Hi all !

I bought a focus rs mk1 about 2 months back. It had supposedly had an engine rebuild a couple years before, the car has the full sabre 400rs package to my knowledge.
But there is a bit of history behind that, the person I bought the car off, said when he bought it, it was running awfully, he contacted the previous owner, and found out that the previous owner to him had been running hybrid turbo, bigger injectors, map etc….. but then stripped the mods off when he traded the car in. Now the person I bought the car off, contacted sabre and bought all of the mods the car should have had to match the map on the car, but bought a 400rs turbo instead of the 400r. ( All of this will make sense shortly ) Then there was a Dyno sheet for 380hp but the map hadn’t been adjusted
Anyway, 2 weeks into my ownership, I had a play down the motorway. 3rd into 4th. When I dropped it into 5th to slow down, the motorway behind me was covered in smoke, got it back to a friends garage. The tips of my plugs were melted away on cylinder 2&3. On a compression test, cylinder 2 was reading about 70 and barely holding, cylinder 3 was bouncing from 0-40 but not holding. Then 1&4 shot up to 140. Got the car recovered home, stripped it down and found it melted pistons 2&3. Chipped a Valve, melted alley over another 4, and the head needs skimming due to melted alley.
My instinct was a fuelling issue, I got the injectors tested and they were all fine. I don’t know much about the engines so I was hoping to ask someone more knowledgable for some advice of what could be at fault.
Sorry for the long post,
Thanks in Advance,
Sam

 

Is it running the standard ecu? I had a car that was Sabre tuned to an alleged 400 bhp. I had it on my friends rollers and it wouldn’t make 300. It was over-fuelling and ran like a sack of shit.
I would be looking at the fuel pump and pressure, if it had all the mods removed and then re-fitted the pump might have been overlooked. It sounds like it ran very lean. Was it running direct and bypassing the boost controller?
There are so many things that could have caused the problem.
Who is rebuilding the engine for you?

 

Hi there,

As far as I am aware, the car is running standard ECU, the previous owner didn’t say it was aftermarket. I didn’t get the chance to get on a Dyno myself, but the car did pull very strong, and had no previous issues before it went bang.
Funnily enough, I was thinking the same thing about the fuel pump, as it’s hidden away in the tank ( I assume ) it would be overlooked.
There is no boost controller anywhere to be seen, so again I would assume it would be direct

I am rebuilding it myself with my old man, we are HGV techs so we aren’t complete idiots when it comes to rebuilding, but we have the help of a good friend who has rebuilt countless Zetecs across the years

I just was hoping to see if anyone else much wiser than myself could think of things to check, as I don’t want this to happen again

many thanks,
sam

 

Hi !

Did you get to the bottom of what happened to it ?
Had a Mk1 FRS many years ago tuned to 380bhp whit the Gt3071rs from Pumaspeed they had for a while so I know the platform..
Sounds like the engine whent really lean ! Fuel pump... Mad... Injectors.. yeah can be alot of stuff. Best thing you can do to that car making 400hp+ is to get a aftermarket ECU 👍

Matt