6 months in: The uselessness of torque in FWD cars

[Dj4Monie]

DJ4Monie......."These cars don't need much and while I agree both Cobb and Mountune take advantage of the ignorance of this new generation of car enthusiast, they continue to offer parts when other companies don't, other than a couple of one-man operations out there."

I think this is a cheap shot at Mountune....just what "ignorant" car enthusiasts are you talking about? The ones that have been down the road of warranty denials for mods and are willing to pay a premium for proven, reliable, WARRANTED performance seems to me to be pretty intelligent not ignorant. They back their products and customer service is second to none. Unlike some of the suppliers on this forum they do not collect orders then build and ship untested devices. My one experience with these suppliers has been enough.

Keep in mind very few Fiesta ST owners will do much to their cars, I will never drop the clutch on my car to see what kind of 0-60 times I can get. I am more concerned about third gear acceleration for passing and fun on the TOTD. So the MP215 is perfect for me. The programmer is in the glove box and the whole tune is invisible. I will do no other performance mods as I find my car is absolutly wonderful for its purpose in life. At one time I would have been looking to get 300 WHP out of the car........but those were long ago. I no longer spend too much time and money on cars as being old and retired limits my ability to do much wrenching and the FiST is already too fast for the TOTD and my slowing reflexes. The point being that every member of this forum has different goals and purposes for their car. This and other FiST forums are mainly performance oriented and I love this forum because of the information available, for example we will all need shocks and tires sooner than most cars so learning what works well and is affordable helps us all. I used this forum and other research to help me decide on the MP215. Was it expensive? Expense is relative, 18-20 HP and the torque increments came out FOR ME at $1000 plus a case of beer! That is $50 per HP, not bad but any further increases get much more expensive and kills my warranty. And the difference in performance are real and easily felt and measured.

So back to the question....what has Mountune done to us ignorant folks to take advantage of us? What am I missing here?

It's not a cheap shot, it's marketing.

1) To ease your mind about modifications by offering complete solutions that are guaranteed by Ford
2) Conservatively tune to again ease your mind about warranty concerns.

I personally don't need this kind of hand holding, I come from the Pottery Barn school of though; you break it, you own it, you fix it. Modifying your car isn't fool proof at all there is a certain amount of risk and carelessness can get you into trouble.

I don't let dealers dictate what they will or will not do, they are only franchisees; Ford has the ultimate and final say.

I've had to deal with dealers before trying to deny coverage, usually a call to the OEM will solve that problem. Dealers don't like warranty tickets, the mechanics don't like them either, less money to make.

I like Mountune products, I will be running one of their upgrades soon anyway, no fitment issues is the main reason.

I just didn't think it was the only way to make power with one of these things but too many people do.

You won't find me whining my cobbled together Stage 3 car got beat by somebody with FRPP tune which is an 8 page thread over on the sister site.

Like I replied to the OP if the point was beating your friend, then beat him, soundly and there's only one way to do that.

 

[BronxBomber]

"1) To ease your mind about modifications by offering complete solutions that are guaranteed by Ford
2) Conservatively tune to again ease your mind about warranty concerns.

I personally don't need this kind of hand holding, I come from the Pottery Barn school of though; you break it, you own it, you fix it. Modifying your car isn't fool proof at all there is a certain amount of risk and carelessness can get you into trouble."

Now this I can agree with. I couldn't care less about my mods voiding certain parts of my warranty. You gotta pay to play. Now at the same time, just because I swapped turbos, or tuned my ecu doesn't mean either of these mods caused my window regulator to go bad, or my mode door a tailor on my a/c. Been to he dealer and had these issues covered while openly leaving my accessport attached and obviously running modified suspension and exhaust. Now if I pop my engine, I don't expect Ford to cover it. These cars are nor made of fine China. They're not gonna just fall apart. I've been modifying my cars since 1999. Never had a major issue mechanically or electrically with any car save for my Subaru engine blowing, which is a well documented problem with the ej25 motors. People that want to retain heir factory warranty while adding a bit more oomph to their rides, Mountune fills that need. Is it for everyone? Of course not. I'm with Hijinx on saying I doubt I will ever put one of their power parts on my car. We will see what their upcoming turbo can do. My bet is that it will come in about the same as he X-37 & the Cyborg, but for more money. And people will buy it just because it's Mountune and they think that since it's linked to a major name like Mountune with their factory Ford approval, that it will somehow prevent any potential problems while at the same time make great power. Hey to each their own again. Research is your best friend.

