the RS500 DOES actually make 350PS...............................nearly

[Janner_Sy]

this is quoted from evo's website

You may remember that a few weeks back I stuck a new Focus RS500 on a rolling road and the outcome wasn't that impressive - just 326.7bhp, some 20bhp short of the actual claim.
We put the story up on the website, Ford got to hear about it and it caused a bit of a kerfuffle. They wanted to know exactly how the test had been conducted, ambient temperature, etc, etc. Anyway, turns out they had a point - when we ran the original test the dyno had been set-up to calculate losses based on a four cylinder engine, while the Focus RS has five cylinders. To compensate for that you have to do two runs on the rolling road, one in 4 cylinder mode, the other in six, then average the two. Hands up for the cock up first time round - all my fault.




So yesterday I took the exact same Focus RS back to DMS Automotive and ran the tests again. Just to check Ford hadn't had a tinker with EJ10 OAP (unfortunate numberplate...) we ran the 4cyl test again and got 326.5bhp, an all but identical result.
We switched to 6cyl mode, which increases the resistance through the rollers, and expected to see a small gain, but little more. However...



So if you are an RS500 owner, you can now boast about you car nearly having the power it's claimed to - averaged out the RS500 develops 337bhp against a claim of 345bhp. But that's by the by really, the RS500, just like every other Focus RS, remains a pretty tremendous thing and feels like it has every one of the 345 it's meant to have.  
Oh, one more thing. Last time we stuck a video up of the rolling road run and loads of you wanted to know how much power the RS500 was developing at the wheels. So here's another video with the result on it. The first figure you see is in 4cyl mode, the second is the 6cyl run.

so it seems the dyno operators have been wrong.  maybe this is the reason for the focus RS reading low on alot of dyno's

[Sunglasses Ron]

Very interesting that. Never knew that you had to do that to get a reliable 5 cyl result???   Is this true, or have Ford got involved and somehow manipulated the results for publicity reasons..?
I'm sure one of our RR bods will be along soon to add their opinions to the mix..

The good news is that it's still making less than a Stage 2+ Ko4, even with an extra cylinder and 500cc..  

[Hurdy]

Me smells a weeee bit of male cow excretion coming in there.

[Janner_Sy]

why's that?

[Hurdy]

why's that?

I would need to see proof that the car did the outputs that they did. Especially as the dyno runs were to massage revise the figures 

[Janner_Sy]

but it shows that the car in 4 cylindr mode did as before, then it shows the 6 cylinder test.  it makes sense as it would be in between the two, although anytime an average is used there is an element of discrepency. 

it makes sense, though 4 cylinder cars run in the correct mode as do 6 cylinder cars, so running the RS in either one of them will produce incorrect results.    Is this just a dyno dynamics issue?

as for proof the dynos and videos f it are in front of you?? 

[Hurdy]

It just feels like comparing apples and oranges to get bananas....if you see what I mean.

[Poverty]

Why the fook does the dyno need to know how many cylinders a car has got? All it need surely is for the RS to lay it down on the rollers, and therefore engine type is irrelevant?

[Janner_Sy]

evidently not, ive read something similar before as well.

i'm like you though, id have thought the car could just be plonked on and ran

[Poverty]

maybe they are saying the engine has added frictional losses because its 5 cylinder? But then still the wheels are what does the talking lol

[PDT]

This is all 100% genuine, as a dyno dynamics operator I am aware that there is an issue with 5 cyl cars and we test in the exact same way as this test was carried out.

The DD dyno is a very complex bit of kit and has various calculations built in for transmission losses based on the amount of cylinders, when testing a car you must input the amount of cylinders and the dyno will calibrate a transmission loss and a ramp rate (the speed of allowed acceleration against the load placed on the tyres by the dyno) but there is no option for 5 cylinders, so you test in 4cyl mode and then 6 cyl mode and use an option known as graph averaging that is built into the dyno to determine the true BHP.

However, none of the above will affect the measured power output at the wheels. The calculations and compensations mentioned above will only affect the given estimated flywheel power.

Does this really matter? not at all. Its great for a number on a bit of paper but the car drives out performing in the exact same way as it drove in. Above everything a dyno is a tool that should be used for measuring a difference in power before and after modifications or during mapping, the number at the top of the screen is a by-product of lots of guesswork made by the dyno, albeit a very highly developed guess that has resulted in from of research and testing by the dyno operators.

Its power @ the wheels that counts.

[Janner_Sy]

power at the wheels is how most dyno's abroad quote figures, it seems its just the UK that quote Flywheel hp.

what about 4WD cars how do the power at the wheels compare to a similar engined FWD car, ie stage 1 S3 Vs stage 1 Ed 30?

on a side note have you ever had a modified 3 or 6MPS on your rollers, if so do you know what it made?

Sy

[PDT]

I have tested 2 remapped Mazda 3 MPS' and neither were great TBH. There are only really 2 tuners out there that offer maps for them to the trade and neither make decent figures, well nowhere near the claimed output. Problem is there is only really 1 tool available that will read and write their ECU and that is a locked slave tool so anyone that owns one cant write their own map they must buy one form the tools supplier.

The top mounted intecooler is a big problem when pushing higher power figures.

Personally I choose not to offer any remapping solutions for them, well until the day the software supplier can provide a proven well developed map.

[Janner_Sy]

cheers mate.  i test drove a tweaked one the other day from sanspeed(ecutek tune) and it was massively quicker thanmy vRS at stage2+ he reckoned about 315hp/370Ibft. certainly felt it. 

tuning wise, ecutek seem the only safe option, with all the others underperforming and or requiring maps emailed to them from abroad so not a route ill be taking.

could you PM m the graphs if at all possible, just be interesting to see.