Tag Archives: Cobb Tuning

Cobb Tuning – They Dyno’d a Ford Focus RS!

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The above was a Cobb Tuning live video session that occurred today.

They dyno’d a Ford Focus RS.  The car was stock.  In fact, they dyno’d it four times.  The first two pulls were with the stock tune.  The latter two pulls were with a Cobb AP tune (stage 1).

The guy in the video stated that he’d heard that a lot of people were thinking the car was overrated from the factory and that they wanted to test to see if it was true.

[SPOILER ALERT – Stop reading now if you’d like to watch the video to see the results!]

Well, the first two pulls netted 301 WHP and 340 lb-ft of torque.  The last two pulls netted 313 WHP and 360 lb-ft of torque.

Now, my concern is that current RS owners say they aren’t getting full boost on a consistent basis (ie, they’re not getting the full power on demand, every time they run the car hard).  Yes, different atmospheric  conditions will dictate how well the car runs, but if your car is only generating 250 WHP when you want the full Monte, that’s a problem.  The cars are probably dialing back boost when ambient temps are high.  The Cobb test car was run in Texas, where it’s in the low to mid 90s today.  The dyno testing didn’t see any anomalies but their testing isn’t what the mag publishers’ test numbers are showing.  The mag publishers are showing discrepancies (the cars are not generating what it should, HP-wise).

Cobb needs to test more, IMO.  Or maybe they don’t care enough to investigate further…after all, it isn’t their problem.

Regarding the HP numbers of the dyno runs, the car saw rather significant gains when going stage 1, but this car is already putting out serious amounts of power.  How much more before the car either stops generating nothing but heat (or a thrown rod or cracked piston)?

Cobb Tuning – Researching AP v3 for Subaru STI

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So, I’m conducting research on the Cobb AP just so I can make an informed decision on if this would be a good idea for my car.  The latest version of the AccessPort is expensive ($650), but the v3 offers a lot more functionality than the v2, so this may be what I’ll get.

In today’s research (this will take awhile), I saw the following:

http://www.cobbtuning.com/Dyno-Database-s/70119.htm, then select “Han Wu”

Summary:

This guy already has a rather strong STI (248HP/254TQ at the wheels).  When Stage 1 OTS was applied, the dyno read 269HP/319TQ).  From there, he got a protune while still at Stage 1, netting 276HP/327TQ.

If you click on all three dyno runs, you can see the differences between the three (there will be six graphs).  In particular, look at the stock and the Stage 1 OTS graphs.  Two things are apparent:  1.  There are a several big dips in both the HP and torque graphs on the stock dyno run; 2.  There are huge gains in the OTS map (21HP and 64TQ peak).  The last set of graphs looks to be where the owner decides to go Stage 1 protune (at 18.5 psi), where a few more HP and TQ are squeezed out.

The dyno session started at 9:30AM and ended at 10:11AM (granted, the work wasn’t much, as they went from stock to S1 OTS then protuned off of that).  IMO, that’s a significant gain and the session probably costed $300 (not sure where the tune was done).

PTuning is near me (in Manassas, VA), and I’m pretty sure they do protuning…I’ll check their rates.  I’ll also check their site to see their pricing on a Cobb AP and what they charge for a tune.