[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfCFRiAneew[/youtube]
Our man Jason Connor typically handles driving duty when it comes to the camera car. What do we use for said vehicle? Why Jason’s own Mountune-modified Focus ST. It’s a car that actually deserves its own video… so that’s what’s happening here. In fact, we’re going to let Jason tell us all about it.
Mr. Connor took a stab at shooting and editing this whole this as well. It’s his first go at it, and we think he did a pretty damn good job for his first go ’round.
Exploring the Hooniverse Mountune Focus ST
About
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I thought about the Fiesta but size was an issue. The Focus is Made in USA (from parts) and the price made it a no-brainer. Cheaper than the Fiesta. I finally drove a Fiesta ST at the ecoboost challenge and that interior was way cheaper than my Focus. That would have swayed me.
So far all I have done to my ST has been stickers. I bought a set of winter wheels super cheap and I’m hunting snow tires. And mud flaps… for when we get back to winter.
The brakes- I instructed a student in an ST3 last weekend. We got up to some good speed which put pressure on the brakes. He was running some aftermarket pads. They cooked. I’m still thinking the torque vector thing is causing the brakes to be used 90% od the time on track and never cool off. Some additional cooling would help a bunch.-
It’s funny, I don’t know if it was my negotiation skills or just catching the dealer at the right time. The sticker on my FoST ST2, nav and roof was $28,9k but I paid $24,1k. My brother in law got the same comparable package on his FiST and the sticker was $25,9k but paid $24,9k.
Dealer just don’t seem to be negotiating better pricing for the FiST as the FoST which also had something to do with my decision. The FoST is a better place to sit, the touch points are much nicer and is overall a better car in terms of materials.
The cooling for brakes in terms of air guides seem to help. The only sure footed way to correct the issue of brakes is install a Quaife (Funny name I know) LSD and tune the ECU to disengage the torque vectoring. There could be some increased torque steer by going that route but seems worth it if you are a serious track rat.
Oil temps rise on track as well and recently Mountune released a Oil Control System for the 2.0 Ecoboost. They removed the crankshaft balance shaft assembly and engineered a baffled oil sump with one way gates preventing it from causing catastrophic oil pressure loss by just removing the balance shaft assembly on it’s own. I’ve been considering doing this when the warranty is fully expired as well as the full pro tune. The parts for the Oil Control System are fairly inexpensive but I’m sure the labor associated is pretty crazy.
I didn’t want to talk all about this in the video otherwise we would have been looking at my ugly mug for 30 minutes.-
I took the ST to a HPDE and drove one session – or 3/4 the session and came in due to the heat. I could go down that path to upgrade but another instructor said “nice car, don’t f- it up.”
It’s an excellent road car. Not an excellent track car without work. I’ll keep hammering on the Mustang for the track.
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