MAPerformance Fiesta ST Catback R&D | Pictures | Video | Information

[Hijinx]

Why not drop us the Datazap link so we can look at it ourselves?

 

[maperformance]

Why not drop us the Datazap link so we can look at it ourselves?

Because all my customers logs are on there as well, I will gladly email the logs to anybody who would like to see them. Feel free to load them on your own datazap account and share the links. I offered them on facebook publicly to Russel@DHM as well.

adam@maperformance.com

 

[maperformance]

Here is the conversation between a few of us on facebook as well if anybody would like to read it. Covers a few more details.

 

[maperformance]

As you can see in the conversation above, I requested links to other downpipe/catback testing. Not together, individually.

 

[BlueBomber]

those numbers are not going to be an easy sell for you regardless of what you back your numbers up with Adam, lol

I believe the numbers you're seeing are possible, on a stock ST running OTS Stg 1 91, no other upgrades; were I to install it on a car with FMIC, Intake, Downpipe and THEN installed Exhaust I don't think the numbers I'd get out of it would be close.

Now, let's talk about the most important aspect of ANY exhaust system. the sound. Since the gains of any exhaust system are generally going to be in about the same ballpark - barring some sort of crazy physics-defying design - the tone of an exhaust system is the most important characteristic.

Sound I'd describe as being somewhere between Injen and Cobb. Spool is louder like with Injen, but the same "tame" burble I get out of my Cobb catback.

That's my honest $.02 opinion, take it with a grain of salt, I look forward to watching your build continue to evolve.

I have a couple suggestions for your video guy too (easy things) but it looks good. smile emoticon

 

[Rhinopolis]

Here is the conversation between a few of us on facebook as well if anybody would like to read it. Covers a few more details.

Did I read correctly that you are not seeing a downpipe give any gains on a "bonestock" FiST? Would you mind elaborating here?

I requested you on FB because I want to "be in the know" too...lol. If that's a personal page and for people you know only, my feelings won't be hurt. Thumbsup

 

[Klerr]

Did I read correctly that you are not seeing a downpipe give any gains on a "bonestock" FiST? Would you mind elaborating here?

That is possible, if bonestock means that the FiST has no remap.
With a 3" catless DP and Injen air intake my FiST gained 2 BHP without remap. BHP and Torque of the FiST is 'electrically' limited, in Europe, so I think US model too.
You need a remap for getting the gains.

 

[maperformance]

Did I read correctly that you are not seeing a downpipe give any gains on a "bonestock" FiST? Would you mind elaborating here?

I requested you on FB because I want to "be in the know" too...lol. If that's a personal page and for people you know only, my feelings won't be hurt. Thumbsup

I accept everybody, I'm not sure your name on there but feel free to drop me a message if you have any questions.

Regarding your downpipe question, yes we made the most power with the stock downpipe. I will be posting the results later today. Honestly, I can't find any results ANYWHERE of anybody testing parts individually. Either I'm blind, or searching like a potato...

I can see why aftermarket downpipes don't make any power, the factory unit has huge volume and the cell count on the cat is crazy high. It has a 3.5" inlet, which every downpipe, including ours, has a 3" inlet. We aren't going to go into production with our downpipe, unless people still want it after we prove the stock downpipe is better. Our downpipe is pretty sexy too..:

That is possible, if bonestock means that the FiST has no remap.
With a 3" catless DP and Injen air intake my FiST gained 2 BHP without remap. BHP and Torque of the FiST is 'electrically' limited, in Europe, so I think US model too.
You need a remap for getting the gains.

All of our testing is on the Cobb OTS Stage 1 93 MAP. This is just to keep everything consistent between testing. Our intake and exhaust were the ONLY gains to be had so far. We will be testing our charge piping and intercooler out very soon, hopefully within the next week.

 

[pelotonracer2]

Regarding your downpipe question, yes we made the most power with the stock downpipe. I will be posting the results later today. Honestly, I can't find any results ANYWHERE of anybody testing parts individually. Either I'm blind, or searching like a potato...

