[Legendary_ZX3]

I was hoping to hear from some tuners out there, and you all with turbo cars on what is the limiting factor to the ford focus's power output? This is the zetec motor I am talking about as well.. It seems once your up to the 350-400 range thats it.. is it entirely the cylinder head limiting this or what? Just hoping I could gain some more knowledge about this.. Thanks!

 

[mlbbaseball]

well, on stock internals, ur limited to 250 hp or so, but after you have internals, ur block will limit the amount of PSI you can make. then you have to go CGI.

 

[Legendary_ZX3]

Right.. I understand all this. What I was really wondering is design flaws that limit the ability to make more horsepower. As in limited flowing of the cylinder head which hell, look at the thing.. lol, but really say for instance where does the block fail.. main caps cracking, etc, etc..

 

[silveib]

i big limiting factor to the amount of power it can make is.... its size!
i know people do make billet main caps, that has to be for a reason
also the CGI block is recommended for applications above 400hp

 

[1turbofocus]

I never had any issues going over 700HP other then its costly , The sky/wallet is the limit other then that your good to go

Tom

 

[viney266]

And I see it as a traction issue as well. Everybody wants a 1000 HP Supra...Hmmm, and they still run 10's, Why? They can't hook up! ( there are exceptions).

Tom ^^ Made that kind of HP, and I'm sure even He will tell you its pretty hard to get that to hook up. Most never go over 300-400 because frying the tires kind of becomes an issue at that point.

 

[Legendary_ZX3]

Whoa.. no kidding. Thats impressive, Tom! I haven't ever heard of a zetec pushing 700+ before.. 450ish has been all I have heard or seen.. And yeah, traction is always gonna be an issue.. hell, look at the SRT-4's.. make great numbers all day long.. but they don't hook up for shit. At this point if I could make that much power I would make or put that motor in a RWD car..

 

[polarisman14]

that's why the discussion of using a jaguar s-type AWD setup (for the zetecs) or a ms6 setup (for the duratec guys) comes up...getting power to the ground is more important than the power level once you get up over 250whp or so. Although spinning through 3rd is cool, it's not fast.

 

[Legendary_ZX3]

Yea.. spinning through 3rd is great, but the ideas for the RWD conversion are really interesting especially the stuff about the jaguar x-type.. it just seems like the thing is trying to be over engineered for the sake of a keeping the traverse style transmission. I think it would be simpler to just set it back like in the v8 conversions.. I need to look into it more, but a friend of mine builds the old Opel GT's.. nice cars.. but the point at hand.. its RWD with a getrag manual transmission.. and from what I have been told a zetec will bolt up because their have been swaps into Opel's from what I have heard.. Sounds like a great platform, but like I said I haven't researched it much yet..

 

[polarisman14]

Well, the two things I were suggesting were AWD platforms, not RWD...the problem with a full-on RWD setup is rotating the engine and having enough clearance for everything. It'd be easy enough to use the IRS setup from the cobra, it has worked many times on many v8 swaps so why not with a high hp duratec or zetec.