$1100 for installation!!!!!???? Are they taking their own **** and smoking it???!!


Good god!! they can sit on it and spin for that much!!

 

i can get a fmax installed for about $300 or so bux....you must have a typo. Also, do you mean where the cat ends, or up where it attaches to the header

 

no that wasnt a typo. thats the price quoted to me in the parking lot. Now I dont know for sure, but i believe this includes tuning also?

So you guys seem to think thats a little steep.

 

You guys obviously haven't tried to install a conventional turbo on a Focus. For one person it's a 2 day event even with air tools. All of the bolt on crap is pretty easy.....tapping in for the oil return line is a pain in the butt. The main reason is because you can't tap into the oil pan because its to low and the oil level is above the top of it. We made that mistake the first attempt at installing my turbo. The oil couldn't escape through the return line so it broke through a seal and sprayed out the exhaust side turbine burning up as it hit and blowing sick amounts of smoke out the exhaust. You have to tap into the "girdle housing" which means taking off the oil pan and taking off the girdle housing and then drilling a hole (so as not to get an metal shavings on the crank) and putting all back together. Then you have to let the oil pan gasket set overnight. If you had one guy working on tapping and another guy putting on the bolt on stuff on top you could probably get it done in a day but that is 2 people tied up and one bay rendered completely useless for at least a day assuming there weren't any glitches. Not to mention the intercooler plumbing. Over $1k seems a little steep but I would never take only $300 to do that job again.

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'00 Green ZX3
Garrett T3/T4 turbo, Greddy Type S bov, Turbonetics wastegate (Tial when boost is turned up), 5th injector w/ Haltech F5 eic. Focus Central Throttle Body. Superchip. Focussport over the crossmember pipe, cat-back, chrome stress bar and plug wires. Esslinger underdrive pulley, adjustable cam gears, and chrome oil cap. AEM spark plug cover. Eibach Sportline Springs. APC Clear Corners. Hella headlight conversion kit. Autometer boost and air/fuel guages. Wings West wing. 17x7.5" Konig Toxxins w/205-40-17 Yokohama Paradas

 

And how much information do we have about this kit?

What PSI is that at? What are they doing to control spark and fuel?

Why/how did they blow a motor up?

 

Ha.. Focusparts.com.... Ha... Is it me or do all of the bolt ons/internal mods all have a Focusparts.com "special tool" you absolutely must have thats handy dandy and can even cut carrots? You say 3 grand for the turbo and a grand for installation... 4 more and you can get sponsored by them!!! YAY... where do I sign up for Alamo and their exploding engines...

 

i think this turbo is lame also but only compared to whats out and now it doesnt even sound like it keeps the cat. but they blew an engine testing how much boost they could run and then they made new rods and all that good stuff for the people that want to go with more boost. still this is peak hp we are talking 7k rpms at about 5.5 you break 200 hp

 

Didn't they blow the motor while racing a Corvette or something?

 

Yes, and they were not capable of describing to me WHY. Which makes me question their ability to design a system.

Failures are excusable, if you can identify the problem and fix it.

 

Wasn't it because they had the boost set too high on the turbo?

 

...and a small shot of NOS.
I can't believe you people think that this kit sucks because they blew a motor. Is the aerocharger a good kit because it doesn't make enough power to break the weak stock powder cast rods? That's not an reason for a kit to "suck". Do some research on the parts that Focusparts is using for thier kit (Garrett turbo, Tial wastegate, GReddy blow-off valve, Spearco core for the intercooler.) Its not a sucky setup. Plus its relatively cheap for the power gains. Open your minds people.

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'00 Green ZX3
Garrett T3/T4 turbo, Greddy Type S bov, Turbonetics wastegate (Tial when boost is turned up), 5th injector w/ Haltech F5 eic. Focus Central Throttle Body. Superchip. Focussport over the crossmember pipe, cat-back, chrome stress bar and plug wires. Esslinger underdrive pulley, adjustable cam gears, and chrome oil cap. AEM spark plug cover. Eibach Sportline Springs. APC Clear Corners. Hella headlight conversion kit. Autometer boost and air/fuel guages. Wings West wing. 17x7.5" Konig Toxxins w/205-40-17 Yokohama Paradas

 

Before anyone here goes and accuses Alamo for sucking...STOP
If you knew anything about that shop you'd know these guys KNOW their SH@#!!!
They blew an engine...so what??? I bet you guys didn't know that their "project" focus is in store for a liitle work and it should be getting close to 410bhp. They are a good shop and do great work...

