Sorry for reviving an old thread here, but doing a bit of research on potentially doing some silly things to my 2015 SE. For context, I am a fabricator and mechanic working out of a shop in Virginia, USA.
So far, my little armchair research has yielded the following:
- Rear IRS subframe assembly from AWD ecosport is possibly a bolt-on affair with some modification/fabrication for height adjustments (namely IIRC the placement of the hubs in relation to the trailing arms vs. torsion beam)
- Donor PTU (transfer case) from 1.5/1.6 ecoboost models of the Fusion, Escape/Kuga, Flex, etc. could potentially bolt to the sigma styled PowerShift/6MT's? Having a bit of difficulty being able to tell just from pics though, might make a run to the local pick-n-pull to see for sure...
This leaves us the previously mentioned hurdles of relocating the fuel tank, evap components, exhaust, sourcing axles, and running the electronically controlled clutch actuator of the rear diff. Most of these are somewhat trivial things to find solutions for when you run a fab/performance shop, but the axles are a bit outside my wheel house.
There is always the option of taking the 1.5t/1.6t transmission with the PTU from the donor car as a whole assembly and swapping it into the Fiesta platform but as I'm sure most of you guys like your 6MT's I suspect thats an unpopular notion. As my SE already has a DCT unit, its less a concern for me personally.
Curious to hear if
@Dialcaliper or
@LilPocketRocket have made any headway on theorycrafting/fabrication.