Category: Maxxd News

The MS-RT Transit Connect is pretty cool in stock form, but pretty cool was not enough for Jo Lawrence. Behold, the world’s first Ford Transit Connect RS.

Feature from Fast Ford. Words: Dan Bevis. Photos: Ade Brannan

Vans. They’re sensible and functional things, aren’t they. People buy them because they need to haul stuff about – they’re rugged, dependable, practical and versatile. What they aren’t, though, is exciting. At least, not usually.

“I didn’t buy this Ford Transit Connect with the intention of doing what I’ve done to it,” says Jo Lawrence, gazing at his extraordinary van with the dazed expression of a man desperate to reconcile how he got from that point to this.

He continues, “After all, it is still my daily-driver. I sleep in it, throw mountain bikes in the back, go to the tip, take my daughter to nursery; it’s still very much used as a van.”

Perhaps we oughtn’t be totally surprised. Modifying cars – and Fords in particular – has been Jo’s modus operandi since he was a kid. The tuning adventures started when he became a mechanic at the age of 15; things got serious when he met like-minded enthusiast Will Robson, and the pair eventually formed WRTuning.

Jo fell in love with the idea of the Mk2 Focus RS when it was released, and he just had to have one; after owning and modifying that for eight years he levelled-up to a Nissan GT-R – only to find that it was actually a bit too PlayStation (“Fast, but no fun”), so he downsized to a Fiesta ST180, before moving back into Focus RSs with a vengeance.

So when someone with this sort of background buys a van, it’s not just going to be any old van. Indeed, Jo went for a 2017 MS-RT Transit Connect – the rakish variant packing a full aggressive bodykit, chunky OZ Racing wheels and a quad-exit stainless exhaust. It was already modded from new, so that’s job jobbed, right?

Ah, no, it doesn’t quite work like that. The MS-RT Connect may be very cool, but for people like Jo, any newly-acquired vehicle is a blank canvas. The mods started small with a gentle ‘I’ll just change this and upgrade that…’ mentality, before getting steadily sillier.

Some simple speaker upgrades came first, along with soundproofing and carpeting the rear, and then the thought occurred to make a custom roof-lining in the style of the starlight setup you find in Rolls-Royces. Having drilled 450 separate holes to feed through fibre-optics, Jo was starting to feeling quite connected to the Connect, and then the thing happened that so often transpires to push a build forward: Jo and his brother-in-law had a few drinks, and reality began to get distorted.

Jo says, “The idea of fitting a bigger engine was just a silly thought at first. But after a few beers on the sofa, my brother-in-law happened across a damaged Mk3 Focus ST on Facebook that was complete but couldn’t go back on the road. It looked like the perfect donor, and suddenly that silly thought became a reality; a few messages later, the deal was done.

“The initial plan was a long-term project, but that quickly changed as Ford Live at Knockhill was only a week away, so it had to happen ASAP.”

The game was afoot. Jo and Will dragged in the Focus, tore it to bits, then pushed out the empty shell and brought in the Transit. Now, it takes a certain strength of character to pull a perfectly good and functional vehicle to bits just for the sake of it, but Jo was focused on a higher purpose: big power, right now – and so within a few hours the Focus engine was in, and then the fun could really start.

The gearbox, shafts, radiator and intercooler all bolted in largely without hassle, so then it was a case of modding the Focus fuel pump to fit the Transit tank and various other detail jobs.

He says, “After what felt like days, but was actually only hours, we fired it up. Basically nothing worked – the airbag light, ESP light, EML… The dash was like a Christmas tree!. But after some fiddling with Forscan and UCDS software, we managed to code the ABS module, get some lights gone, and then moved on to basically a full rewire of all electrics: wipers, speakers, windows, lights – you name it, we did it.”

The van made the Knockhill deadline (as if there was ever any doubt); it even enjoyed a few laps of the track, and everything was looking rosy. But fast-forward six months and disaster struck: a misfire developed.

Jo says, “It turned out that the block was scrap. And I thought instead of sourcing another 2.0 EcoBoost, it was time for the 2.3 from the Focus RS, so it was back into the workshop for me and Will.”

Engine duly sourced, the game of swapsies commenced, with Jo opting to fit a Quaife LSD to the six-speed ’box. Having enjoyed such immediate success with the ST transplant, a few unexpected hurdles presented themselves owing to the fundamental differences between the ST and RS engines.

Jo says, “The mechanical side of things was simple, but the van required a full engine loom, including engine bay loom, full rad pack, lambda sensors, modifications to the downpipe, another Airtec intercooler… And then I ran into ECU issues. The van would start, but ran horribly. After a few days of head-scratching and many phone calls, help came in the form of Peter Tranda, ECU god at TRS Performance.”

With Peter working his magic, the Transit believed itself to be a Mk3 Focus RS. Jo ran it in for a few days to ensure all was well, then applied Revo Stage 2 software. And, just like that, he had a daily-driver Transit with somewhere north of 400bhp.

