Making My Mondeo Angry

[ZeEscort]

I own a Mondeo Ghia X - Duratec 2.5 V6

She's not angry enough for me.

I believe that V6 | V8 | V12 should sound like the engines that they are (Grunty, Heavey & Angry), not the subtle grunt every now and then. So I'm looking at making mine very angry, I will be modding the car in and out as I'm changing the bodywork to look more like the ST(the car even looks wimpy). I'm already looking into a Dual Cat Split Exhaust system and having the engine cleaned from top to bottom (Ports cleaned and polished, pistons replaced etc). All that will just bring the engine back up to condition, so I need some advice on how to improve from their.

[FOCA]

A sports exhaust (the v6 has 2 sets of cats - pre cats/ main cats - some remove 1 set) - an induction kit with a CAIS - you can get professionaly made ones - shoud transform the sound from the car

Porting the ports and replacing the pistons is a lot of hassle (unless it needs it and you are doing a complete engine rebuild with the bores honed and new pistons/ rings and refurbing the head/ lapping in the valves etc ) if the motor is running ok, personally i wouldent bother with that - if you are going to this expense you mat be better off starting with the 3.0L ST220 engine 220HP with a potential 270 with a bit of work - the 2.5 only has about 160-170HP- and it can be difficult expensive to get much more than that - i get that from my 2L turbodiesel (+40mpg + about twice the torque)

PS - just make sure you dont make the car angry trying to make it angry!

[jeebowhite]

I agree with Foca on this one, if the car runs well, pulling everything apart is going to be a wasted effort, I would advise in that case to just get a terraclean service done to clean the carbon out, by all means clean the easy to removes but theres no point taking it out to replace a piston if the piston is fine but a tad dirty!

[ZeEscort]

Sorry not been around to reply back.

I've decided against touching the engine for now, as it's been on diags and is pretty much still running as well as it should do. It has lost around 10% hp (currently running at around 160hp), but for the age and mileage it's done well.

I am looking at getting rid of the restriction on exhaust though, as from what I've read this is where most of the noise is dampened down.

[BOF]

I disagree slightly with what has been said above: there is one thing that can be worth doing on the engine. As standard the engine has about 170 hp, and the big difference to an ST 200 is the induction system, primarily the throttle body, which is extrude honed (and bigger?) in the ST 200. Now, in reality, an average ST 200 isn't really worth 200 hp that you might have expected, but more like 195, but still that's an advance from where you are.

So, if you can get the ST 200 induction set up for a reasonable price, that might be worth doing, but, keep in mind that while it is worth some extra horses, it really doesn't do anything to increase the amount of low end grunt, and if using the low end grunt is mainly what appeals to you, then it won't be worth it. Won't do much for the noise, either, except that you'll probably use the engine in a different way, and that might make a difference.

(If you want a more radical suggestion, you could look into the Jaguar variant of the 2.5 engine, which produces more HP still, if I remember. I don't know what they do to get it, but I'd have to suspect that they have gone their own way on the induction side completely.)

There is also a bit of difficulty in the area on the exhaust at the back of the sump. Now, with this engine layout, it is impossible to do things perfectly, short of splitting the exhaust system, but there is a bend here that doesn't have an adequately radius. Probably only worth a couple of hp as standard, though, but may get to be more of a problem as you tweak it further and the the hp goes up.

Now, if what you want is noise and you don't care that much about the hp, an aftermarket exhaust can certainly give you more noise. An aftermarket panel or cone air filter will also give you more induction roar at significant throttle openings and that conversion should be quite cheap (relatively). I'm not clear whether that does the job that you want, though; more noise at wide throttle openings, but these are probably worth less than 5 extra hp (on their own, and maybe with a loss elsewhere), and hardly any extra noise on light throttle openings. Also it is difficult to say much about the character of the noise until the exhaust is fitted, but louder ought to be within the bounds of possibility.