+300whp Big Turbo FiSTs - Driveability, Engine Limits, and Reliability

[RAAMaudio]

I consider it always best to develop the chassis first, get it sorted the way you want then dial up the power to a nice balance point with a good power curve and go have fun, it has worked really well for all the cars I have done that way, quite a few.

That is why I decided to give the Cyborg a go, I had the first one, it was a huge improvement even though I moved on well before it became what it could be though I would of still moved on to a bigger turbo. The EFR looked far more promising on paper than in use unfortunately, I did want the smaller one listed but it is vaporware, none existent. I was not that impressed with the ATP direction though found out if was barely tuned, why I went EFR but I wish I had listened to Russ and went GT or GTX before it but it was a bit of a surprise for him as well, just not what was expected.

I had the first 1zz turbo Matrix in the world, log manifold, I do not even recall what the turbo was, 250WHP, very nice power band, it was great fun, that is what I wanted in this car but a bit more power, 275 with that kind of power band would be damn fine, 300 even more fun but not really needed for most situations, 320 is more than any car of this weight needs to be dang quick

Until a very well developed twin scroll setup is done the best all around game right now is the DHM quickspool I am quite sure you will really love it and might not even need to consider twin scroll.

 

[Wimp Lo]

I cut my teeth on cave man cars, manual steering somewhat effective brakes and a V8 out front trying to twist its way out of the chassis. The first thing I do is look for more power.

To me, the Fiesta chassis is quite well sorted in stock form.

I think it is ready except the passenger side motor mount sucks.

 

[antarctica24]

Hijinx,

That's great, are the numbers you are quoting Virtual dyno or real dyno? And out of curiosity how far are you driving every day and are you driving it every day? I only ask, because I want to power up my car, but based on my experience, 369hp seems a bit much considering the physical limitations are 424 on the block or in that neighborhood according to DHM. Your within 87% of where the theoretical threshold is for the block according to the information provided by Russ at DHM. So how long do you think that is going to last. I am averaging give or take 5% 300 miles per day both highway and city driving and I am not being nice to the car. I throw it around and I am constantly gunning the car. The closer you get to that threshold the more you are pressing your luck. It doesn't leave that much room for error.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not questioning your power, I am simply saying how reliable is it at 369. Where did the gas mileage go to? To say you cant have both power and gas mileage would be a farce, I have proven that is not the case. That was the purpose of my post.

If I am going to go to all of the trouble of adding power to this little car, I want to increase the fun not change how I drive the car so it can support 350+ hp. I don't know Russ personally, but talking to him he absolutely knows his stuff and builds great product, some of the best product I have seen for out cars, and may be the best tuner on the planet, but what he cant do is surpass the limitation of physics.

Ford put over 1 million miles on these engines when testing to ensure they were reliable. How many miles have you put on your car since upgrading to 369? 10K, 15K, even 20K doesn't make the car reliable. It means you drove 15 thousand miles and haven't blown the engine up yet. And you get on it twice in a day, and now I am contradicting myself, I really had to think about it, I am pounding my car. Pounding. I am certainly not driving it like an old lady (no offense to any old ladies on the forum). I have enough twisty roads in North Carolina to last me a life time including the twisty road, the dragon. I show my car no mercy, every day. At 154,000 plus now, and the car being bone dry underneath, I can say the car has been very reliable.

With all of that said, I want to add power as others do because they are asking, how drivable, how reliable? your blowing your tires off at 55 mph. Who is driving 55 mph unless your in a 55mph zone? If you cant go more than 55mph without blowing the tires off, how much fun is it. That is great at a show in a parking lot, but 99% of the fun in driving a car is how much useable throttle (pedal) you have. If I have the feather the thing, it is not worth it and I think everyone here asking those questions might agree. That is part of what makes the car fun. I will be at 80 mph and downshift and put the pedal to the floor for a good 4-8 seconds. You do the math. If I am going to blow the tires off, what is the point.

I very humbly accept your respectful disagreement.