 

Yeah but saying its because they ran too much boost is like saying the terrorists attacked because they are evil.

No, of course that doesn't make it BAD because it has enough power to destroy the engine.

But as a turbo-kit designer, it would be helpful if they determined what was the root cause of the failure and the best way to address it. I wouldn't pride myself on having a kit that previously was known to explode my bottom end into little metal fragments. You have to research the limits of the engine or tell the customer exactly what he/she needs to replace unless they'd like to reproduce their experiment.

Was it too high of an RPM, excessove boost (they have a BOV), the engagement of the nitrous, extreme detonation, did elimination of one or all of these factors make the kit reliable and was it tested extensively. And we need as much information on the kit as possible.

Remember how Aerocharger was treated when we knew NOTHING about it... nobody even talked about it even though the kit has been around forever, because nobody knew enough about it. If someone is going to sell a turbo kit, they need to market it and they need to provide as much information as possible on the kit. Otherwise you could end up with someone like me designing your kit. I could throw together a bunch of cool parts and blow up an engine, back off a little and say "here ya go". Not saying this is the case... but food for thought. You do NOT want me designing your turbo kit.

And econorocketZX3, if you hit ctrl+F and type in "suck", you are the only one thats said that so far. People are going to ask extensive questions and be sceptical until they get good solid answers. This is a GOOD thing.

[This message has been edited by Ducman69 (edited 09-18-2001).]

 

This topic has come up so many times it makes me sick. People badmouth Focusparts because of the blown engine story. A couple of us who know that they had been testing the limits of the stock bottom end for a long time. At one point they had it up to 238hp @ the wheels. Cranked up the boost a little more, slap on a 50 shot, get into a race on the highway doing high rpms with high boost in 4th gear (where there is alot more stress on the motor than in the lower gears) and snap........actually snap times 4!!! Of course we have told this story time and time again but it still goes back to "Focusparts' kit blew the motor up, so it's not a good kit".
Oh, and by the way, Ducman the wastegate controls the boost pressure, not the blow off valve!

------------------
'00 Green ZX3
Garrett T3/T4 turbo, Greddy Type S bov, Turbonetics wastegate (Tial when boost is turned up), 5th injector w/ Haltech F5 eic. Focus Central Throttle Body. Superchip. Focussport over the crossmember pipe, cat-back, chrome stress bar and plug wires. Esslinger underdrive pulley, adjustable cam gears, and chrome oil cap. AEM spark plug cover. Eibach Sportline Springs. APC Clear Corners. Hella headlight conversion kit. Autometer boost and air/fuel guages. Wings West wing. 17x7.5" Konig Toxxins w/205-40-17 Yokohama Paradas

[This message has been edited by econorocketZX3 (edited 09-18-2001).]

 

i think that by blowing an engine it helps us guys...so i dont know why all the hate. They uped the boost until they found the limit of the turbo, which was 9psi and NOS. At 7 psi, it still produced over 200whp, and is street safe..so quit hatin. I talked to them a while ago and they seem really knowedgable. They should just try to update their page a bit and keep us imformed on stuff.

PS>..an aerocharged engine has been blown before, just thought id let you guys know.

 

Well they did mention of blowing the motor two times. They backed it up by saying that they were testing the limits of the factory motor. True they may have done it on purpose or by accident. I can see them not wanting to let out all of their findings. This could be used for marketing and such. I dont know of many companies letting all of their cats out of the bag especially when it comes to R&D work.

May be i'm wrong?

 

Uhh... BOV controls the boost... uhm, off of the throttle.

Oops.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ducman69:
I could throw together a bunch of cool parts and blow up an engine, back off a little and say "here ya go". Not saying this is the case... but food for thought. You do NOT want me designing your turbo kit.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
See!

 

There is nothing wrong with blowing up an engine in the search for power. Or seeing "how much the engine can take". Read my post, I never said blowing up an engine was bad.

