We go back to November when, with the styling sorted (for the moment), Craig went to get some more power for the diesel Focus.
Right – the Focus’s little problems are fixed; it’s looking pretty good; it’s Koni-sprung and ITG-filtered; and it’s got fresh tax and ticket. Time to power-up the blackstuff burner, and in a modern common-rail turbodiesel that means a remap.
But with so many TDCi remappers out there, how do you choose which one to trust your ECU to? You’d probably suggest a serious bit of research – trawl the forums, speak to mates, get tips from tuners… Well, I turned to Facebook. A company called CG Remaps started ‘following’ the Fast Ford Facebook page, and I was intrigued enough to pay a visit to their website then get in contact with the main man, Chris Greenwood.
His mobile remapping company is fresh on the scene but he is an Elite Remaps agent so any fears of a new tuner using a ZX Spectrum were immediately washed away. Chris was extremely enthusiastic about how positively the Ford TDCi reacts to a new map, and he was friendly and knowledgeable, so I got him to book me in.
There’s no point in doing a remap without knowing what the before-and-after power and torque figures are, so I also arranged some time on the Powerstation‘s rolling road. The Tewkesbury-based dyno and tuning business was ideally situated between Fast Ford Towers and CG Remaps‘ home in the West Midlands, so I shot up the M5 to meet Chris there and see what he had to say.
I was to get a surprise when Powerstation‘s Andy Cookson strapped the Focus to the rollers – 127bhp before any laptops had been attached to the OBD port… The 1.8-litre TDCi rolled off the production line with 115bhp! The engine’s been feeling a little more lively since its ITG air filter was fitted, but an extra 12bhp from a replacement panel filter? Unlikely.
Despite the bewildering bonus bhp, I was still keen for more horses so Chris whipped out his laptop and did his stuff, then asked if I’d like an economy map, a mix of power and economy, or a power map. After exactly zero seconds thinking time, I answered: “Power, please”.
An hour or so later, and it was ready to be dyno’d again: 144bhp and a monster 332Nm of torque – 22Nm more than a standard Mk1 Focus RS. That’ll do nicely! The Powerstation graphs show that the increases are more than just about the swollen figures though. The torque curve is much steeper than pre-remap and reaches its peak lower down the rev range – and this is borne out in the way it drives.
For a turbodiesel, it is fairly aggressive in low-gear acceleration and the already pretty impressive mid-range surge is much improved. Plus it is still returning over 40mpg (prior to the remap it was giving around 42-45mpg) and that is while making decent use of the new power… it’s a no-lose situation! Chris promised that the car would feel like it’s had a dose of steroids, and I get his point!
But I’m never happy, and the next stage for the Sport is a sports exhaust to open up the engine’s breathing that bit more – and so that I can lose the droopy-dick diesel-spec tailpipe! The spanking new Koni suspension kit has also amplified how tired the bushes are on the Focus so I’ll get some polybushes, and I also need to replace the old-school six-disc headunit with a modern iPhone-compatible one. I’ve been reading about the new second-generation DAB headunits recently, time to investigate them further…
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