I can see why aftermarket downpipes don't make any power, the factory unit has huge volume and the cell count on the cat is crazy high. It has a 3.5" inlet, which every downpipe, including ours, has a 3" inlet. We aren't going to go into production with our downpipe, unless people still want it after we prove the stock downpipe is better. Our downpipe is pretty sexy too..:


All of our testing is on the Cobb OTS Stage 1 93 MAP. This is just to keep everything consistent between testing. Our intake and exhaust were the ONLY gains to be had so far. We will be testing our charge piping and intercooler out very soon, hopefully within the next week.

I thought that the lower the cell count the better? Usually a low cell count means larger open areas which equates to higher flow potential. I guess it also matters what material is used and the actual cat design. I can see how a stock car running an OTS map would not make any additional power due to tuning limitations, but theoretically wouldn't a car with other bolt-ons and a corresponding tune (for that specific combination) be more beneficial, especially a non catted version DP? I wouldn't figure that many people would just buy a down pipe and bolt it to their stage 1 car. I just find it hard to believe that the stock downpipe with that tiny outlet bottleneck would be better than a downpipe with no cat and no bottleneck.

 

[maperformance]

I thought that the lower the cell count the better? Usually a low cell count means larger open areas which equates to higher flow potential. I guess it also matters what material is used and the actual cat design. I can see how a stock car running an OTS map would not make any additional power due to tuning limitations, but theoretically wouldn't a car with other bolt-ons and a corresponding tune (for that specific combination) be more beneficial, especially a non catted version DP? I wouldn't figure that many people would just buy a down pipe and bolt it to their stage 1 car. I just find it hard to believe that the stock downpipe with that tiny outlet bottleneck would be better than a downpipe with no cat and no bottleneck.

Depends on the cell design, you can have a 100 cell cat that has high density or it could have low density and dramatically change the performance. You are looking for a quality unit that is being rated in CDPI. The higher the cell count per inch the higher the flow, as it has more "passages" per inch.

I put our turboback on the car along with the intake, flashed my stage 1 tune to it which has HUGE gains over the OTS tune and the power figure numbers were the same as my Stage 1 tune on a bone stock car, but +6hp from the intake install. So, I tried different variant and for myself I will be running stock downpipe moving forward paired with our intercooler, intake, and catback.

I'm also going to predict that our charge piping isn't going to make any difference in power and torque, but they sure as hell are going to stay on the car instead of blowing off like the stock ones do, so there is your major selling point on that. When you upgrade the turbo you are going to see some gains from every component you put on, including downpipe. I'm 100% confident in saying that.

I could of tuned the car with everything on it and made changes but without making tune changes and seeing no power gain at all, it tells me that making tune adjustments would just be a waste of time. The exhaust itself made huge gains with the stock downpipe, keeping an ideal amount of back pressure and not being 3" is why it gained the power it did as it isn't maxing out the turbo.

 

[LT Berzerker]

So you didn't see any gain even with the catless dp? Or were you just testing the catted dp?

 

[BoostBumps]

So you didn't see any gain even with the catless dp? Or were you just testing the catted dp?

I think MAP mentioned earlier they are comparing stock catted DP to their catless DP

http://www.fiestastforum.com/forum/...eo-Information?p=106217&viewfull=1#post106217

 

[LT Berzerker]

I think MAP mentioned earlier they are comparing stock catted DP to their catless DP

http://www.fiestastforum.com/forum/...eo-Information?p=106217&viewfull=1#post106217

Thanks, just seems weird, next step is to throw an intercooler on and test the ots stage 2 running tbe vs stock dp & map cbe... See if the power is different.

 

[Rhinopolis]

At the risk of exposing how uneducated I am about turbos, I'm going to weigh in. What I gather from MAP, is that the stock turbo can only "exhaust out" so much, and the real bottle neck in the system on stock turbo is the stock CBE.

The DP with stock turbo does a good enough job, and unless going with a different turbo our FiST in "stock turbo" form does not benefit from a DP. This knowledge seems completely counter to what I believed last week, but as MAP has asked, has anyone done testing on the individual components to measure the individual gains?