Jo smiles, “Since the van thought it was an RS, I decided to go all-in and turn it into the world’s first Transit Connect RS. With the Mk3 RS leather Recaros, steering wheel, cluster and boost pod, it’s now complete.”

It’s simple when he puts it like that. Like any van should be, the Ford Transit Connect RS is still practical and versatile. It’s just that now, with that RS DNA, those nursery runs and trips to the shops happen a lot more rapidly.

Tech Spec: Ford Transit Connect RS

Engine:

2261cc EcoBoost (Mk3 Focus RS), Revo Stage 2 software, Revo RS carbon intake, Revo sound suppressor, Milltek downpipe, custom cat-back exhaust system by Calum Hayes Fabrication (retaining MS-RT quad tails), Airtec RS intercooler

Power:

400bhp-plus (owner’s estimate)

Transmission:

Focus ST250 gearbox, Quaife LSD, RS clutch

Suspension:

Front: KW V3 coilovers; rear: custom coilovers; poly wishbone bushes

Brakes:

Mk3 Focus RS Brembo brakes

Wheels & Tyres:

8.5 x 19in Revo RV019 wheels, 245/40×19 Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tyres

Exterior:

Original MS-RT bodykit

Interior:

Mk3 Focus RS heated Recaro seats, Mk3 Focus RS steering wheel, Mk3 Focus RS Mountune gearknob, Focus centre console modified to fit, Focus gauge pod moulded into dash, fully carpeted and soundproofed rear, custom Rolls-Royce-style starlight roof, bulkhead removed, rear seat conversion

Spitting flames and howling like a jet fighter through a screamer pipe while it deploys a riotous 515bhp directly to the tarmac, Danny Tanton’s tuned Focus ST Mk2 certainly fulfils his ambitions of building a car worthy of that infamous ASBO nickname.

Feature from Fast Ford. Words Jamie King. Photos Jason Dodd

If there’s one car that sums up the fast Ford scene today, the Mk2 Focus ST is it. It’s a car that’s as comfortable on the school run as on a weekend track session; as confident on the summer show ground as it is the supermarket car park.

And the best bit is the Focus ST can – and usually does – combine all those things into one very neat, very capable package. No wonder it’s the backbone for modern fast Ford culture.

But let’s face it, the real reason we all love the Focus ST is because it’s a little hooligan of a car. Of course, being labelled the ASBO by Jeremy Clarkson helped set the ball rolling, but like all stereotypes it had to be based on an element of truth, otherwise it simply wouldn’t stick.

And that was 15 years ago, talking about a car with the factory 222bhp. Things in the ST world have come a long way since then – getting faster and faster, and becoming ever more powerful – but one thing that has remained a constant is way the Focus ST is viewed as a tearaway of the hot-hatch market.

Perhaps not as technically adept as some of its (more expensive) German rivals, the ST has something not many other cars have: character, and bags of it. In this case, an anti-social hooligan personified by boisterous paintwork and a thunderous five-cylinder soundtrack. And that, ladies and gents, is the real reason we love the Focus ST.

“It’s true,” confirms owner of this particular ASBO, Danny Tanton. “I only got mine back in 2016, but I’ve wanted a Focus ST ever since I first saw one in the Ford showroom. Of course, it had to be Electric Orange too.”

Danny came very close to buying a brand-new Electric Orange ST, but he’d just put down a deposit on a Fiesta ST. As it turned out, he then had a change of heart and stepped back into his faithful Escort RS Turbo. “I still miss that old tin,” he laughs.

Fast forward to 2016 and Danny finally became an ST owner. Purchasing the car from a friend (Jason, who was selling up to make space for a Focus RS), he knew the Focus had been well looked after, so jumped at the chance to become its next owner.

Danny remembers, “It had already been modified with some nice bits; stuff like the K-Sport brakes, exhaust, and the block mod, and it was maintained to a high standard. But it was just lacking some of the ASBO-ness I was after…”

So, the plan was always to build something of an anti-social thug for the streets, then? “Err, not at first. My original plan was to keep it sensible with just a few cosmetic mods. Obviously, that very quickly went out of the window,” laughs Danny.

As a tunnel fitter by day, Danny spends a lot of time working away from home, where a dangerous combination of an abundance of free time in evenings away from the family, and a smart-phone with internet access to various tuning websites wreaked havoc with any notion of ‘cosmetic upgrades only’.

Danny recalls, “My first few mods were actually purely cosmetic: Maxton Designs splitters and skirts, Zunsport grilles, light brows and so on. My first performance upgrade was swapping the lowering springs for a set of BC Racing coilovers.

“But the biggest changes started to come when I was working away from home a lot; I had time on my hands after work, and I would sit in my digs looking through the Auto Specialists website saying, ‘I want that’, before promptly ordering loads of bits.”

The next few years saw Danny chopping and changing any bits he could. The mapping was swapped to Dreamscience Mod XRS software (complete with the anti-social ‘pop and bang’ add-on, naturally), and a host of bolt-on performance upgrades found their way under the bonnet. Part of this process saw Danny and Andy at BRC Performance become good friends, and with Danny always knowing he wanted to go for more power eventually, Andy proved an invaluable source of knowledge and advice.

