How bad did ford Sandbag the Ecoboost?

BmacIL said:

Can't say I'm surprised. The very interesting part is that with an upgraded FMIC and slightly bigger turbo, you'd end up with an overall more reliable package than stock, at similar boost levels, while making more power.

Click to expand...

Hopefully this positively affects the Focus RS since I believe those two things are upgraded.

Very interesting write up, I was close to buying an Ecoboost.

Interesting read. I'm not sure about the whole idea of purposefully sandbagging the car just because they were scared of it being too close in performance to a GT. If that were the case they could have just tossed a less potent engine (like the Focus ST's 2.0L) in it and called it a day. Would have been way cheaper too.

The analysis is interesting, especially from someone that's been in the industry. But I feel like the actual Ford engineers aren't as clueless as your friend thinks. There's reasons for everything they do. And these days with strict emissions standards, they can't make an inefficient engine anymore. If the car could perform better for the same production cost, why shoot yourself in the foot? Sure they want to leave room for upgrades for the refreshed model (350hp rumored for 2018) but I don't think Ford is deliberately making the ecoboost slower. They did de-tune the V6 from 2014 but that was just in an effort to push people into EcoBoosts.

marjen said:

Would like to know what he thinks of some of the third party intercoolers that fit in the stock location, such as mishi, map and cp-e? DO they suffer some of the same limitations?

Click to expand...

Good question, I'll have to ask him next time.

Ok the remainder of the write up!
this is the part of the downpipe that drove him nuts.




His words exactly, "Wow they spent real money here! The flex section is a great quality piece, I never used a flex joint like this on a passenger car, it will probably out last the rest of the exhaust. It is flat when there is no ground clearance issue, In fact the pipe is round and protrudes below it on both sides. You see how it crimps down to fit? by changing the shape of the flow from round to an oval shape you do not restrict low volume flow at all, infact you improve the speed, But once you start adding alot of flow those outside edges stall causing turbulence, increasing the backpressure dramatically. A simple round flex joint would be much cheaper than this and flow much better. plus you wouldn't need a machine to shape the pipe on both sides, welding and assembly would be easier and cheaper. Something like this costed at least $1 per car, I'm guessing close to $2 if that bellow is specially made for this application. My boss would have had my balls if I tried to add $2 on an exhaust to maintain low volume flow I would have used a 2 inch neck down flex section for 15 cents and called it a day."

So I asked him what he thought he could do if unshackled.

"If I were in charge of the project from inception, but had to use the same turbo this engine would make 360 hp and save around $1 per car over the current design. If I was not limited on turbo this would be 400 hp at the same manufacture cost, and get better gas milage on the EPA cycle, Emissions would be slightly worse unless I spent 50 or 60 cents on a better cat and you could not run 87 at all. That's as far as I'd push the Hypereutectic pistons on a motor. If the fuel system has the capacity, $20 per car which would translate to around $1000 to the purchase price if we passed it all to the customer would be 450-470 hp on 93 only with forged pistons, 500 on a short over boost function. I can guarantee you that will not exist as long as the top trim level engine is naturally aspirated."

I honestly wouldn't think that they suffer the same issues, I mean have you actually looked at them? They may be small but they are of much higher quality.

Bullitt said:

Interesting read. I'm not sure about the whole idea of purposefully sandbagging the car just because they were scared of it being too close in performance to a GT. If that were the case they could have just tossed a less potent engine (like the Focus ST's 2.0L) in it and called it a day. Would have been way cheaper too.

The analysis is interesting, especially from someone that's been in the industry. But I feel like the actual Ford engineers aren't as clueless as your friend thinks. There's reasons for everything they do. And these days with strict emissions standards, they can't make an inefficient engine anymore. If the car could perform better for the same production cost, why shoot yourself in the foot? Sure they want to leave room for upgrades for the refreshed model (350hp rumored for 2018) but I don't think Ford is deliberately making the ecoboost slower. They did de-tune the V6 from 2014 but that was just in an effort to push people into EcoBoosts.

Click to expand...

They didn't deliberately detune the V6. To fit it under the '15 hood, a new intake manifold design was required that chopped top end power a little. The flip side is that the '15+ V6 actually has better low-mid range torque than the '11-14.

BmacIL said:

They didn't deliberately detune the V6. To fit it under the '15 hood, a new intake manifold design was required that chopped top end power a little. The flip side is that the '15+ V6 actually has better low-mid range torque than the '11-14.

Click to expand...

Actually as it stands now, the 15s look to be making better numbers until you start porting upper and lower intakes on the 11-14s. It's suspected that the 15 manifold is a better design and would actually be an upgrade for the 11-14s. A member on the cyclone Facebook is going to give it a go soon.

What I love about this- I spent 25800 out the door on a base auto EBM. $1600 on a tuner, intercooler, and downpipe, and now I have a ~330hp/380trq car that pulls 1G turns that looks so good I want to wash it every other day. God bless America

Glenn G said:

So I asked him what he thought he could do if unshackled.