 

[Joker328]

I could of tuned the car with everything on it and made changes but without making tune changes and seeing no power gain at all, it tells me that making tune adjustments would just be a waste of time.

I'm not nearly as expert as you or anyone else here on this stuff, but it sounds like there may be some faulty logic in this assumption. The wording is a little unclear, but I think what you are saying is that since you didn't see any gains when putting on the DP while keeping the tune the same, you shouldn't see any gains when changing the tune with the DP on. But my understanding of the "stage" model is that modifications like intercoolers and DPs (and to a lesser extent intakes and catbacks) allow you to run more and more aggressive tunes (i.e. higher boost, different timing) without damaging the stock parts, overheating, causing timing corrections, etc. So couldn't it be the case that the DP is not a limiting factor on a Stage 1 tune, and thus you will see no gains from adding it, but having an after-market DP on there would allow you to tune more aggressively than if you had the stock DP on there? I'm not saying it necessarily would, but it seems plausible and possibly worth seeing if you could wring more out of your DP vs. stock through tuning. I'm not even sure how you would know whether you've gone too far with a tune on the stock DP (does it melt haha?), but I'll leave that up to folks who know what they are talking about.

 

[maperformance]

Just so we are all on the same page, when I say there is no power gain there is no PEAK power gain. There is definitely power to be had through the powerband, I should of stated that and that is my fault.

I kept the tune file the same for the testing, but for my own testing I threw on my custom tune as I mentioned in a previous post and the gains were minimal within 1-2hp of each other.

Here is a bone stock car on a Cobb Stage 1 OTS tune, compared to our catless Turboback with Cobb Stage 1 OTS Tune.

As you can see the peak gains are not there on the HP side but was up about 15wtq. The car just likes the stock downpipe when it comes to peak performance.

I'll provide any data that you all would like, but you have to understand that I would of loved the downpipe to make more power so I can sell them and bring you top quality products. However I am having a hard time offering a product that will reduce the power output for 90% of the Fiesta ST's out there because they are on stock turbo.

 

[BrokenSVT]

Sell me an inexpensive, used, less than optimal downpipe? [MENTION=3178]maperformance[/MENTION]

 

[Coolnezzz]

So now that this is all out of the way you're going to begin development and testing of your turbo kit, right? Wink wink nudge nudge.

 

[maperformance]

So now that this is all out of the way you're going to begin development and testing of your turbo kit, right? Wink wink nudge nudge.

HAha nice.

 

[maperformance]

If anybody isn't following our R&D thread, here is a log post that I put up:

Me too. Mornings at 3:30 AM are so much more exciting with MAPERFORMANCE in your ecu.

I was also told by Randy at Mountune that the stock down pipe was better than most aftermarket Catted downpipes. Not something you want to hear AFTER you change the Catted downpipe out.

Exactly, the only information I found about product testing was from Mountune and they stated that there was no power increase with a catted downpipe. However, I tested both catted and catless with no gain at all.

I have always thought that in turbo cars, the least amount of back pressure the better aka downpipes and such, guess that must not be the case with our cars, nevertheless great information and very interesting following this!

Thank you. Smaller turbo cars can benefit from backpressure, to an extent. You have to find a happy medium, the same goes for a lot of cars. I seen the same results on Abarth's, Mini's, and Focus ST's.

Just to play devil's advocate here, does it make sense to compare apples to apples? When you look at the Cobb OTS Stage maps, peak boost goes from 20.5 at Stage 1 to 22 at Stage 3. Stage 1 works on stock, but Stage 3 requires intake, intercooler, and turbo back. The implication of all that is that to safely run a tune putting out 22 psi of boost, you need all those mods (the TB being the difference between stage 2 and 3). So in essence, they are saying you can't compare apples to apples because you can't safely run 22 psi of boost on a stock car, or even with just an intercooler (capped at 21.5). They aren't even arguing that you'll see performance gains on a stage 1 map when you add a DP, which is what Adam has been using for his comparisons.