Then, one fateful day, the time came for those big ideas to become reality. “After four years of abuse, the stock turbo blow itself to pieces,” recalls Danny, “but this served as the perfect opportunity to go for it, and pull the engine out to forge it ahead of chucking some serious power at it.”

The engine was duly removed, stripped and inspected by Andy and Jamie at BRC Performance, before a set of Wossner pistons and PEC conrods were added – along with Newman cams in the refreshed cylinder head – and the five-cylinder was dotingly rebuilt in anticipation of a significant power hike.

At this point, the turbo was a BorgWarner K16 from a Mk2 Focus RS and the software was the tried-and-tested Revo Stage 4+.

“That only lasted while I was running-in the new engine, though – about 200 miles, I think. I managed to get my hands on a Garrett GTX3076R turbo setup, and Andy at BRC came back with a new Ecumaster EMU Black engine management system and complete wiring harness,” remembers Danny.

Things had just gone up a notch. Unlike the direct-fit RS item, the massive GTX turbo meant Danny needed to fit an external wastegate system too. And that lends itself to another of this ST’s hooligan upgrades – the screamer pipe that exits at the back of the bonnet. Not only does it sound like a jet fighter about to launch, it also spits huge flames all over the windscreen. Not your average optional extra.

But this isn’t your average tuned Focus ST Mk2. It’s been built with thrills and giggles in mind from the very start, and after Romain at Race Cal had tweaked the very clever EMU Black ECU the ST produced a raucous 515bhp.

“We’re not finished there, either. We’re currently running a development BRC fuel pump, so there’s definitely more power to come yet once that’s dialled in. We’ll probably cap the power at around 550bhp – that’ll be plenty. The noise, the power, the flames out of the bonnet, and the way it scares passengers already is awesome,” admits Danny.

But then, Danny drops a bombshell. “I do wonder what it would be like with this power and all-wheel drive…”

Blimey. Sounds like this story is far from over. Which brings us to what is perhaps the biggest reason so many of us love the ST – its ability to constantly evolve, and the seemingly limitless tuning possibilities. While wider society may frown upon cars like Danny’s tuned Focus ST Mk2 for their antisocial nature, in a bizarre paradox, it’s precisely these kinds of cars that bond us enthusiasts and help form the fast Ford society. It’s a funny old world…

Tech Spec: Tuned Focus ST Mk2

Engine:

2522cc turbocharged Duratec five-cylinder, Wossner forged pistons, PEC forged conrods, block mod, Newman high-lift cams, BRC Performance ‘development’ fuel pump, 1000cc injectors, Garrett GTX3076R turbo, Turbosmart external wastegate, Focus RS oil cooler, Funk Motorsport turbo heat blanket, BRC Performance custom downpipe and screamer pipe exiting at rear of bonnet, Anembo Engineering inlet plenum, oversized throttle body, Airtec ported lower inlet manifold, Airtec intercooler, Airtec breather kit, Hardrace and Powerflex engine mounts, Pro Alloy big boost pipes, Syvecs MAF-less crossover pipe, RamAir Proram filter, KMS Thunderstorm exhaust, Auto Specialists engine dress-up kit, hydro-dipped engine bay plastics, DnA custom bonnet prop, Ecumasters EMU Black engine management system

Power:

515bhp (will be capped at 550bhp after further tweaks)

Transmission:

Focus ST Getrag M66 six-speed gearbox, Quaife ATB limited-slip diff, Helix Motorsport six-paddle clutch, B&M short-shifter kit, Hardrace uprated mounts

Suspension:

BC Racing coilovers, Hardrace lower arms and track-rod ends, Summit strut brace and rear subframe brace, Hardrace rear anti-roll bar, Whiteline front anti-roll bar, Powerflex bushes

Brakes:

Front: K-Sport 356mm drilled and grooved discs with eight-pot callipers and EBC Yellowstuff pads; rear: Focus ST callipers with drilled and grooved discs and EBC Yellowstuff pads; Goodridge brake lines all round

Wheels & Tyres:

8.5×18 Cruize Blade alloys in gloss black with ET42 offset, 225/40R18 Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tyres

Exterior:

Focus ST in Electric Orange, Maxton Designs lowline kit, Zunsport grilles, Maxton Designs RS-style rear spoiler with extension, Climair wind deflectors, custom rear diffuser, DRL switchbacks in headlights and fogs, direction arrows behind wing mirror glass, custom grille lights, underbonnet mirrors, Rally Flaps mud flaps, RS bonnet vents

Interior:

Focus ST, custom floor mats, custom flat-bottom steering wheel, orange and black leather seats, hydro-dipped interior plastics, custom dial faces to match hydro-dipping, ST puddle lights, ‘ASBO’ custom door sills, custom boot liner and parcel shelf, Alpine head unit, Edge 6x9s, tweeters and mids, 1000w amp and 10in JBL sub in custom enclosure