Litchfield’s RS demonstrator arrived last week and it didn’t take long for them to set about development work.
Litchfield have a long and rich history with rally replicas from Subaru and Mitsubishi and with Ford producing such a dynamic, fun and yet practical car they felt it was about time to widen their product range to include a blue oval marque.
Litchfield technicians have run numerous dyno sessions and have been busy analysing data and comparing notes. They have tested the Focus RS on their state of the art Maha MSR Dyno which uses advanced electric motors to allow these cars to run safely without damaging their clutch based 4wd system. The MSR dyno is able to control the RS’s front and rear wheel speeds independently to avoid unnecessary stress back through the differentials as the car changes the Torque split. However this is not just when the vehicle is under acceleration but also whilst it is coasting down from its power measurement. Here the dyno measures each axle separately and it is interesting to see how Ford changes the load the 4wd system is under as it decelerates.
See the image below which shows the Green (front and rear axle measurements) separating before the clutch brings the axles together before releasing them again at low speed. The dyno is able to react and measure this change instantly to insure transmission is loaded safely.
The Lirchfield demo produced 343bhp on the dyno (Ford claim 345bhp) with a nice flat torque curve. Ford claim 350lbft with the overboost feature so when we load the car up from low revs on the dyno our figure of around 331lbft was produced without the overboost feature activating. The RS power delivery is also incredibly consistent during the multiple runs being performed for data collection
As well as the dyno data logging tools Litchfield have also been using the COBB Tuning Accessport to log and send data back to Cobb HQ in the US. This handheld programmer allows the user to upload new maps, data log for remote tuning, fault code read and use the Hi Res screen to show user defined gauges. The Accessport also stores the cars original engine calibration so it can be flashed back to standard at any time.
From the few days a research Litchfield have already learnt a huge amount and with speaking with their partners (KW, Alcon to name a few) about designing new parts we will be watching Litchfield very closely as these guys produce only the best products.
