Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

This was just put on drive.com.au.

Article%20Lead%20-%20wide981830871mgeghi

184kw!

Theres no performance figures on the article It'd have to be under 6 sec's 0-100 though, right? Maybe if it has traction.

This is obviously the baby brother to the RS which apparently doesn't arrive till 2016.

Link to comment
https://www.sau.com.au/forums/topic/455589-2015-ford-focus-st/
Share on other sites

Wow petty eccy,think I'll stick with the old Nissans. :-)

unfortunately the Nissan "equivalent" (awd, turbo, petrol, "sports car") is 100k more.

Wish Nissan had of made the sss an awd version.

Was looking at the sss, but ended up with the emo does to more sportiness.

Love it! I think its more aggressive and has a better front end than the current model.

Tossing up between one of these and a WRX for my next car.

If you test drive one can you write us a review? Super keen to know more about it.

Which? The ST or the RS?

The ST has already received rave reviews for being as much fun as you can have with your pants on, as did the previous incarnation of the RS. I thought that the ST's retailed for around the $40k mark? (been on the market for a couple of years now)

Not convinced that AWD would necessarily make it that much better. For not a lot more money, the AMG Benz would snot all over it (unless Ford manage to squeeze a hell of a lot more power out of the ecoboost donk)

Don't get me wrong - I quite like the Focus they're great fun to throw around (mine's just the NA 2 litre Sport). Not sure if the ST would get under 6 sec for the 0-100 sprint either - that's a fairly big ask of a FWD shopping trolley.

Unless you were competing in the WRC, I don't think there were any AWD Focus (Foci??) 6 years ago. I'm happy to be proven wrong, though.

The performance model of the Focus (XR5 turbo most likely, judging by the time period) has always been extremely capable in the twisties, so it doesn't surprise me if one of them. The last iteration of the RS was a rip snorter, and very quick around a race track - despite being an understeery FWD shitbox.

I've owned a few AWD turbos, and yes they are quick. Not going to get into an argument about that. My comment was more along the lines of will the AWD bring a significant power imcrease, to make use of the AWD, and at what cost? The FWD's manage to tame 184kW, so you'd be wanting mid 200's to be able to exploit the AWD system. What does the extra weight do to the balance of the car? Undoubtedly it will be faster, but will it be useable on the public road? More fun? How much dearer?

These are my own opinion, and I respect you have yours. However, remember there have been some truly horrid AWD turbo performance cars over the years. Bolting an extra diff into a car does not automatically make it better, although I'm sure with FOrd's track record with chassis tuning of the Focus, they'll make a decent car out of it. Would I spend the $$? That's a hard one as it's a very tough market segment.

  • Like 1

You're right, the xr5t is fwd. Quickest fwd I've ever seen, and probably will.

I wouldn't expect anything less than perfection when ford starts dealing with their awd focus, after all they have been doing it for years.

Awd would come in handy reguard less of power, where a fwd would start to understeer you could fine tune the awd to push it through the corner and vise versa. Honda has had this tech since the 90's for their accord that was marketed at snowy regions. Pretty amazing when you see how it works, and almost dummy proof in a way that anyone can get in and drive it.

Absolutely - AWD will be a good thing on these. My point was, is the extra cost worth it to me? I'm comfortable fanging FWD's (despite growing up on a diet of RWD) so lack of AWD isn't a big deal for me. If it were only $5-10k dearer than the FWD, then it's a no brainer.

There have been some astonishingly good FWD hot hatches over the years - RS (and now ST) Focus, EP3R civic, DC2R Integra, GTI golf, Megane RS, Clio Sport. None of the above is going to break any land speed records, but for pure driving fun, they are hard to beat. They also all punch well above their weight when it comes to lap times.

  • Like 2

I've got the current ST and it has converted me to appreciate that a front wheel drive car can be fun. It's quick and very refined, but the Megane is finished better (costs more too).

The new Focus doesn't seem to be too much different to the current one. Mostly cosmetic and techno changes (except the AWD RS). Would like to steer the RS when it lands, as I reckon Ford would do a good job.

Torque steer is shit. Tries to kill you at higher speeds in WOT. i call bullshit on the fuel figures, no matter how well behaved I am & types of fuel I use, fuel economy doesn't go below 8.4/100 and I do mostly highway k's.

  • Like 1

Should..... I wish. Not going to put one in. About to change it over.

It was my only negative in not going for the Megane that came with LSD at the time.

Turning off traction control fries tyres easily.