"If I were in charge of the project from inception, but had to use the same turbo this engine would make 360 hp and save around $1 per car over the current design. If I was not limited on turbo this would be 400 hp at the same manufacture cost, and get better gas milage on the EPA cycle, Emissions would be slightly worse unless I spent 50 or 60 cents on a better cat and you could not run 87 at all. That's as far as I'd push the Hypereutectic pistons on a motor. If the fuel system has the capacity, $20 per car which would translate to around $1000 to the purchase price if we passed it all to the customer would be 450-470 hp on 93 only with forged pistons, 500 on a short over boost function. I can guarantee you that will not exist as long as the top trim level engine is naturally aspirated."

Click to expand...

Therein lies the rub. I'm sure Ford would not bring such a vehicle to market in the US if it couldn't at least accept 87 octane gasoline The Ecoboost bridges too many markets here in the US for that to be acceptable...unfortunately, the product does get dummied down somewhat to make it appealing to the masses here. If it were a high end product that you were expected to pay a premium for (rather than a $1,700 option on the base V6 engine), I'm sure the situation would be changed and your prof would have unlimited license to make it like that. Then you'd have a car like the '84-'86 SVO, where it's a limited market machine and designed for specialist auto enthusiasts...the '86 SVO made over 200 HP, at the time the 5.0 GT was making 225 HP. Unfortunately, the pubic wasn't ready for a machine that made its horsepower in a rather unconventional (for the time!) manner, especially when gasoline was cheap and you could have the monstrous, tourquey Ford 302 that was easy to mod and get more out of for less money.

Bullitt said:

Interesting read. I'm not sure about the whole idea of purposefully sandbagging the car just because they were scared of it being too close in performance to a GT. If that were the case they could have just tossed a less potent engine (like the Focus ST's 2.0L) in it and called it a day. Would have been way cheaper too.

The analysis is interesting, especially from someone that's been in the industry. But I feel like the actual Ford engineers aren't as clueless as your friend thinks. There's reasons for everything they do. And these days with strict emissions standards, they can't make an inefficient engine anymore. If the car could perform better for the same production cost, why shoot yourself in the foot? Sure they want to leave room for upgrades for the refreshed model (350hp rumored for 2018) but I don't think Ford is deliberately making the ecoboost slower. They did de-tune the V6 from 2014 but that was just in an effort to push people into EcoBoosts.

Click to expand...

He doesn't think the ford engineers are clueless, quite the opposite actually, he thinks they did so good a job on the ecoboost that management made them castrate it.

Considering that's the exact thing that happened to him I'm inclined to believe him. Remember the profit margins on higher trims increases exponentially, it does not cost Ford $7k more to make a GT.

You want to see a company that really sand bags an engine? Look no further than BMW. Do you really think 320 hp is anywhere close to the safe limit on a 435? that is basically the M4 Engine with smaller turbos, crap HPFP and crappier tune. It will make damn near 400 whp on a tune only.

I have it on good authority that the only place the V6 was detuned was on paper.

That makes sense. What a great post! Only makes you wonder what would happen if the v6 ecoboost ever made it into a mustang. Ford would have to spend even more money to slow it down

Well nothing here is a surprise at all. It's common for all mfgs to cut costs and purposely take power away from engines with restrictive exhausts and designing limits to the engines. If it was a Ferrari engineer Spouting off about the latest model having these deficiencies it would be a whole different story.

dsabat said:

What I love about this- I spent 25800 out the door on a base auto EBM. $1600 on a tuner, intercooler, and downpipe, and now I have a ~330hp/380trq car that pulls 1G turns that looks so good I want to wash it every other day. God bless America

Click to expand...

+1 dsabat! Great write up Glenn, thanks for posting. I've got the same $1600 in tune, IC and DP and can testify with everyone else who has unburdened the EB to the "limits" Ford put on the EcoBoost. The car has so much ballsy punch now, that's available almost all the way to redline, just a totally different car from the one I drove off the dealers lot.

Wulf Titan said:

That makes sense. What a great post! Only makes you wonder what would happen if the v6 ecoboost ever made it into a mustang. Ford would have to spend even more money to slow it down

Click to expand...

The only way I can see an Ecoboost V6 in the Mustang would be when the whatever the top trim Mustang is moves up to an Ecoboost V8, which would be Monstrous. At that point there would be no need to artificially create space between the engines like they are doing now. Boost is the replacement for displacement if the bigger engine is NA, once both engines are boosted, displacement and cylinder counts begin to pay off huge dividends. I generally consider an engine a race engine when one of two benchmarks is reached, 150 hp per liter or 100 hp per cylinder. The Ecoboost is amazing in that it exceeds those benchmarks on a tune. An Ecoboost V8 of say 4 liters would be safe to assume 550 - 600 hp stock on and near 800 hp with bolt-ons if the turbos are sized properly. I wouldn't be surprised if government steps in soon to legislate a horsepower cap on vehicles that sell over a certain amount per year.