it can be done. With lots of money. If your doing it for performance, you really need to upgrade the engine a lot. All wheel drive takes substantial HP to run it. If your doing it to go skiing on crystal for better traction, you don't need to upgrade the power to much. Just different lines of thought. There is a company in england that sells an MTX 75 that bolts up to the zetecthat has an output shaft for rear drive. I hear that the rear suspension can be made to work from an escape

 

the rear drivetrain from the WRC focus is made up of actual ford parts carrying ford part numbers. theoretically, you could call ford and get the part numbers for the rear subframe, differential, halfshafts, etc. and order them through ford, though I'll bet the price will be quite high

 

Plain and simple, anything is possible with enough money.

 

/\ exactly what i was gonna say....would be awesome though...first one ive ever heard of besdies the rally foci of course

 

I'd guess that you would be better off buying a 2.5RS or something like that and building it up. The cost would probably be less that way.

 

You can do it but most people suggest that you mod the engine heavily not to mention they reccomend that you run Forced induction to do so since it sucks out so much power out of the engine. It's expensive possible but expensive.

 

I don't know anything about them but instead of going awd don't those LSD thingys work wonders on a front wheel drive car? That would probably be better than awd in this case. Some one who knows something about what I'm talking about (I don't even know what I'm talking about) fill us in. I just know that going with a LSD is alot more practical than going awd.

 

Plain and simple, anything is possible with enough money.

I'll add time and talent to this !!

The place to start would be with a complete Ford Escape AWD, but the time work, and money would not be worth it, unless you had time to kill and had aquired the parts cheap!! It woould be cheaper and better to import an RS I think

 

I don't know anything about them but instead of going awd don't those LSD thingys work wonders on a front wheel drive car? That would probably be better than awd in this case. Some one who knows something about what I'm talking about (I don't even know what I'm talking about) fill us in. I just know that going with a LSD is alot more practical than going awd.

Limited Slip Differential.... Yes they do work wonders and would be a great choice to improve things in the traction department..
Basically they keep just one wheel from spinning when applying hard power. They make both wheels grip and therefore you put more power to the ground.. That is over simplified, but it works..

 

that sounds a litle too complicated. I say, go out and get yourself an STi, that'll be a lot easier!

 

money talk my friend...
with enough cash everything is posible...

 

or with enough thought and imagination you can do it

 

As soon as we finish the Sho swap we are looking into the AWD.......I've been doing reserch and so far the more common sense thing to do is buy a complete Escape and go from there.......there are two ways you can do it........you can find an AWD Zetec with the VERY weak MT(not the same as a FOCUS) or you can go all out and go with the 3.0 duratec auto set up........plus going with the 3.0 engine you have to do the V6 swap as well..........so it's by far not an easy project, but I REALLY want to get started on one[]..........

 

not totally on topic, but sorta . . .

The 2nd gen european Focus shares the platform with the new volvo that is AWD, so in theory, if you wanted to go out and buy a brand new volvo to hack up for parts, that drivetrain should swap fairly easily, yes? I'm not sure how much the 2nd gen platform differs from the 1st gen, but that may be a more direct fit with less modding required than trying to bastardize an escape. just a thought.

 

The C1 focus is significantly different. Also, the Volvo based AWD on the C1 is a electronic setup using a haldex coupling, both technologies that weren't even in the ford partsbin when the C170 focus was developed. You're better off going with a purely mechanical setup than trying to get the volvo parts to work. They are significantly different. The awd system on the new volvos is controlled by a computer that takes inputs from the abs sensors which can detect wheelspin. When wheelspin is detected the coupling locks up and sends power to the rear. And you can't just tell the computer to set a fixed torque split, since there's no differential action built into the system other than the computer locking and unlocking the coupling.

Conceptually C1 is very similar to and a development of C170, but the implementation of individual components is very different. The focus floorpan apparently can accomodate a mustang drivetrain without too much trouble so at least you know that you have the clearance for a rear driveshaft. But it won't be easy.

 

ahhh . . . I wasn't familiar with details of HOW the volvo system worked, just that the paltform is shared with the new focus and the mazda 3.

In my mind, the fact that a stablemate is using AWD with a turbo'd engine (even if it is a 5cyl) is a good thing and gives me warm fuzzy feelings about the eventual possibility of an AWD turbo Focus coming to the states.

 

I know there's someone over on FJ who's selling an AWD drivetrain in his sig...