 

[Wimp Lo]

DHM broke one motor and I think they just broke a piston skirt, the block, crank and rods were fine up to that point.

If you get the quick spool kit and run straight gasoline, you are looking at 290-300hp or so, well under 424hp.

As for loss of traction on a v-dyno run, the idea is to do a sweep of the rpm range you are interested in at full throttle. In certain gears you can have more power than traction but you never want to pedal it in a v-dyno run. At higher speeds in higher gears, you shouldn't have traction issues. At low speed in low gears, you are going to have to pedal it like any other powerful car.

Finally, if you drive the car as much as you say you do, any changes are risky so you have to decide if you can tolerate the risk.

 

[Hijinx]

Hijinx,

That's great, are the numbers you are quoting Virtual dyno or real dyno? And out of curiosity how far are you driving every day and are you driving it every day? I only ask, because I want to power up my car, but based on my experience, 369hp seems a bit much considering the physical limitations are 424 on the block or in that neighborhood according to DHM. Your within 87% of where the theoretical threshold is for the block according to the information provided by Russ at DHM. So how long do you think that is going to last. I am averaging give or take 5% 300 miles per day both highway and city driving and I am not being nice to the car. I throw it around and I am constantly gunning the car. The closer you get to that threshold the more you are pressing your luck. It doesn't leave that much room for error.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not questioning your power, I am simply saying how reliable is it at 369. Where did the gas mileage go to? To say you cant have both power and gas mileage would be a farce, I have proven that is not the case. That was the purpose of my post.

If I am going to go to all of the trouble of adding power to this little car, I want to increase the fun not change how I drive the car so it can support 350+ hp. I don't know Russ personally, but talking to him he absolutely knows his stuff and builds great product, some of the best product I have seen for out cars, and may be the best tuner on the planet, but what he cant do is surpass the limitation of physics.

Ford put over 1 million miles on these engines when testing to ensure they were reliable. How many miles have you put on your car since upgrading to 369? 10K, 15K, even 20K doesn't make the car reliable. It means you drove 15 thousand miles and haven't blown the engine up yet. And you get on it twice in a day, and now I am contradicting myself, I really had to think about it, I am pounding my car. Pounding. I am certainly not driving it like an old lady (no offense to any old ladies on the forum). I have enough twisty roads in North Carolina to last me a life time including the twisty road, the dragon. I show my car no mercy, every day. At 154,000 plus now, and the car being bone dry underneath, I can say the car has been very reliable.

With all of that said, I want to add power as others do because they are asking, how drivable, how reliable? your blowing your tires off at 55 mph. Who is driving 55 mph unless your in a 55mph zone? If you cant go more than 55mph without blowing the tires off, how much fun is it. That is great at a show in a parking lot, but 99% of the fun in driving a car is how much useable throttle (pedal) you have. If I have the feather the thing, it is not worth it and I think everyone here asking those questions might agree. That is part of what makes the car fun. I will be at 80 mph and downshift and put the pedal to the floor for a good 4-8 seconds. You do the math. If I am going to blow the tires off, what is the point.

I very humbly accept your respectful disagreement.

It was on vDyno. To be more transparent, I achieve those numbers when it's cold out. Below 60 and its spool happy for a big turbo. 65-70 and up I still see 350 or so. Anyway, at 55mph (to be more clear as well) it's a brief moment of traction loss, not exactly blowing the tires off.

I'm confident in my vDyno numbers. Way back when I was on the stock turbo, I had the car dyno'd and it was within 5whp of my vDynos and I've been using the same location.

I don't drive anywhere near as much as you, though. I drive maybe 50 miles a day 4-5 days a week and only 10k this turbo, and maybe 9k at my power level. I understand that that is a very small sample, but we don't have a lot of big power cars with tons of miles yet. I'm moving on for more power soon with a built engine so, I won't ever be able to tell you.

