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Its actually fairly cheap. Like 175 dollars. We looked into it, there is a diesel mtx75 that runs a 4.25 ish final drive in England
 
Discussion starter · #103 ·
So we spent the entire day on the dyno, with nothing but issues and again Tom worked his butt off with my co driver pat and finally have the car running, have found 10 ft lbs of tq thru the rev band, not the hp we were hoping for but tq is certainly a good thing. I will say this motor runs but tuning has been a bitch, Tom never stopped and figured it out. Amazing job but we are going to try some other stuff on it before we call it done. The runoffs are one month away.
 
Assuming you are running a n.a. zetec with cams and bolt ons?
 
No 05 model, 2 liter duratec, punched 20 over, custom header, custom cams, rods and pistons.
Custom header in like a tri Y or more of a custom burns ss collector setup.
We ran a burns collector on our na mini cooper it helped a little bit

Not to throw shade at Tom, but honestly what problems were you experiencing tuning a 2.0 dtec without boost, and some fancy bits. Were they mechanical issues around cam timing with the longer duration cams. Was it on the tune side with x pro software. I feel Tom should be able to tune this in his sleep after an all night bender. I'm assuming he has tuned 1000s of Foci, and nothing should stump him for more than a minute. Would you mind sharing the root cause of the tuning issue.
 
Discussion starter · #107 ·
It’s a three step header built by America header in NY, we have had great success with this compared to the cosi unit and another big tube header built by a shop here in the Carolinas. The tuning of the motors we run sometimes require a little more finesse. The two liter is stuck due to rules at the intake and throttle body. Custom cams built by Crower to the limit of the rules didn’t insure anything and we knew that. Rules lock me into the compression ratio of .5 more than stock. These cams might be amazing at 12.5 to 1 but at stock limit we are held hostage. We also started with a base tune package and started moving with adjustable gears in both directions. The motor just didn’t respond typical moves. Tom made all the improvements thru the tune after we had a baseline that was consistent with prior performance. I was never promised big hp numbers and with the rules getting 200 hp is pretty amazing, no adders, minor compression bump breathing thru the stock intake I should be happy, but what racer doesn’t want more. We as a team sat and decided it was a calculated risk on the cams, the refresh of the bottom end was needed and it was an opportunity to throw everything at it. We haven’t quit just going to attack it again from different angles. Tom never once has ever given up on my program and without him I wouldn’t have accomplished 1/2 of what we have. The starting field in the runoffs at this moment consists of 37 competitors, 23 are miatas, the rest are a Honda variant with one Nissan and me in the only domestic and certainly the only Focus. Numbers aren’t everything and the total increase of tq across the entire spectrum is something that will if I can convert be amazing, just nice to boost more hp. Tom always gets there.
 
Thanks for sharing your insight. 202 whp is quite amazing for the class restrictions you are up against. Do you have to run a belt driven ps pump. We have converted over to a Saturn vue electric unit using the focus rack, with great succession
 
Discussion starter · #109 ·
Ps is open, we went with a mr2 pump utilizing the focus rack. We tried multiple ways to just depower the rack but it’s undriveable without ps. Don’t know if it’s from how the rack is mount in relation to the motor but it’s actually worse without it tied to the ps system than if just the ps pump goes out. Seems strange, we have it tied to an on/off switch so when I start to move, I throw it up and ps. The mr2 pump is a little noisy, but works great.
 
We are using a Saturn vue in line electric motor with a standalone cam bus controller to dial in feed back. About 8 complete stage rally's in this set up. Plus side zero hydraulic fluid to burst and catch fire
 

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Custom header in like a tri Y or more of a custom burns ss collector setup.
We ran a burns collector on our na mini cooper it helped a little bit

Not to throw shade at Tom, but honestly what problems were you experiencing tuning a 2.0 dtec without boost, and some fancy bits. Were they mechanical issues around cam timing with the longer duration cams. Was it on the tune side with x pro software. I feel Tom should be able to tune this in his sleep after an all night bender. I'm assuming he has tuned 1000s of Foci, and nothing should stump him for more than a minute. Would you mind sharing the root cause of the tuning issue.
Idle issues , no IACV , big cams , new engine , low compression = problems

