ford focus

The term "track day" around here is always surrounded with a certain level of enthusiasm. We're all aware of the extra labor that goes into a trip to Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ, but everyone involved is more than willing to pitch in for the chance to see our RS thrashed around the track. Think of it like one of those field trips you would take in middle school. Sure, there would be a test on everything seen that day, but that was a small price to pay for a day out of the classroom. After spending almost a week preparing it was time to take the class on their field trip.

Hot Oil and Broken Eggs

Our other product coordinator Steve Bryson took the journey up to the track as the perfect opportunity to snap some roller shots.

Like any of the previous trips to the test track, we started at sunrise, meeting at HQ in New Castle, DE before shipping up the NJ turnpike. Even though our team spent over a week preparing for the day in Englishtown, there was still plenty to do once we arrived before

We've noticed that the 2013+ Ford Focus ST has little wiggle room when it comes to gaining power strictly from bolt-on parts. Even with stage 3 tunes, not many ST's out there see horsepower numbers beyond 300-350hp. That barrier can be surpassed with the use of ethanol or a bigger turbo, but on a stock turbo and pump gas, those numbers aren't going too far north.

With our intercooler, we wanted to bring on some positive effects for the power in this stubborn 2.0L engine. While power is important, we also needed to monitor the outlet temperatures with a visual analysis of heat transfer across the core.

Setting up our prototype for some dyno runs

One of our newer pieces of equipment is a neat little camera that detects thermal activity. It has been pivotal as our visual aid when looking at heat-soak and dispersion across stock intercooler applications, as well as our upgraded prototypes. We used it on our loaner ST to see how the stock unit handled the heat and how we could make it better.