Anyone had experience with the Kia pro-Ceed? I'm aware it is not in the same league, but Seems like awesome value.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Latest Posts

    • OK, so regardless of whether you did Step 1 - Spill Step 2 - Trans pan removal Step 3 - TCM removal we are on to the clean and refill. First, have a good look at the oil pan. While you might see dirty oil and some carbony build up (I did), what you don't want to see is any metal particles on the magnets, or sparkles in the oil (thankfully not). Give it all a good clean, particularly the magnets, and put the new gasket on if you have one (or, just cross your fingers)
    • One other thing to mention from my car before we reassemble and refill. Per that earlier diagram,   There should be 2x B length (40mm) and 6x C length (54mm). So I had incorrectly removed one extra bolt, which I assume was 40mm, but even so I have 4x B and 5x C.  Either, the factory made an assembly error (very unlikely), or someone had been in there before me. I vote for the latter because the TCM part number doesn't match my build date, I suspect the TCM was changed under warranty. This indeed led to much unbolting, rebolting, checking, measuring and swearing under the car.... In the end I left out 1x B bolt and put in a 54mm M6 bolt I already had to make sure it was all correct
    • A couple of notes about the TCM. Firstly, it is integrated into the valve body. If you need to replace the TCM for any reason you are following the procedure above The seppos say these fail all the time. I haven't seen or heard of one on here or locally, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. Finally, Ecutek are now offering tuning for the 7 speed TCM. It is basically like ECU tuning in that you have to buy a license for the computer, and then known parameters can be reset. This is all very new and at the moment they are focussing on more aggressive gear holding in sports or sports+ mode, 2 gear launches for drag racing etc. It doesn't seem to affect shift speed like you can on some transmissions. Importantly for me, by having controllable shift points you can now raise the shift point as well as the ECU rev limit, together allowing it to rev a little higher when that is useful. In manual mode, my car shifts up automatically regardless of what I do which is good (because I don't have to worry about it) but bad (because I can't choose to rev a little higher when convenient).  TCMs can only be tuned from late 2016 onwards, and mine is apparently not one of those although the car build date was August 2016 (presumably a batch of ADM cars were done together, so this will probably be the situation for most ADM cars). No idea about JDM cars, and I'm looking into importing a later model valve body I can swap in. This is the top of my TCM A couple of numbers but no part number. Amayama can't find my specific car but it does say the following for Asia-RHD (interestingly, all out of stock....): So it looks like programable TCM are probably post September 2018 for "Asia RHD". When I read my part number out from Ecutek it was 31705-75X6D which did not match Amayama for my build date (Aug-2016)
    • OK, Step 3, if you need to remove the valve body, either to replace it, the TCM, or to do a more complete drain.  First, you need to disconnect the TCM input wires, they are about half way up the transmission on the drivers side. One plug and the wires are out of the way, but there is also a spring clip that stops the socket from sliding back into the transmission. On my car the spring clip was easy to get, but the socket was really stuck in the o-ring of the transmission housing and took some.....persuasion. You can see both the plug to remove (first) and the spring clip (second) in this pic Incidentally, right next to the plug, you can see where the casting has allowance for a dispstick/filler which Nissan decided not to provide. there is a cap held on with a 6mm head bolt that you can remove to overfill it (AMS recommend a 1.5l overfill). Final step before the big mess, remove the speed sensor that is clipped to the valve body at the rear of the box.  Then removal of the Valve Body. For this the USDM Q50 workshop manual has a critical diagram: There are a billion bolts visible. Almost all of them do not need to be removed, just the 14 shown on the diagram. Even so, I both removed one extra, and didn't check which length bolt came from which location (more on that later....). Again it is worth undoing the 4 corners first, but leaving them a couple of turns in to hold the unit up....gravity is not your friend here and trans oil will be going everywhere. Once the corners are loose but still in remove all the other 10 bolts, then hold the valve body up with 1 hand while removing the final 4. Then, everything just comes free easily, or like in my case you start swearing because that plug is stuck in the casing. Done, the valve body and TCM are out
    • OK, so if you are either going for the bigger fluid change or are changing the valve body which includes the Transmission Control Module (TCM), first you should have both a new gasket 31397-1XJ0A and a torque wrench that can work down to 8Nm (very low, probably a 1/4 drive one). You can probably get by without either, but I really didn't want to pull it all apart together due to a leak. First, you now need that big oil pan. The transmission pan is 450 long x 350 wide, and it will probably leak on all sides, so get ready for a mess. There are 24x 6mm headed bolts holding the pan on. I undid the 2 rear corners, then screwed those bolts back in a couple of turns to let the pan go low at that end, then removed all the middle bolts on each side. Then, undo the front corner bolts slowly while holding the pan up, and 80% of the fluid will head out the rear. From there, remove the remaining bolts and the pan is off. You can see it is still dripping oil absolutely everywhere...it dripped all night.... I got another couple of litres when I removed the pan, and then another few when I removed the valve body - all up another 4l on top of the 3 already dropped in step 1.
×
×
  • Create New...