Here's the thing about my engine... I have 27k miles on it. I started modding at 700 miles. Since then, I've raced it at 1/4s, driven it halfway across the country, blasting up and down mountains to race it in multiple half mile events, and of course just plain old regular travel. Looking at my folder of tunes and datalogs there are 283 files. Needless to say, my car has been through a hell of time in its 27k miles and she's not let me down yet. Also, 350-360 is what Russ has determined is the safe spot for long-term reliability...but of course it's all in the tune and your maintenance.

 

[Dib]

I had the first 1zz turbo Matrix in the world

not trying to thread jack, but I also had a turbo 1zz. 07 corolla with a gt2871r, loads of fun. Personally I'm going for 10:1 weight to power ratio with me in the car, adding lightness and possibly cyborg. dailying about 600mi/week

 

[Wimp Lo]

10:1 should be fun.

I don't know the real world reality of the Cyborg, it seems like 230-240 at the wheels is reasonable and if you push the tune, more is possible.

The beauty of DHM is that Russ tunes it and he is a good tuner so you don't have to worry about leaving much on the table. Also with out weight reduction it should be instant 10:1 weight to power on pump gas with the quick spool.

I have a feeling that a quick spool kit on an ST with ethanol mix tune, good tires and a good driver should be able to flirt with high 11s in the quarter mile. 12.2-12.3 should be very achievable in race trim and high 12s in street trim, worst case on gas with street tires, low 13s.

That is fast. The bigger turbos will be faster on the track but I'm not sure how much that will translate to the street.

Just looking at the reality of street driving, I don't think it makes much sense to chase more because the bigger turbos have more lag and the power delivery might make it harder to use on the street.

If I can hang with a Mustang GT which is also around 10:1 weight to power, I will be happy.

 

[antarctica24]

DHM broke one motor and I think they just broke a piston skirt, the block, crank and rods were fine up to that point.

If you get the quick spool kit and run straight gasoline, you are looking at 290-300hp or so, well under 424hp.

As for loss of traction on a v-dyno run, the idea is to do a sweep of the rpm range you are interested in at full throttle. In certain gears you can have more power than traction but you never want to pedal it in a v-dyno run. At higher speeds in higher gears, you shouldn't have traction issues. At low speed in low gears, you are going to have to pedal it like any other powerful car.

Finally, if you drive the car as much as you say you do, any changes are risky so you have to decide if you can tolerate the risk.

Wimp Lo,

You have to work with me here.......When I blew up my C5R block, BTW a $6,000 block, all I did was split two sleeves. Broken engine is broken engine. It kills me that a lot of people on this forum have to run E30 and don't have access to 93, 104 or 110.

As I suspected when I wrote all of that there would some who would step out and challenge and that is ok, that's what makes this such a great forum.

I really should have defined street able and up front to remove any confusion. A street able car or daily driver as one would have it, means just that. You should be able to get in the car, and drive it anywhere under any conditions without modification. If you have to change anything about the way you would drive the car on a daily basis which includes "feathering the pedal" that is not a daily driver. It can be a hot rod, a high performance street machine, a race car, whatever you want to call it, but it is not a daily driver.

There is also the point of diminishing return. $2500.00 on a GM Cobalt will yield you 500hp to the front wheels. Less than $3000 on a LS1 will yield you somewhere between 500 and 600. I know its a Ford forum I digress.

I just spent $2500 for about 80. And depending on which turbo I go with I am either $1400 deep as Rick suggest, or $6000 deep for the twin scroll, or $4200 deep for the DHM setup less not forget the 2554R from ATP for a whopping $1800 and all of them get me to what 300 - 350? so for an extra 60 ft lbs.?

I am not trying to be a kill joy, I want to play too. I just want to include myself and the others who want to play just not at the same level as Hijinx, or Rick, for which I have a tremendous amount of respect for and any one else pushing the limit. It is expensive and complicated to play on that level. Read what Hijinx posted. The man had 258 tuning files that he has had on his car and Rick I keep finding stuff that he has done and it just blows my mind. I used to have money and could play in that sandbox, and I just don't want to play on that level anymore because of the ROI. Digressing again for the last time, after you do it to the Trans Am, then the GTO, then the Z06....and thinking about what I could have done with all of that money.