Also, read some of my old turbo posts from way back, and I was a huge defender of all turbos when people accused them of blowing up motors. I said you have to understand what went wrong before labelling all turbos bad.

What I am saying is this:

I call up to find out the details on their kit. The guy mentions that they just blew up the motor. I ask why, what blew it up. The answer I get is not very confidence inspiring, cause the guy really doesn't know what he's talking about.

Now why would I want to buy a turbo kit from a company that A) has blown up a motor with it. And B) doesn't really know why.

If they don't even know what caused the problem, how can they be sure that the kit they are selling isn't faulty?

They didn't know if it was excessive boost, or too high rpm, and now people are mentioning nitrous.

I heard they were doing 160mph racing a Corvette. Now Econorocket is saying they were in 4th gear. That would put them at 8500rpm at 160mph. IF that is the case, then A) they are pretty stupid for doing that, and B) the motor blew from revs, not boost.

All of this speculation leads me back to my original point. Why would you buy a kit from a company that doesn't even understand why they had a failure?

 

actually I remember from the previous posts that Focusparts blew up the engine at 11,000 rpm at 175 mph -- a surprising rev number for a focus, especially a turbo! OMG!

Do a search...you'll find the story.

I decided not to do turbo because at the time I crossed the turning point...getting cams and an intake....aerocharger was the only reliable kit, and it was totally bizarro in terms of what a turbo kit is usually thought of. Also, I was turned off by the lack of a recognizable brand name turbo...Garret, Turbonetics, etc.

Maybe I would have accepted the aerodyne turbo if it was mounted up with a turbo manifold or if it didn't install after the cat. I don't know.

You know, companies like GReddy and others blow up engines regularly, testing the power threshold so that they can make safety recommendations to drivers.

I think we should ask Aerocharger Jim if he's ever blown up an engine after incrementally increasing, boost, rpms, nitrous, etc. just so he can save our motors from destruction by saying "don't rev your engine past 8k" or "don't use more than X amount of nitrous with this turbo kit"

all we know is that a stage 3/4 aerocharger MIGHT screw over an automatic on full boost, but jim's never done that, to my knowledge.

------------------
Car: 2000 black Focus ZX3 with AT, AC, CD
Mods: JBA cat4ward header, Borla catback exhaust, Esslinger intake cam, Focus Central 65mm throttle body, Volant Intake with iceman snorkel
Horsepower: unknown
1/4 mile: unknown

 

11K rpm? Thats rediculous. My FJ can't rev that high! What was the point of that, if that is true? Can't you just go... duhhh it will probably break something above 10K rpm.

On several occasions Jim has mentioned that 200fwhp is about the max of the small turbo. So blowing up an engine is rather pointless and wouldn't make me feel any better.

If he can get 200fwhp and 240ftlbs with as quick a spool time as possible and have it be very reliable... thats what interests me. Its clear that if you are looking into the import drag racing scene and desire around 300fwhp or more that you should look into another more traditional kit, and probably some other work as well. But I'm not sure how big of a market there is for people trying to squeeze more horsepower through a 2.0 liter engine than you get with a 5.7 liter Camaro SS V8. It can be done, but...

Right now we just need as much information as possible. Is there a dyno sheet floating around somewhere?

 

There is a small article in Turbo Magazine.
October issue. It shows a dyno sheet and explains everything the car has done. There will be a bigger acticle on it later, time I don't know they are supposed to be building a stroker it. When they are gone, is when Turbo Magazine is going to write another Article on it.

 

I read that same article. Didn't it say that the stock rods can only hold up to 7 pounds of boost and alamo blew the motor at 9?

 

A lot of this confusion comes because most "tuners" aren't engineers, and can't understand the relationship between RPM and the force on the rods.

So they break a rod and blame it on boost, when it could have been RPM that did it.

 

I read the same article and they said that once you put in new rods that you should be able to boost over 7lbs Ive been looking at alot of kits and the alamo seems real nice to me but I dont know

 

Geez, it's really strange how there are quite a few people on this board who are over 7psi, and their rods aren't broken?

I think 10 people... Could it be that the "7psi barrier" is not true?