Devils Advocate

Oh deary me, these boys are taking all of this far too seriously, and biting on posts in the mistaken belief that they offer a bona fide challenge to the original contention, when instead however they are clearly ridiculing it!



[Edited by Devils Advocate - 1/5/2004 9:30:04 PM]

FLAT ERIC

iTrader: (1)

The standard ECU is programmed to cut the power available in both 1st & 2nd gear.This lessens wheel spin & reduces tyre wear.The developement guy & owner that I see at the Optimax saloon says this was built in after testing showed it to be more user friendly.His words not mine.

This is why Ford dont want to up the BHP any further until they develope a 4WD chassis for the Focus.Which the 300+ BHP Cosworth Focus will have,if it's ever produced.

Does the ECU not kill the power also because of the over-boost problem or is that now sorted?

If the car had been released for sale at the time of my invite from Ford to see it on Boreham air field (it didn't show up for technical reasons)then I may well have been tempted.

But I wasn't so I am now on my 4th Scooby. MY03 WRX PPP (Stealth) Wagon.

[Edited by FLAT ERIC - 1/6/2004 7:47:51 PM]

ZIPPY

REMEMBER after all this its still a FORD.

Ask yourself would you pay £20k for a car that cant drive in a straight line without you fighting the wheel.

You cant polish a DOG T#RD.LOL

Come back Jonmorris.......

MadMark

Just to add my 2 penneth worth ......

Focus is a worthy adversary cross country - and very fast - but only on smooth dry roads, as it seems to be set up a bit stiff. Their brakes are great though - mine were starting to fade before I turned off!!

Just for the record - my pretty much standard WRX 03 (which produced 252bhp at Power Engineering) - easily beat this Focus RS off the lights, with both of us doing a full bore start and I had about 3 car lengths in hand when I backed off at the magic ton!

willgill

iTrader: (1)

why can't someone post a decent "encounter" without having the whole of the Subaru community yet again get up in arms, yes I drive a subaru, yes its fast as ****, but I'll roll over and accept a beating if and when it happens, the only car to do this so far is an RS6 but thats not to say that a tuned RS couldn't beat me. At the end of the day I'd rather have a new RS than a 8 year old STI anyway

Subarus whilst fun are not invincible

[Edited by willgill - 1/8/2004 12:20:10 PM]

jonmorris

I know about the restriction. It's just that people seem to try so hard not to spin the wheels, that it pulls away like a 1ltr NA Fiesta! You can spin the wheels if you try hard enough (i.e. rev it hard, to 3k+ RPM) so it all needs practice.

Obviously FWD has the disadvantage here, so to do a proper drag race you've got to try and overcome this problem to test the performance of the car - otherwise you're only testing the traction and nobody can deny that any 4WD car has the upper hand in a lot of situations.

The restriction has been slightly lessened now and why Ford have only just issued this ECU software is anyones guess - but it stops the bogging down problem when you pull away. Even the Bluefin still has the bogging down problem (the solution, remove Bluefin, upgrade ECU and re-add Bluefin).

I'd love to see someone race who has had the upgrade!

The factory models vary between the 212 (although I don't think anyone has actually had one that has been as low as this) to the 240-odd someone had at the Power Engineering rolling road day.

Even people who have done some serious mods haven't yet reached 300bhp but of course some nutter will do it regardless of how easy it is to drive..

The Focus Cosworth would need to be a minimum of 300 because in 2005/6, I'm sure even Peugeot will have something approaching that in a 206 or whatever.

There never was an overboost problem on production models (not to be confused with people who had loose/detached hoses that caused overboosting). I don't know how (or why) Auto Express got this silly story that also said it was going to hold up the start of production (some people had already taken delivery of their car and production had started over a month earlier!). Wait, Auto Express get their facts wrong? Surely not!

[Edited by jonmorris - 1/11/2004 6:27:05 PM]

jonmorris

I'll be sure to speak to you the next time I need someone to state the bloody obvious.

No I wouldn't. Your point is?

I'm not entirely sure why you tried to polish a dog t*rd but thanks for letting us all know the result.