Cruise , needs to be able to move it around in pits easy , no IACV , big cams , no compression = problems

WOT , big cams , have to adjust both cams , get tune close and adjust cams again , just adjusting cams on a Duratec = time , lots of time

I could go on and on , if it was just a straight forward build , 11-1 , stg2-3 cams , header , intake yes it would be easy but we need everything this engine with these limited rules can give us and that takes lots of time to do that

Tom
 
Discussion starter · #113 ·
So this is a blatant plug for Tom and the tuning he provides. I have been with him for a number of years. He has built the last few motors, two have won championships. We currently rack 7th in the southeast going into SCCA runoffs. Well we had Tom work on this current motor. Well it has fought back delivering the numbers we had hoped for.
Well I have thrown in the towel 3 times. Tom has never given up, or given in. We have good numbers but Tom is not satisfied. He has spent more time than anyone would to get everything we hoped to. Not there yet but he is ever so close I just hope my driving is half as good as his performance. I can work on my car but Tom is the only place tuning should be done with.
 
I just watched Michael's race at the SCCA runoffs, the National Championship. I want to congratulate him and Tom from Focus-Power for a great race! Michael finished 14th of 36 cars in STL, in a very, very tough field of cars, running the only Ford, and the only domestic car (grocery getter, lol) in the group. Many of the cars in STL are factory built sportscars such as Miatas, RX-7 & 8's, Acura Integra GSR's, etc.

I believe Michael's previous best laps at VIR were in the 2:14 range. He was able to go 2:13 a few laps, and ran consistent 14's throughout the 15 lap, 40 minute race., save for a lap or 2.
Talking to him on Tuesday, the car was down on power and was puzzling he and Tom. I'm told that Tom worked his butt off to find the issue and get the power back in time for the race. It was evident by the lap times yesterday and during the race today, when compared to Tuesday's qualifying session. Today was the fastest the car went all week through 3 qualifying sessions, and the race today.
Congrats to Michael, Tom and the entire team that put on this great showing for the Focus.
 
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Discussion starter · #115 ·
So the weekend is done, the car is put away until I catch up on work and the honey do list. So we rolled off the trailer ready to roll and nothing worked. We left with it as perfect as possible, literally off the dyno into the trailer, rolled out and just wouldn’t run. So Monday we ran the test and I spun off and tore apart the splitter, the dam thing took 2 weeks to build. And the car ran super rich. Hello Tom help, so he started his diagnosis and magic. By tues new new, newly repaired splitter. Ran a little better but missing at high rpm now. Ok new tune and new tires, ran a little better but have yet to get back to mid August times. Still frustrating, Wednesday back out and starting to see some important improvements. Tom and I have been on the phone for hours discussing what is going on. Ok Thursday last shot for qualifying in one 20 min session. I have 40 or so true sports cars and us. Well Tom took a big swing at the final tune and it worked, ran a 2:15.2 car felt good and if I could of had a little cleaner run but it was what we got.
Fri at 1:00 pm was race time. We rolled of 21st out of 36. We had a great rolling start and picked up two positions by turn 3, grabbed another and then gave back 2. 40 mins at vir is a workout. We ran almost every lap as a new personal best, Toms last tune for race day moved the redline up to 7800 rpm and it was needed. Motor ran strong, never slowed up and pulled to redline every time. Tom didn’t pull his hair out, I did, he didn’t shoot the car, I wanted to. Tom never lost focus and I certainly came close. He did everything to this build and we ran great, had a memory building race that caused a few folks to come over and really wonder what in the world did we bring to the largest end of the year event. Well we brought a 05 zx3 focus with 2.0 liter duratec. We weight more, present a bigger aero issue, and really took an economy car and kick better than half of the best STL field in the nation. It was my bucket list to earn an invite to the runoffs, done, qualify, done, race and be top 15, done. Thank you to my crew, my Visa card, and Tom. You built a great motor that fought back until we figured it out and then 40 min of redline performance.
 
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