 

[Dj4Monie]

"1) To ease your mind about modifications by offering complete solutions that are guaranteed by Ford
2) Conservatively tune to again ease your mind about warranty concerns.

I personally don't need this kind of hand holding, I come from the Pottery Barn school of though; you break it, you own it, you fix it. Modifying your car isn't fool proof at all there is a certain amount of risk and carelessness can get you into trouble."

Now this I can agree with. I couldn't care less about my mods voiding certain parts of my warranty. You gotta pay to play. Now at the same time, just because I swapped turbos, or tuned my ecu doesn't mean either of these mods caused my window regulator to go bad, or my mode door a tailor on my a/c. Been to he dealer and had these issues covered while openly leaving my accessport attached and obviously running modified suspension and exhaust. Now if I pop my engine, I don't expect Ford to cover it. These cars are nor made of fine China. They're not gonna just fall apart. I've been modifying my cars since 1999. Never had a major issue mechanically or electrically with any car save for my Subaru engine blowing, which is a well documented problem with the ej25 motors. People that want to retain heir factory warranty while adding a bit more oomph to their rides, Mountune fills that need. Is it for everyone? Of course not. I'm with Hijinx on saying I doubt I will ever put one of their power parts on my car. We will see what their upcoming turbo can do. My bet is that it will come in about the same as he X-37 & the Cyborg, but for more money. And people will buy it just because it's Mountune and they think that since it's linked to a major name like Mountune with their factory Ford approval, that it will somehow prevent any potential problems while at the same time make great power. Hey to each their own again. Research is your best friend.

Engines just don't come apart, there are reasons why. This is the lack of knowledge of internal combustion engines and detonation. At some point if you upgrade turbos and other components you need to stop trying to run it purely on pump gas.

Every so-called cracked ring land issue with the Focus ST is user error or tuner over-zealousness. Devices such as wide band 02's which the Ecoboost engine is blessed with are not a replacement for reading the spark plugs.

My rule is don't detonate, period.

That is why I run an E30/E40 tune at the track.

Mountune's turbo upgrade for the Fiesta will be mild, in-fact all the turbo upgrades are mild, why? Because users believe there's a free lunch out there. You are going to get additional lag, you already have a high static compression ratio with direct point engines. There only two things to stop lag, one is employing anti-lag which is hard on turbos and really should only be used in competitive situations.

I won't mention the other you have to figure that one out yourself.

 

[BronxBomber]

Engines just don't come apart, there are reasons why. This is the lack of knowledge of internal combustion engines and detonation. At some point if you upgrade turbos and other components you need to stop trying to run it purely on pump gas.

Every so-called cracked ring land issue with the Focus ST is user error or tuner over-zealousness. Devices such as wide band 02's which the Ecoboost engine is blessed with are not a replacement for reading the spark plugs.

My rule is don't detonate, period.

That is why I run an E30/E40 tune at the track.

Mountune's turbo upgrade for the Fiesta will be mild, in-fact all the turbo upgrades are mild, why? Because users believe there's a free lunch out there. You are going to get additional lag, you already have a high static compression ratio with direct point engines. There only two things to stop lag, one is employing anti-lag which is hard on turbos and really should only be used in competitive situations.

I won't mention the other you have to figure that one out yourself.

Sorry, but the EJ25 has been shown to blow ring lands on stock Unmolested engines. Been in the Subaru game 10 years and have seen plenty of them go. Does bad tuning contribute? Yes it does, but I've seen other engines with subpar tunes hold together much better. Also my car did not ping no detonation. I don't go cheap wih my tuning and run meth injection as an additional precaution if I'm really trying to push it. Always tune for longevity. What good is making more power of it causes you to blow up your engine. My current tuner pulled back some boost and timing because I told him I would be tracking my car. Car was perfectly happy run in more boost and timing, but to be safe, we pulled a little boost and timing anyway. I'm currently in the midst of my e-30 tune. You say that you run e-30/40 on track, well when I run on the track I always add a little extra E-85 as a little measure of safety as well. I'm not new to this.