Anything north of 325 hp in this car is not daily drivable reliable. You may drive it daily, but your on a clock. if Rick, comes back and says hey, Im making 375hp on my Fiesta, and I have driven it daily for 75,000 miles without any problems, then you have my attention, otherwise be fair to the others here, and call it for what it is. I had one guy ask me about what kind of brakes were on my car, as he was telling me about the Cobb setup he just had installed. He didn't even know what he had and your going to tell this guy that "oh yeah, my car makes 350hp with my stage 3 setup and tune, and it is a daily driver. I don't think so.

And lets be fair about the changes and risk. You can make changes without introducing any risk, you just have to be conservative.

And just incase there was any doubt.

 

[antarctica24]

It was on vDyno. To be more transparent, I achieve those numbers when it's cold out. Below 60 and its spool happy for a big turbo. 65-70 and up I still see 350 or so. Anyway, at 55mph (to be more clear as well) it's a brief moment of traction loss, not exactly blowing the tires off.

I'm confident in my vDyno numbers. Way back when I was on the stock turbo, I had the car dyno'd and it was within 5whp of my vDynos and I've been using the same location.

I don't drive anywhere near as much as you, though. I drive maybe 50 miles a day 4-5 days a week and only 10k this turbo, and maybe 9k at my power level. I understand that that is a very small sample, but we don't have a lot of big power cars with tons of miles yet. I'm moving on for more power soon with a built engine so, I won't ever be able to tell you.

Here's the thing about my engine... I have 27k miles on it. I started modding at 700 miles. Since then, I've raced it at 1/4s, driven it halfway across the country, blasting up and down mountains to race it in multiple half mile events, and of course just plain old regular travel. Looking at my folder of tunes and datalogs there are 283 files. Needless to say, my car has been through a hell of time in its 27k miles and she's not let me down yet. Also, 350-360 is what Russ has determined is the safe spot for long-term reliability...but of course it's all in the tune and your maintenance.

Thank you so very much for your post. That was a lot of information and I am certain will be useful to a lot of people including myself.

 

[antarctica24]

I consider it always best to develop the chassis first, get it sorted the way you want then dial up the power to a nice balance point with a good power curve and go have fun, it has worked really well for all the cars I have done that way, quite a few.

That is why I decided to give the Cyborg a go, I had the first one, it was a huge improvement even though I moved on well before it became what it could be though I would of still moved on to a bigger turbo. The EFR looked far more promising on paper than in use unfortunately, I did want the smaller one listed but it is vaporware, none existent. I was not that impressed with the ATP direction though found out if was barely tuned, why I went EFR but I wish I had listened to Russ and went GT or GTX before it but it was a bit of a surprise for him as well, just not what was expected.

I had the first 1zz turbo Matrix in the world, log manifold, I do not even recall what the turbo was, 250WHP, very nice power band, it was great fun, that is what I wanted in this car but a bit more power, 275 with that kind of power band would be damn fine, 300 even more fun but not really needed for most situations, 320 is more than any car of this weight needs to be dang quick

Until a very well developed twin scroll setup is done the best all around game right now is the DHM quickspool I am quite sure you will really love it and might not even need to consider twin scroll.

And that amongst other reasons is why I have so much respect for you and what you have done and accomplished.

 

[Wimp Lo]

If you have to change anything about the way you would drive the car on a daily basis which includes "feathering the pedal" that is not a daily driver. It can be a hot rod, a high performance street machine, a race car, whatever you want to call it, but it is not a daily driver.

<snip>

Anything north of 325 hp in this car is not daily drivable reliable. You may drive it daily, but your on a clock. if Rick, comes back and says hey, Im making 375hp on my Fiesta, and I have driven it daily for 75,000 miles without any problems, then you have my attention, otherwise be fair to the others here, and call it for what it is. I had one guy ask me about what kind of brakes were on my car, as he was telling me about the Cobb setup he just had installed. He didn't even know what he had and your going to tell this guy that "oh yeah, my car makes 350hp with my stage 3 setup and tune, and it is a daily driver. I don't think so.

