[BryanPendleton]

My WRL race team is fielding a 2000 ZX2 Escort which run the 2.0L ZETEK engine, thus sharing alot of parts for the early Focus.

 

[BryanPendleton]

Here is a article on our last event at Circuit of the Americas last December:
https://www.bpi-us.com/single-post/2018/01/08/WRLCircuit-of-the-Americas

 

[felixthecat]

I couldn't imagine running a locked up front diff on a fwd.....around a road course.

 

[BryanPendleton]

I couldn't imagine running a locked up front diff on a fwd.....around a road course.

It was an interesting experiment. The biggest driver for it was unacceptable tire wear. We would not last a day without replacing at least one tire. The tire that was getting shredded was the unloaded front tire. Mean while the competition, primarily Miatas, can run the weekend on a set of tires. We did see marked improvement with tire wear. We could have rotated the tires front to back and vice versa and finished the weekend on the same set of tires. Ultimately the inability to rotate the car with the brake and the ridiculous steering effort that was required killed this experiment. That said the car was quick, despite a tired (ie. 15% cylinder leakage) engine.

 

[felixthecat]

A diff would go along ways as you know.......

 

[BryanPendleton]

A diff would go along ways as you know.......

absolutely! Its coming, but with the recent engine failure the current budget is going towards a fresh rebuild and we will switch back to the open diff. Perhaps later this year or next year, the diff will come.

We have not raced with the current custom suspension with an open diff, so perhaps the tire wear is not an issue now. We removed the front sway, and increased the overall roll stiffness, and also balanced the front-rear roll stiffness for a more neutral handling car.

 

[mac.mogul]

Eh, that engine has some similarities to the motor that ended up in the SVT (correct me on that, if need be) but the Escort chassis isn't that great compared to the Focus.

What made you settle on the Escort ZX2 and not, say, a Focus ZX3?

 

[felixthecat]

Possibly that what he had.......

 

[BryanPendleton]

it's what we had.
Previous team owner had originally secured it from a dirt track racer. We took the car and slowly tweeked it and dial her in, but we were limited by the lack of suspension aftermarket. The previous team owner, moved on, and passed the car along to one of the team members who is more serious about building it to actually compete. I designed a custom suspension for it, and for the first time, we think this car can compete. The only short coming will be our lack of range on a tank of fuel. Most can go 1:45-2:00, whereas we around good for 1:15-1:30 pushing the car, so we have an extra fuel stop.