t impact your ground clearance or approach angle too much.
We then came back to the car and started covering it in preparation for some paint to fly in the garage this time. As mentioned Keith wanted the COBB stencil on the intercooler to match the horn faceplates and snorkel mouth, so as those were now receiving their colour coats it was time to do the same here. We applied the stencil – a bit lower than center so that it’d line up with the lower grille of the bumper – sealed the car in its little drop sheet bubble, and then Keith got to work with the spray can.
Paint now drying, the side skirts were unwrapped next so we could start preparing them as well. These we had to be really careful with as they had just been painted themselves, in (the insane) Tuxedo Black to match the ST!
Quick break, for snacks. And cuddles with Callie.
And back to work! Here the passenger skirt had just been wiped down to remove any residual grease or dirt, and had the double-sided tape applied. This combined with the hardware makes for a super strong install.
Elsewhere, the pieces Keith had painted were drying so that they could be put into place later that evening.
For the side skirts the car had to be raised up higher to allow the drill to fit in underneath, but soon the mounting holes had been made and hardware put in place so those too could be called complete. Having the “fins” at the back really made the skirts more pronounced and we all agreed they looked much better for it.
Back up front, it was time to get around to finishing the horn install! The covers were bolted back in place, and with the horns now sitting further from their plug (plus having different connectors than the OEM units) I rummaged through my bin of electrical supplies to whip up a new harness.
As I had joked in the video, it was no Rywire harness but it certainly got the job done! Admittedly I do need to restock my electrical supplies as I was quite low on things like heatshrink and connectors (and colours of wire…), but I had enough to get the job done. Some loom and electrical tape tidied up most of it, while leaving the ends of the wires free to move and bend into the appropriate positions.
Clipped into place, it looked quite at home aside from the obvious difference in cleanliness as compared to the 6-year old wiring next to it.
With the horns complete, Big Mouth fully assembled, lip on, and stencil dry, one of our last tasks of the night was to remove the lower grille and cut out its supports to fully expose the intercooler. Like with the video however, this is where the install portion of this post will end somewhat suddenly (the video did show the final install of the night though, the eyelids).
As we finished the install day and cleanup at 2 in the morning, the plan was that I’d film and photograph the Fiesta the next time we had a chance to meet up, to grab the final footage with which to close out the video and post. Of course, as you all know, before we could make that happen some genius decided to drive right into the car and ultimately wrote it off however. Fortunately Keith did have a few photos of the finished car which he was able to send my way, so you can all still see the results of his planning and our combined work on the car despite the unforeseen change in plans.
The little ST really did come together well and went from stock to a fairly thoroughly-modified example in a short span of time. It’s a shame that the finished product was so short-lived but as mentioned in Part 1, Keith was okay which is the most important thing. Since then everything has been sorted out and Keith is now driving around in his new car, which is one that you will all of course recognize; it’s not a secret by any stretch but I’ll still be holding off on showing what he picked up for the next blog post, so that the spotlight doesn’t get moved away from the Fiesta today.
This really was a fun project to work on and Keith had selected a great set of parts to make it distinctly his and something that stood out, without being overly aggressive, while also packing a fair bit more oomph than a standard FiST. I hope that you all enjoyed the couple of posts (and video) that we were able to make, sharing it!
-Bill