And lets be fair about the changes and risk. You can make changes without introducing any risk, you just have to be conservative.

I don't know if I can take you seriously.

It doesn't matter what car you have, if you spin the tires while accelerating, the cure is to lift off the gas a bit. I can make a Prius peel out so by your definition it isn't a daily driver.

Your proclamation of 325+ HP not being daily driver reliable is based on what?

What if you aren't using stock pistons?

I kind of understand if you are saying that ethanol mix fuels are not a daily driver thing. Its not something people do because they can't get race gas, it is something they do so they can make big power without paying $10.00 a gallon. If you don't want to do it, don't do it but you will be limiting your boost and power potential.

A lot of people switch between tunes so they can mix fuel for the track and refill with straight gasoline when they run out. A few people have figured out how to add a flex fuel sensor to allow the ECU to compensate for ethanol content, that means the fuel mixing becomes less critical and you don't have to switch tunes.

I want to do the flex fuel sensor and keep a couple jerry cans of E85 in the garage for when the mood strikes me. 330+ whp, here i come. My short block might not be stock either...

 

[antarctica24]

I don't know if I can take you seriously.

It doesn't matter what car you have, if you spin the tires while accelerating, the cure is to lift off the gas a bit. I can make a Prius peel out so by your definition it isn't a daily driver.

Your proclamation of 325+ HP not being daily driver reliable is based on what?

What if you aren't using stock pistons?

I kind of understand if you are saying that ethanol mix fuels are not a daily driver thing. Its not something people do because they can't get race gas, it is something they do so they can make big power without paying $10.00 a gallon. If you don't want to do it, don't do it but you will be limiting your boost and power potential.

A lot of people switch between tunes so they can mix fuel for the track and refill with straight gasoline when they run out. A few people have figured out how to add a flex fuel sensor to allow the ECU to compensate for ethanol content, that means the fuel mixing becomes less critical and you don't have to switch tunes.

I want to do the flex fuel sensor and keep a couple jerry cans of E85 in the garage for when the mood strikes me. 330+ whp, here i come. My short block might not be stock either...

Let me clarify, obviously my comment of 350+ not being a daily driver does not apply to every car. We are in a Ford Fiesta forum so I am speaking specifically abou Ford Fiesta st. And we have to keep this in context with the other word I used reliable. My 2008 z06 505 /500 tq obviously a daily driver the motor and chassis were build that way from scratch. The ford gt as is a is a daily driver. If it is built from the factory with that power then daily driver reliable save a few.

Now in my opinion I'm not saying you can't increase your power and it not be daily driver reliable. I'm saying that on this motor in the car people are not putting 350+ hp and have proved daily driver reliable. If Rammaudio came in and said hey I'm making 375+ and now have put 75,000 on the car since modifying it then were there.

Everything you said is true you can do all that. And yes you can blow the tires off of anything. But if I am blowing the tires off every time I'm at a light and I out the pedal to the floor and I have lost more than 50 percent of useable pedal as a daily drive it is no longer a daily driver and reliable transportation.

There are a lot of people who love this car and want to get a little more out of it and still be able to drive it to work or to the beach and race and not worry about breaking something.

Let's go back to the problem with the motor at 424 a cylinder was spit. That was due to either too much pressure or bad tuning. Considering who tuned the car that is probably not the case. What it is may be telling us is that to get the power we want out of this block we may need to go deeper in the block, make the motor more efficient head wise and then add some boost. Making 375 with something like 15 to 20psi would make the motor more reliable and more daily drivable and more sustainable. Obviously puma thought the same thing but now you have really dug deep in your pocket and most of the people here save a few cannot play there.

