Hey everyone, hoping to get some opinions from the experts. I recently picked up a project ST and it's worse than expected. I'm trying to decide what to do with it from here. If I save it, the goal would just be to get it running and driving for a daily commuter.
It's a 2015 ST with 285k miles. The original owner supposedly drove all over the country with this car. The second owner put about 10k miles on it before the slave cylinder went out and he sold it instead of fixing. I picked it up for $1500 thinking I would just replace the slave cylinder myself and get it back on the road. Now that I've looked it over a bit more, it needs a lot of work. I've included pictures to show the condition.
This is my plan at the moment but not sure if it's the right route:
Interior:
Fair bit of rust inside the car on the floorboards. Nothing I can't sand and treat with a rust-preventative coating to get another 5 years out of the car (I live where there is no snow or salted roads).
Missing the carpet and several trim panels and door handles. I can pick these up from my local LKQ - they have an SE hatchback that I can steal the black carpets out of for this car. Might buy new, it looks like they can be had for about $300.
Exterior:
Missing the spoiler. I already bought a replacement, will install when weather permits. Several minor dents and scratches, biggest dent being on the back of the roof. Not causing any issues and I might be able to hammer it out from the inside if I drop the headliner.
Right side mirror is broken. I picked up a replacement from my local LKQ which I'll install when I do the spoiler.
Has old focus wheels on it but I have a set of steelies with new tires that I can put on. One of the tires is not holding air more than a couple days so they need to be replaced by something anyway.
Windshield is cracked all the way across.
Cowl is dry rotted and cracked but I have a replacement from one of my other FiSTs in much better shape that I can swap out.
Mechanical:
I know it's going to need a slave cylinder so I'll be dropping the trans.
Engine seems to run fine but I have no idea the service history or what shape the turbo is in... I do have a 12k mile OEM turbo from when I S280 swapped my low-mileage orange ST. I also have a 125k motor out of another 2015 that I could swap. This is my biggest question. The head on the 125k motor is junk, so I'm thinking about swapping the head/cams/buckets from the 285k motor onto the 125k motor, doing timing belt and water pump, and then putting that combo with the stock turbo back in this car. That would be a lot of work and I'm not sure it's worth it for this shell. It might be better to save the 125k motor for another project and just fix the trans in this car and send it.
That brings me to my question (thank you so much for reading this if you got here)... should I pull all the usable parts from this car, including things like the engine, trans, lights, seats etc and either use them for another project or sell them... or do I use my extra motor and turbo, fix this car, and drive it until the rust claims it or the car dies?
It's a 2015 ST with 285k miles. The original owner supposedly drove all over the country with this car. The second owner put about 10k miles on it before the slave cylinder went out and he sold it instead of fixing. I picked it up for $1500 thinking I would just replace the slave cylinder myself and get it back on the road. Now that I've looked it over a bit more, it needs a lot of work. I've included pictures to show the condition.
This is my plan at the moment but not sure if it's the right route:
Interior:
Fair bit of rust inside the car on the floorboards. Nothing I can't sand and treat with a rust-preventative coating to get another 5 years out of the car (I live where there is no snow or salted roads).
Missing the carpet and several trim panels and door handles. I can pick these up from my local LKQ - they have an SE hatchback that I can steal the black carpets out of for this car. Might buy new, it looks like they can be had for about $300.
Exterior:
Missing the spoiler. I already bought a replacement, will install when weather permits. Several minor dents and scratches, biggest dent being on the back of the roof. Not causing any issues and I might be able to hammer it out from the inside if I drop the headliner.
Right side mirror is broken. I picked up a replacement from my local LKQ which I'll install when I do the spoiler.
Has old focus wheels on it but I have a set of steelies with new tires that I can put on. One of the tires is not holding air more than a couple days so they need to be replaced by something anyway.
Windshield is cracked all the way across.
Cowl is dry rotted and cracked but I have a replacement from one of my other FiSTs in much better shape that I can swap out.
Mechanical:
I know it's going to need a slave cylinder so I'll be dropping the trans.
Engine seems to run fine but I have no idea the service history or what shape the turbo is in... I do have a 12k mile OEM turbo from when I S280 swapped my low-mileage orange ST. I also have a 125k motor out of another 2015 that I could swap. This is my biggest question. The head on the 125k motor is junk, so I'm thinking about swapping the head/cams/buckets from the 285k motor onto the 125k motor, doing timing belt and water pump, and then putting that combo with the stock turbo back in this car. That would be a lot of work and I'm not sure it's worth it for this shell. It might be better to save the 125k motor for another project and just fix the trans in this car and send it.
That brings me to my question (thank you so much for reading this if you got here)... should I pull all the usable parts from this car, including things like the engine, trans, lights, seats etc and either use them for another project or sell them... or do I use my extra motor and turbo, fix this car, and drive it until the rust claims it or the car dies?