Now I am not one to take Cobb or anyone else trying to sell me something at their word, so I would love it if Adam or someone else could convince me that either a) there are no gains to be had from stock to after-market DP when both are running peak boost of 22 psi or b) the stock DP cannot run that level of boost or it creates a problem (e.g., melts the cat or damages the turbo). If (a) is true, then Adam may be right that a DP upgrade is not necessary on stock turbo, but if (b) is true, a DP may be necessary to run more aggressive tunes, even if you can't make an apples to apples comparison on the same tune.

You don't need any certain amount of modification to run any tune. If the tune is safe, and all temperatures are within limit you aren't hurting anything. Every car is different. The staged packages are just a benefit to a end user. I love Cobb's packages and they work great, however you can toss a stage 3 tune on a bone stock car if you wanted and if you datalog all the parameters and everything is in check you won't have any issues at all. I know for a fact my Stage 1 tune is more aggressive than any of the Cobb's tune. They have to leave power on the table, they have a ProTuner network. If they made as much power as possible they wouldn't have a dealer network or Protuners.

(See more information below that correlates to your post. IE: CCT)

Wait, why are these even being tested on a Cobb Stage 1 tune? Was it arbitrarily picked? Why not test each part, independently on the vehicle with it's stock tune? Next, in combinations? Afterwards, test each part again on each staged tune, in the same manner, if you wish. Then, with your own tuning strategy do it again. Hell, you could test the hardware with the software, and turn around and test the software with the hardware... So, the question remains, why is testing even happening on the Cobb Stage 1 tune? If that's been succinctly answered, my apologies.

Because the factory tune has a lot of load control ceilings in place. Here is a log from the factory tune, you can see a ton of throttle closures to keep load at a minimum to increase efficiency as that is the cars main purpose, power is secondary. My marker on the image below is the only point that the throttle body angle is at 100% (~82? OA).

If you were to use the stock tune it would keep limiting the vehicle from making anymore power, it would increase torque slightly but I mean SLIGHTLY.

If you compare parts on the stock tune then everything is limited and your overall numbers will be restricted by the tune. The stage 1 raises limits so that parts can produce whatever they can produce, comparatively. Stages 2 and 3 simply take advantage of increased boost and timing, mostly, so introducing them into testing would add an unfair advantage and additional variables.

Basically, by running everything on stage 1 you can make an accurate assessment of whether a part shows an improvement because without that change the stock tune will limit it. It keeps the tune 'playing field' level for part increases. One of the issues I've had with other companies' testing is that they would test a car stock and then show their 'gains' using their part and a tune (or starting with stage 1 and parts and then adding a part dyno'ed with the stage 2 tune, etc).

Tl;dr-Any part needs stage 1 to show gains that would otherwise be limited by the stock tune. Additional tuning can be done beyond that to extract additional power from the setup, but that would be power extracted by the tune as opposed to the part.

Exactly, this is all for hard part testing purposes you have to keep the most important factor, the tune, a consistent variable for the entire process. If I put on a part, modified the tune, made more power, we would all be having the same discussion about why I changed the tune and didn't test what the part itself made for power. We would all wonder what % of power increase was from the part, and what % of power increase was from the tune. Keeping STG 1 as the tune variable works out well, per the about outlined reasons.

Hey Adam, just a question, so similar results should be seen with other exhausts made by different vendors correct? The size of the piping. routing, and muffler shouldn't change TOO much from vendor to vendor. What makes your system vastly superior to others to warrant such gains? Also, will you claim yours to be "drone free"?

Correct another manufacturer with similar piping size and design will yield similar results. As long as they aren't using too restrictive of a muffler. Major selling points of our exhaust are outlined below:

-100% Made in the USA
-304 Stainless, a lot of companies use aluminized (MBRP) or 409 steel which will surface rust/corrode (MBRP, and a few other manufacturers)
-100% Tig welded with backpurge
-CNC mandrel bent, for perfect replication
-Lifetime Warranty

You guys are missing my point though. The argument Cobb or other vendors would make is that the part and the tune work together to increase the power. That you won't see the extra gains without the part and the Stage 3 (or pro) tune. Just a downpipe is not going to increase performance and just running a Stage 3 or other high boost tune without a DP is supposedly inadvisable or dangerous for the stock parts. And if true, that's a perfectly justifiable argument for comparing the part and the tune together. Just like an intercooler may not make more power per se, but it allows you to run more boost and avoid timing corrections.