Continuing on that thought let's ask the experts what they did. Ford has to make their cars daily driver reliable can we agree on that? That being the case if making 260hp was reliable on the 1.6 block it would have been cheaper for ford to use the same motor and turbo in the focus and just retune. But they didn't do that did they? They went up in displacement, used a k03 bw turbo. I'll also bet that the rs, oh wait we already know the answer to that question they didn't use a 2.0 liter they used a 2.3. You can even drift in that car.

So we're back to making reliable daily driver power with changing the turbo and plumbing. Maybe I should have said 20-25psi is probably the upper of safe on this motor. That is a lot of pressure and still a lot of restriction on this motor. If we're making 375 on 15 or 20 then we would be coming back to a more daily driver reliable level.

 

[jeff]

Everything you said is true you can do all that. And yes you can blow the tires off of anything. But if I am blowing the tires off every time I'm at a light and I out the pedal to the floor and I have lost more than 50 percent of useable pedal as a daily drive it is no longer a daily driver and reliable transportation.

There are a lot of people who love this car and want to get a little more out of it and still be able to drive it to work or to the beach and race and not worry about breaking something.

Wisely spoken. I really appreciate the discussion on this thread. Your comments above are right in line with where I'm at. I'm not big turbo nor do I plan to be, but all of this applies very much to me. I am currently working on my tuning revisions with Adam and my goal is exactly as you state - as much power as he can extract from my car with my particular mods while at the same time keeping 80-90% usable power.

Usable power! That's what it's all about.

Yes I am in a lower power bracket with the stock turbo, 220 probably as opposed to 300+ like some of you guys, but the same still applies....usable power on the daily route being my goal.

As antarctica24 says there is such a focus on big numbers and 1/4 mile times but considering ROI, daily drivability, and long-term reliability, I think it is wise to focus on the best common denominator for all of these factors and others. That looks different for each of us; I'm in the $1500 range to get my numbers, others are spending two or three time more to get theirs....but no matter what kind of power we're making this is something we all might consider: Usable power.

 

[antarctica24]

Wisely spoken. I really appreciate the discussion on this thread. Your comments above are right in line with where I'm at. I'm not big turbo nor do I plan to be, but all of this applies very much to me. I am currently working on my tuning revisions with Adam and my goal is exactly as you state - as much power as he can extract from my car with my particular mods while at the same time keeping 80-90% usable power.

Usable power! That's what it's all about.

Yes I am in a lower power bracket with the stock turbo, 220 probably as opposed to 300+ like some of you guys, but the same still applies....usable power on the daily route being my goal.

As antarctica24 says there is such a focus on big numbers and 1/4 mile times but considering ROI, daily drivability, and long-term reliability, I think it is wise to focus on the best common denominator for all of these factors and others. That looks different for each of us; I'm in the $1500 range to get my numbers, others are spending two or three time more to get theirs....but no matter what kind of power we're making this is something we all might consider: Usable power.

Thank you, I really think there is at least 30-80hp between 3-5% more compression and reducing the timing a tiny bit and opening up the heads which no one has done except puma. I have an email out to them on just what do they mean by race heads as this is all perspective. You can open a head so much that you get the same effect as putting too large of a turbo on the car which would be lower power in the lower rom range but Ian at map said the heads were junk from ford regarding their porting and they picked up something like 75 from porting the heads on their mustang if I understood him correctly and that would be about right. On an ls1 there is anywhere from 50-100 ho increase in a well ported not bigger head over stock and upwards of 125-175 with a cam minding on a v8. I suspect there is a sold 50 with a stage 3 parts and tune just by properly porting the head without changing cams and another 30 or so just going to 10.5 compression or shaving the head just a little bit not changing anything else.

What I say is all the major players here have shown us is the car from the factory is grossly restricted on breath ability. So before I add another turbo I really think the heads is the next place to look. I know it's a bit pricey but if opening the heads would reduce boost and increase hp which it should becuase that is how it works in every other application then I made more power and made the car more reliable.

 

[V_2]

Off topic for this thread, maybe, but coming from a more moderate perspective...