 

[Dj4Monie]

I am confused...I thought from the Mountune site they opened in the US in 2013 to offer the MP line here. They were here before that? So your problem with Mountune is you feel like you overpaid for something not that the product was bad? Personally I shopped my MP215 and bought it from a Ford dealer for a lower price than Mountune charges.

As to the warranty issues do you also think Mountune customers are ignorant enough to believe Ford would refuse to fix a window because of a Cobb tune? Really??

You do realize that people that don't have another car or bottomless pockets buy these cars as a daily driver. And do you realize people like me use my car for traveling all over the US and I want ZERO grief from a Ford dealer in Podunk, N.D. if I have to have an engine replaced.........To sum it up I feel it is pretty backwards to imply that people that do not want a race car with no warranty on the most expensive part of a new car are ignorant! I'm sure people like us see this as 180 out. I am not here to debate cheap Hp........if you want it it is there. Please keep in mind that people that do not agree with your mods for their cars are not ignorant.......we made the correct choice for OUR needs and we did not buy the car to see how cheaply we could modify it to go faster. Showing some respect for those who do not share your goals for their car is the point of my comments.

We all love our FiST's we just do not all have the same purpose for our cars.....Wrench on!

This is my only car.

Ford knows full well that only about 2-4% of it's user base is going to actually use the car for other than basic transportation. They really shouldn't reject these claims unless there's blatant negligence which does happen.

None of the bolt-on parts make a sizable performance difference alone. As I said an aggressive flash tune and a catted down pipe will give you 70-80% of the output with Stage 3.

MP215 or MP275 for my car overpriced for what it does, specially on 91 octane fuel. If your running their stock tune and 91 octane you are not getting 215 or 275 hp and they tell you so on the website and in the box.

At that price point, I want my money's worth. I do know adding 50/50 water/methanol to my stock tune Focus ST did pick up 10-12 hp across the board with a 250 cc nozzle.

For $350-$450 you can add WMI to either car to get rated power from these packaged upgrades. It will also work on 93 octane cars; that's a modest investment to insure your getting the power you paid for and your car is less impacted by summer weather.

I did back to back to back 13.7x passes on 500 cc WMI in early August.

This is my approach is very simple -

Traction is the main problem but I don't street race nor do I drive too aggressively. I use my car for work which includes ride sharing with Uber/Lyft, my fuel economy trumps (no pun) everything at that point. I am just echoing what I did with my Neon SRT-4, only I didn't use it for work, it sat for about 8 hours everyday and more on day's off. But I short shifted it and drove it like a normal person would.

That doesn't mean I'm not ready to crush somebody's ego and I never challenge anybody directly.

I enjoy my Focus ST immensely, I am having fun figuring out what it needs for best performance and I think I'm shifting too early, I am leaving some performance out there. That's nice to know, but I want to know just how fast it is so my next upgrade doesn't appear to be a band-aid but will add to the performance of the car.

As I said, stock from the air box to the exhaust tips. I did recently flush out the stock factory fill for synthetic oil and replaced the stock filter with a K&N, just standard practice with me.

Other than thinking I am short shifting, I can't log individual spark with SCT. SCT is said to be working on it, so right now we are working on lambda or air-fuel ratios.

I think there's a 12 second ET in this thing

 

[Goingnowherefast]

Telling others what they should use their car for is from some might high horse some people are on, when I'm pretty sure I can beat them doing anything they think I should be doing with my car, IE track days and auto-x make drivers; okay put money on it and I'll make sure I whoop your as*.

Okay, I'm not sure how people are getting this confused... The OP appears to be saying the car wasn't designed by Ford to be a car that shines with straight line performance over anything else. When an OEM starts a project the first thing they do is find the benchmarks and set specific performance goals. The various engineering departments then work to complete or beat that performance goal. In this case, much much more manpower and resources was put into the vehicle dynamics, steering, brakes than the powertrain development. I mean it wasn't like the 1.6L Ecoboost was developed just for the Fiesta. It wasn't. But it was available, and hit the performance goals so it was the best match.

