To Tune, Or Not To Tune

So we all pretty much know at this point that Ford’s engineers had optimized the stock Focus RS’ driveline for 350 horsepower and 350 lb-ft of torque. What would happen to this balance if you were to tune the RS for improved performance? Road & track took a minute to think about this question and retuned with these thoughts on the matter.

According to Ford, any power increase would be split between four wheels and the Torque Vectoring Rear Drive Module (RDM) could direct 70% of that power to the rear wheels. So essentially if you were able to add an extra 100hp to the Focus RS, each rear wheel will only be getting around 35 hp. That Rear Drive Module is speculated to be the Focus RS’ main weakness when it comes to tuning.

Bill Caswell, the author of this piece, managed to shut down the car’s AWD system by driving a bit too aggressively in Drift mode. The rear differential had stopped working because of a built-in thermal safeguard put in place by Ford. This was implemented into the AWD system to prevent damage being caused to the driveline from overheating. If this was caused by drifting a stock RS, what would happen to a tuned one?

The massive intercooler in the RS may be able to cool down the extra pressure put on the system but the rear differential may not be able to handle it as well.

So will you leave the RS stock or will you go through with the tune?