The Psychedelic Socialist's Focus ST

[-Jamie-]

Do they have a proper diff in them as well?

Makes a massive difference on a powerful FWD car getting the power down in all conditions

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

Do they have a proper diff in them as well?

Makes a massive difference on a powerful FWD car getting the power down in all conditions

Yeah it's one of the new fancy electromechanical ones. Seems to do really well hauling out of the corners under power without torque steering all over the road.

A Borg-Warner e-LSD apparently.

 

[-Jamie-]

Yeah I'd say once you have owned or driven a good FWD car with a proper LSD you'll absolutely hate going back to one without, anything with a decent bit of power needs one for sure.

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

Yeah I'd say once you have owned or driven a good FWD car with a proper LSD you'll absolutely hate going back to one without, anything with a decent bit of power needs one for sure.

Definitely. The Fiesta wasn't terrible but it was really noticeable on track quite how long you had to wait before getting on the power. In the Focus it was basically make the apex then foot to the floor, even with plenty of lock on.

 

[McGherkin]

You shouldn't have too much of a problem at 380lbft. I would comfortably put down 2nd unless it was cold or wet. That was open diff too. With a diff you should be fine, I'd have thought.

 

[-Jamie-]

Definitely. The Fiesta wasn't terrible but it was really noticeable on track quite how long you had to wait before getting on the power. In the Focus it was basically make the apex then foot to the floor, even with plenty of lock on.

Lower speed corners and WOT really impressed me when I first got the Megane, you'd be expecting to end up in the bushes but round it goes and off it f***s up the road

 

[Klumpy Dumpy]

Definitely. The Fiesta wasn't terrible but it was really noticeable on track quite how long you had to wait before getting on the power. In the Focus it was basically make the apex then foot to the floor, even with plenty of lock on.

It went well at CSF

Still won't get over my mate overdriving his car going "IM GETTING GAPPED BY A FAMILY CAR"🤣

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

It went well at CSF

Still won't get over my mate overdriving his car going "IM GETTING GAPPED BY A FAMILY CAR"🤣

As CSF is at Goodwood this year I'll be there again, so family gappings will be available on demand.

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

Map installed and filter fitted so with all the talk of acceleration times I thought I'd best crack out the Dragy. Still a bit damp around here to get any meaningful standing start stuff, but the in gear improvements are pretty good. Decided to not bother with 1st or 2nd gear so these figures are all from 3rd & 4th.

40-100mph has dropped from 9.7s to 8.4s
50-70mph has dropped from 2.7s to 2.2s
60-100mph has dropped from 7.4s to 6.4s

Still waiting to have the intercooler and plugs fitted so it's possible there's a bit of power loss at the end of these pulls. Will repeat once everything's on.

 

[Trainerbrow]

60-100mph has dropped from 7.4s to 6.4s

Didn't know you lived at Santa Pod

 

[Klumpy Dumpy]

Careful Rich, you're entering mapped V70 D5 territory here

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

Didn't know you lived at Santa Pod

Visiting family in Mexico.

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

Day off and some decent weather so first wash of the year. Scrubs up okay but the paintwork feels terrible when wiping down afterwards so it definitely needs a polish.

Secondary intercooler now fitted so I predictably fired up Forscan for a bit of data logging. Really difficult to get proper repeatable figures due to conditions, but I did manage to get a direct comparison with two 3rd gear pulls ; completely stock, M330 map only, and M330 map with the Airtec secondary intercooler:

Impressed to see that M330 + secondary intercooler outperforms the bone stock car. On longer runs you can see it start to heat soak, but it takes a lot longer to get there.

Also seems to have unlocked a bit more performance with another couple of tenths coming off all the intervals. Most notable is probably the 40-100mph time which is 8.0s vs 10.1s stock and compares to 8.7s for my old Fiesta. Even more impressive is 40-100mph in 4th gear which is 8.3s. The mid-range torque is pretty stupid now, though it does mean that it's usually faster to get it up to 3rd gear ASAP rather than pissing around in 2nd with the traction control flashing.

Only slight downside is that I'm still waiting on Halfords to sort out fixing the damage from the exploding battery. Have had a body shop ask for a bunch of photos, but I'm guessing it's not going to be cheap so still waiting on the work to be approved...

 

[The Psychedelic Socialist]

...and some nice beading from today:

 

[MLB]

That colour photographs so well!