So what the OP is saying is that the car isn't designed with that in mind and I agree with him from a purely technical point of view. I don't think anyone is criticizing what anyone is doing with their own cars.

 

[RAAMaudio]

This car was never intended to be a drag racer by design, it was made for all aspects of performance in a low cost, small package and it came out exceedingly well all things considered. Those that prefer to drag race it and are willing to do what it takes I am all for it even though I would not of picked it for that purpose as there are far faster ways to go for less cost, time, etc....It does not come from the factory perfectly setup, silly little turbo with the big and I agree useless torque curve in most situations, I had the first Cyborg and never got it above 220WHP as lived at 5k ft, learning curve to sort out, but the car was transformed by it.

I have messed around with Tolulene, Emixes, fuel additives, WMI, 5th injectors, etc....and would run a 5th injector on my car for the simplicity sake, less weight, etc but I was concerned about a possible blown manifold, engine fire, etc so went to WMI and a ton of work to install it in a safe custom compartment in the rear of the car.

I had the first Cyborg then first DHM EFR which I hired Russ to build and I was going to market it. It was a mid band torque monster ripping the car back and forth due to torque steer but it was fast, did not even spin the tires in second gear from a roll but I wanted a broader power band and went with the GT2560R with a billet wheel upgrade and it is super laggy at 4700 ft elevation, so much so I am about to pull the turbo to send it in and have it looked at and tested to see what the problem is as all other avenues have been looked into.

One issue was no boost control, it turns out the EFR boost solenoid I kept was not compatible with the stock tuned ECU so we tried a Cobb solenoid, same issue, bought a new factory unit and fixed that but still very laggy. The new owner of the EFR is using a stock solenoid and has a torque curve I could of lived with, expensive process and long process to realize I should of kept the EFR and used a stock solenoid, who would of guessed, even DHM when Russ was tuning the car, the solenoid was the issue causing the lag then sudden torque hit that was simply not safe with super sticky tires on mountain runs, it caused me to skip running the Ferrari Hill Climb last year as just to wild a ride when I was just sorting out the suspesion and getting used to the car.

One member at higher altitude went from the GT2560R to the GTX(which I was going to run after the EFR but decided smaller would be better) improved the torque curve and made more power with the GTX, seems damn backwards to me but it is what it is. I am likely selling the car soon, if not I would slap on a GTX or go back the EFR or sell the GT2560R kit and go with the X37 (willing to wait for the X37+ to see how it works out)

On topic?
Yes, I went from the stock up to a far more useful power band twice and really miss the hang on steering correction and danger at times EFR setup the most, just need to get the GT2560R to wake up and act like it should.

 

[M-Sport fan]

Last night, I was watching some of the you tube vids of the Ford Turkish Rally Team's class leading ERC (European Rally Championships) R2 spec Fiestas (FWD, 1.6 turbo, production based, limited suspension mods, etc.) on tarmac rallies, and I have a newfound appreciation, and admiration for these cars!!

The 'pace' they were able to maintain with just the front wheels driven is nothing short of amazing!!

Granted, they do have (Sadev??) sequential gearboxes (but no paddle shifters), and I believe they are using top shelf Reiger coil overs and such, but still, except for having to employ the 'Scandinavian Flick' using their hydraulic hand brakes to get around the hairpins cleanly (vs. the AWD R4/5 class cars being able to use POWER to get around them), they are QUICK and NASTY little buggers!!!

I once swore I would never own a boosted, FWD car, but now, here I am waiting on one, and overjoyed about it!!

 

[BronxBomber]

I just wanted everyone to know that torque is useless in this car. Back on topic

 

[BoostBumps]

I just wanted everyone to know that torque is useless in this car. Back on topic

thanks for posting! Thread was starting to ramble off topic once again...

Went ahead and cleaned up some of this thread already...

Carry on and please keep to the topic guys...

 

[Based]

Now that I have the Cobb stage 1 93 OTS tune on my car I see what y'all mean. I don't spin on the low end actually I spin on the top now... If I gun it from 5 mph in first it spins once I get to 4000 rpm lol. Weird seeing how the torque is supposed to be all down low.