So here's why I am going big turbo (DHM quick spool, arriving any day now I hope!)... I am not trying to break any records, nor am I trying to lay down 325+ whp every day. I just want a useable powerband; fast(ish) spool and top off around 280-290 whp. The feeling of power kicking in gradually and confidently instead of immediate grunt, for me at least, makes for a much more pleasant experience and is all around better for the drivetrain. Having experienced similar FWD platforms with that type of range are part of what convinced me to buy a ST in the first place.

...And the headroom to have a separate "all out" tune for the dragstrip, etc. isn't too shabby, either.

 

[RAAMaudio]

I am in agreement with V-2, a nice power band, 275-280WHP is plenty for daily use, even a bit less would still be great fun and quick. Have a tune for the track, which I will also have, backed up with WMI, big coolers, etc and then log and see how it goes. I can run the lower power tune on tighter tracks and the higher powered one with longer straights if there are cars I want to chase down, hang with or not let get to far away.

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If somebody comes up with a relatively "affordable" way to clean up the head, raise the compression a tiny bit, make the power I want on lower boost, I would do that for sure. I would buy a very clean barely used engine and have the head done and if we end up with something that just really should be done on the bottom end do that as well, put it together, drop it in the car, tune, etc....

------------------

I have seen a bone stock LS2, LS7 manifolds with cats, intake, $2k heads and cam make 475WHP on CA 91 cat piss and ran as smooth as butter. Drop down to a far more usable diff ratio and you have a very quick car that is super easy to drive.

We are in an age of ego based way over powered cars, I would rather have a fully sorted car with a really good balance of power, not many are built that way, that is all I want from my ST, most of the time, a bit more for special occasions as mentioned above.

 

[Wimp Lo]

High compression turbo motors are more of an emissions and drivability thing. The reason why turbo motors were originally built with low compression is that they didn't have the sophisticated controls required for high compression and boost on crummy gas.

Put simply, our engine is limited by the 400cc cylinder volume. Cylinder filling efficiency helps a little but we have 4 valves with Ti-VCT, you can't improve on that very much. Higher compression means less cylinder volume at top dead center. If two engines can tolerate the same cylinder pressure at TDC on the compression stroke, the engine with the larger cylinder volume at TDC can take more air and fuel in the cylinder. If that larger volume goes with lower compression you will have to increase boost to reach that same cylinder pressure at TDC.

If you are geeky like me, try messing around with engine simulation software. I spent a fair amount of time simulating builds I saw in Popular Hot Rodding and Engine Masters magazines. Simulate enough and play with the cam centerlines and you will see some trends that are not obvious.

When I was looking at this I wondered what made the Chevy LS engines perform well compared to older V8s and it always came back to high compression, small cam and heads that flow well. That is not the traditional power formula but it works by optimizing BMEP over a wide RPM band, add a cam phaser and it gets better.

When people put traditional hotrod parts on a LS, they make even bigger power but they lose a lot of torque and that BMEP optimization is out the window.

But back to the 1.6, we are boost limited on pump gas and fuel limited on Ethanol mixes so there is very little room for improvement with higher compression, a tick less might be better...

 

[wireless]

Meh. I've had 350+hp FWD cars, and while it's fun, the amount of work it takes to get usable traction at lower speeds isn't something I'd want to do, IMO.

That being said, I think the Fiesta ST is great in stock form, and a tune + a few other things would help a bunch for the twisties. I never find myself accelerating hard in this car, but as soon as I see some curves, I dive into them and tear up the road.

Tons of fun. I may, one day, explore going with DHM's 290 kit, but for now I'll probably just do a catback/intake/tune/RMM & call it a day for a while. Car is too great as it is without throwing 100+ fwhp at it IMO lol

This is all my opinion, and we have different goals, etc which is why I'm glad this platform has a decent aftermarket.

 

[Hijinx]

Edit- You know what? Never mind.

 

[wireless]

Edit- You know what? Never mind.

I saw it beforehand -- and I'm not looking to do any sort of argument, debate, etc -- I just would not be (personally) willing to do slicks etc on a car I daily