Okay perhaps a subjective topic, getting a bit more power/response from your Focus...

So I've read a lot of posts about the mk2.5 Focus 1.6 (non Ti-VCT) petrol duratec engine being underpowered and sluggish. Yes these are heavy cars, yes 100bhp is not a lot for a car of this weight, must be like 90bhp per tonne roughly.

Well first of all I've driven this car around a good few hundred miles of mixed motorway, country roads and town driving. There is absolutely no problem with this size engine in this car. I can keep up with traffic, overtake etc and no worries. This is with a full car and family of 4 onboard. As long as you utilise the power band and hold in gear when you need to it's fine. You don't have the power of turbo diesel or direct injection engines so less torque low down and less immediate power delivery. But that said, it's fine for normal driving.

I have driven all manner of cars from Supra's to 1.0 litre Polos and Yaris's and type Rs. If you know how to drive you can get on fine with this car. Don't expect rapid. But it's not as bad as I was lead to believe. I jump between this and another car with 250nm of torque and don't have any issues.

So... Something I found from another vehicle. I bought some performance spark plugs. I read good things and thought why not. After swapping out I very quickly noticed slight less hesitation, a little more mpg and a little bit more power and responsiveness. Old plugs were not old..a few months. Tried in two cars now and both showed improvements.

So try Denso Iridium TT Spark Plugs IK16TT. These fit the duratec 1.6 and I left factory gapped. 

Cost a few bob (try the green spark plug company) but given the slight mpg increase I guess over the year they pay for themselves. Perhaps then, this is a free upgrade!

This assumes anyone will still be driving internal combustion engined cars by next week as we've cleared the country of every drop of fuel!  Calm down folks!

1 hour ago, supraruss said:

Okay perhaps a subjective topic, getting a bit more power/response from your Focus...

So I've read a lot of posts about the mk2.5 Focus 1.6 (non Ti-VCT) petrol duratec engine being underpowered and sluggish. Yes these are heavy cars, yes 100bhp is not a lot for a car of this weight, must be like 90bhp per tonne roughly.

Well first of all I've driven this car around a good few hundred miles of mixed motorway, country roads and town driving. There is absolutely no problem with this size engine in this car. I can keep up with traffic, overtake etc and no worries. This is with a full car and family of 4 onboard. As long as you utilise the power band and hold in gear when you need to it's fine. You don't have the power of turbo diesel or direct injection engines so less torque low down and less immediate power delivery. But that said, it's fine for normal driving.

I have driven all manner of cars from Supra's to 1.0 litre Polos and Yaris's and type Rs. If you know how to drive you can get on fine with this car. Don't expect rapid. But it's not as bad as I was lead to believe. I jump between this and another car with 250nm of torque and don't have any issues.

So... Something I found from another vehicle. I bought some performance spark plugs. I read good things and thought why not. After swapping out I very quickly noticed slight less hesitation, a little more mpg and a little bit more power and responsiveness. Old plugs were not old..a few months. Tried in two cars now and both showed improvements.

So try Denso Iridium TT Spark Plugs IK16TT. These fit the duratec 1.6 and I left factory gapped. 

Cost a few bob (try the green spark plug company) but given the slight mpg increase I guess over the year they pay for themselves. Perhaps then, this is a free upgrade!

This assumes anyone will still be driving internal combustion engined cars by next week as we've cleared the country of every drop of fuel!  Calm down folks!

My old 1.6 duratec was quite nippy but you had to rev hard in each gear to get it up from 3rd to 5th as 1st and second are limited which you learn to deal with.

Agreed you do need to learn to adapt your driving and gear changes a bit. A few years back on occasion I'd drive my wife's 1.4 Fiesta, smaller capacity of the same engine and again although not very powerful it never felt unable to cope with day to day driving. Lighter so probably same bhp per tonne as the Focus or close to it.

Vs all the issues with newer engines, direct injection stuff, timing chains etc of which I've had plenty of bad experiences I find this older engine great. It's basic, it's easy to work on generally and reliable. It's sort of Japanese having come via Yamaha originally. Expect engine may outlive rest of the car!

Having mainly Japanese cars throughout my driving history it was hard to admit that this Focus is actually a better drive than my Avensis both for comfortable driving position and driveability. Only hope reliability is close as well. Time will tell on that. My Avensis has about 120k on it and problem free. No issues. Can't recall having anything go wrong. The bar has been set very high.

2 hours ago, supraruss said:

Agreed you do need to learn to adapt your driving and gear changes a bit. A few years back on occasion I'd drive my wife's 1.4 Fiesta, smaller capacity of the same engine and again although not very powerful it never felt unable to cope with day to day driving. Lighter so probably same bhp per tonne as the Focus or close to it.

Vs all the issues with newer engines, direct injection stuff, timing chains etc of which I've had plenty of bad experiences I find this older engine great. It's basic, it's easy to work on generally and reliable. It's sort of Japanese having come via Yamaha originally. Expect engine may outlive rest of the car!

Having mainly Japanese cars throughout my driving history it was hard to admit that this Focus is actually a better drive than my Avensis both for comfortable driving position and driveability. Only hope reliability is close as well. Time will tell on that. My Avensis has about 120k on it and problem free. No issues. Can't recall having anything go wrong. The bar has been set very high.

Mines was pretty much trouble free for the 5 years I had it the only problem was wear and tear of suspension components, the manifold bracket that joins near the flexi cat and the fact the battery was the original since 2008 and died on me in 2016. I still see it for sale so it's still going strong. As long as the oil and filters gets changed often the duratec (sigma) is pretty solid.