Now Adam is saying "There isn't anything in the tune that needs to be adjusted, the timing is good, the AFR is good, and the boost is solid." So the question is, is there anything you could do to the tune (e.g., higher boost) if you had a higher flowing downpipe/turbo-back on there (and maybe an intercooler) that you'd be reluctant to do with stock parts (or just an intercooler). If so, then an after-market downpipe/turbo-back may still be worthwhile. If not, it's harder to justify.

I mentioned it in another post, I put my Stage 1 tune which is more aggressive than any of Cobb's tunes with just the catback installed and stock everything else and the power increase was 1hp and gobs of torque. Here is the actual dynograph:

The reason for torque increase is because of a boost increase. That is going from ~20psi to ~22psi between 2500 and 3500rpm and they taper off the same at about 5,000rpms as the turbo is dying. This is why this car is hard to increase peak power as the turbo is dying before it even reaches the cross point of HP and TQ which is 5252rpms. The only way to increase peak power on the Fiesta is to increase the turbo's ability to create airflow longer than factory. If you don't increase airflow beyond 5,000's rpms your peak power is always going to be fairly similar. Adding a bunch of timing as the turbo dies isn't going to increase power either as the engine can only be so efficient and fuel can only combust at a certain rate. So the power increase we are having from the exhaust is from freeing up more flow, but not too much so there is still backpressure to assist in cylinder pressures during the overlapping scenario. This is another scenario where you have to find a happy medium with a small, high backpressure turbo.

I think the real point is that some vendors bring out parts without any proven improvement due to the addition of the part, then they mod their tune, and it appears that their particular combination is what increases HP and torque. Most vendors would never think of adding just a stage 2 tune to a stage 1 parts list because that will show that their parts don't add anything to the playing field. Lets face it, most vendors are in the business to sell parts. If they tell you that in order to get to stage 3, which is really a stage 1 improvement for most other brands and the FoST, you need blah blah blah parts. Most etuners will gladly tune your car for 91/93 octane or e30 without these parts. The biggest limitation, for the FiST is the turbo. I also believed that putting a stage 3 tune on a stage 2 or stage 1 parts list was dangerous, but I no longer do. The recommended parts list for stage 3 just so happens to come from the same supplier of the stage 3 parts and the tune. I don't believe I ever read that using a stage 3 tune on a stage 1 parts list would damage anyone's engine. This is why we see larger gains from tuning from guys like MAPerformance, DHM, Panda, etc. They build parts that are needed, not ones that make profit, but don't significantly add the increase in HP and Torque.

Going to a bigger turbo, makes these parts obsolete, and new CBE, DP or ICs are required. Otherwise, not putting in an aftermarket DP doesn't hinder your HP and Torque, at least not according to the dyno results MAPerformance has provided.

Good post!

Really want to see what map can do with his own parts list and tune for the car... However, as stated before the dp doesn't necessarily gain peak numbers, but does help slightly to power curve...

Helps to the powercurve but loses peak power and the curve is still less than the catback only curve.


As a top tier manufacturer we don't want the stock downpipe out performing a piece that we are scheduled to manufacturer and release this quarter. However, that is why we actually test our products and provide factual data. I could of came in here, designed the parts, put them on the car made some videos and said "buy it because they are beautiful" but that isn't how I work. For the 15 years I have been in this industry and the 7+ years I have been doing ECU calibration I never recommended a product that I didn't know worked and improved performance, or increased efficiency of an engine. Every product we make for EVO's, Subaru's, Ecoboost Mustangs, and other vehicles have all been tested and are very popular in their markets because we aren't in the business of just ripping out parts from our facility just to make some money.