Even a good set of 215's in some soft compound should give you pretty appreciable grip in a car as light as yours. My concern with your vehicle is going to be corner entry push, corner exit tire burning, and your camber gain and contact patches. Do you have camber plates in the car? Is there an available control arm lowerer (bad word choice but just put a 14 hour work day in) to give a better arc to your control arms available? I haven't seen one for the focus, but we can probably have something machined. Basically spaces the lower ball joint from the knuckle. Now that you mention it, i do remember the torsion convo, thanks for the reminder.
As it stands now, push isn't a concern, but from what I've felt I may want to consider throwing a 25mm rear swaybar in the car to help it bite just a bit more. The car is extremely neutral right now, and I prefer loose (you don't call me Mr. Spin for nothing). I have FSWerks Camber plates, though I've started thinking about moving to camber/caster plates, possibly the same ones you have on the Merkur if the right dimensions are there. Roll center correction is not available as a kit, but you and I can come up with a solution for that pretty easily if it is needed. Glad to hear you're confident a 215 would be enough for the car, as that'll make tire fitment much easier.
In love with this thread. Wanted to add that Clint had a basically stock 2.3 with the gtx3071r and he made right around 300whp (his wtq escapes me atm) and he just pwnd with that in Time Attack.
Of course with your aspirations to autox your demands are different but I sincerely think that Jared and Ray have you on the right track -- pardon the pun.
gtx2867r or gtx3067r for sure and since your motor will be built you can run a couple three different boost groups say 12, 16, and 21psi you could switch between depending on what kind of autox/road course you encounter.
Excited to see you take your car to this level as well as see how the platform with FI fares against stiff competition as you will be up against similarly modified cars.
After speaking with Vik last night over the phone (FSWerks customer service, again, has proven to be peerless), he seems to agree that a T3 turbo is just way too big for my needs. Plus, I will be able to upgrade to a GTX2867R without changing any piping, bracketry, what-have-you. It's a drop in and tune affair. That's not to say the GTX3071R is "too big for the car", or that it is excessively laggy, it just doesn't fit my needs.
There are some VERY fast people in our local group. If he's planning on running Pro-S still, he's going to have some fun challenges.
Still, at autocross, it really strikes home that some of the fastest cars around the course aren't high hp cars (granted, a lot of them are) but rather 150hp lightweight little things that just grip.
What's top speed @ 7k in 2nd for these boxes? Are you considering a different final drive ratio to bump that up a little if needed?
I'm looking forward to seeing where I wind up overall in the group. I know I won't be anywhere near the top, but It'll be nice to really start making use of the suspension I've put together. What I'd REALLY like to see is what Skibisky will be able to do with the car...
Top speed at the current 6750rpm redline in 2nd is 58mph, meaning I may have to shift... Time will tell that one. I've thought about moving to the PZEV final drive, which shouldn't be a big deal to put in one of my spare transmissions.
