Project Focus ST: Getting More Power with Cobb Tuning!
We have been pretty impressed with our Focus ST from the beginning. The car has wowed us with great performance and practical internal volume, great for hauling passengers and stuff. Previously we have upgraded the suspension, wheels and tires. With the chassis taken care of it's now time for more power.
In our last segment of Project Focus ST, we reviewed some parts from Cobb Tuning for our car. To get a nice safe boost in power, we got a Cobb Stage III upgrade which includes a V3 Access port ECU flasher, larger more efficient intercooler, larger charge pipes, a cold air intake, a larger freer flowing downpipe, a freer flowing exhaust and a heavy duty motor mount.
We felt that the Cobb Stage III set up would work exceptionally well because it is a totally engineered package with all the parts designed to work together. The best thing about the package is that Cobb has an optimized tune to go with all of these parts. We will see just how well this off the shelf tune works with our lame 91 octane California fuel.
Now it was time to install everything and test it out!
Read more about Project Focus ST!
The first step was to get the Focus on the rack and remove the front bumper cover to access the stock intercooler. Once the bumper cover was removed, removing the intercooler was just a couple of hose clamps and a few bolts away.
The Cobb intercooler is significantly larger than the stock Ford part in frontal area as is plain to see here. Like the stock intercooler the Cobb part is a bar and plate unit. Bar and plate intercoolers are good as heat sinks due to their larger mass. With more frontal area, more core is exposed to the cooling airstream. There are more rows of plates for less pressure loss across the core as well. 
The Cobb core is thicker as well, as shown here. The intercooler has cast end tanks that are contoured for good air distribution across the core. 
A side view of the stock and Cobb intercooler shows the core thickness difference. The Cobb Intercooler is 57% larger than stock and can reduce the intake charge temperature by as much as 100 degrees over stock!
