How Ford 'Fixed' The Focus RS's Intercooler After Discovering That It Was Too Cool
During the Ford Focus RS launch in Valencia earlier this week, I asked Ford’s vehicle engineering manager, Tyrone Johnson, about a rather large blanking plate on the RS’s intercooler. As you’ll see in the video, the reason for the plate is to reduce the efficiency of the intercooler because Ford discovered that in particularly humid conditions, the intercooler was working too efficiently, which caused a build up of water vapour. And because water in an engine is bad news, Ford searched through its parts bin and took the same blanking plate that it used for its diesel Transit van intercoolers and placed it over the intercoolers of the Focus RSs. So you could say, then, that the RS is part super hatch, part practical van…you know, in case you need to justify the purchase to a wife or girlfriend.
In the video, you’ll also hear about a few other cars the Focus RS owes its life to.
Comments
am i the only one who thinks the interior of it is pretty disappointing?
Can someone explain to me why vapor is bad for an engine please?
o don’t if that is a good way of explaining it.. but try that..
if you put your computer on yout freezer, what will happen?
There are several facts that are incorrect in the statement about humid air condensing due to the intercooler working too well and that water damaging the engine:
Intercoolers can only cool down to the ambient air temperature since they transfer heat with the ambient air. Condensation occurs when air is cooled so much that it can no longer hold as much water as it contained when it was warmer. The air would somehow have to get additional water evaporated into it post intake and pre intercooler for this to happen. I don’t see how this is possible unless there’s some kind of water leaking in the intake. Maybe this could be caused by a pressure drop, but I wouldn’t brag about that. Large pressure drops are indicative of a poor quality intercooler.
The amount of condensation created in this manner is nowhere near enough to “raise compression” or hydro lock an engine. You need to almost completely submerge your intake in water to cause problems with water in your engine.
It will immediately phase change to a gas when introduced to the very hot piston, probably before then. This actually cools the cylinders slightly. Although I doubt its really better for performance than if it had just stayed in the air. Some people inject water into their intake on purpose for this reason.
None of the materials in the intake could deterioriate when exposed to water. They’re all aluminums, plastics, silicone, etc. You’d need some iron or something.
Who knows why they really did this, or if it wasn’t just originally designed this way for a completely unrelated reason. It certainly has nothing to do with especially good intercooler performance damaging the engine.
Sounds like they just needed to put a bigger turbo on instead.
What I learned: don’t vape and drive a Focus ST
That’s here! In Valencia!
Drive that car during the Greek summer and then tell me about ‘’too efficient intercoolers’’…
Blanking plate from Transit? Mustang has Transit derived gearbox :D
When they found out that the intercooler was too big it was too late in production, so they put a cheap plate on it instead of putting a smaller one. But intercooler size doesn’t only affect temps… Lag is affected and the load on the turbo also. So you get all the disadvantage of a large intercooler but none of the advantages. (until you turn up the boost and remove that freaking plate lool)
I think this just shows how ford actually don’t really do engineering like it should be, not calculating the inter-cooler thickness and the surface area needed to dissipate de heat generated from the air compression from RS turbo is not a good sign of faith for us engineers.
I’m not stereotyping but trying to make things as big as they can, is typical american stuff.
Your camera skills are awkward to say the least.