Tracking My Car For The First Time
I tracked my car for the first time at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, as part of the Track Night In America, program on May 24th. It was awesome and you should totally do it. »
Motegi MR116s, Pirelli P Zeros, and a Harbor Freight Drill Bit
I've always run all-season tires, since I never really cared about getting peak performance, and the cars I've owned have generally been AWD and low torque, so they performed well enough during the winter. That wasn't the case with my current tires, though. »
Paint, Stripes, and Dyno Tuning
I got the Focus ST paint fixed, striped added, installed a PCV oil catch can, and got a dyno tune from BrenTuning. »
A Wedding And Detailing My Car
Katie and I wrapped up the second weekend in a row where we attended a wedding. The wedding was fantastic! Luckily, last weekend we were in Somerville for the wedding, and this weekend we were in Boston at The Liberty Hotel. If you don't know, the Liberty is actually built on the site of a former Boston jail that housed famous inmates like Sacco and Venzetti [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacco_and_Vanzetti] and Malcolm X [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X]. Despite its rather sordid past, »
Ford Is Murdering My Car
Yesterday, Ford announced that they're killing all of their small cars in North America, to consolidate their lineup around trucks, SUVs, and crossovers. What do I mean by small cars? I mean the Fiesta, Fusion, C-Max, Taurus, and of course, my car, the Focus. RIP 2013-2018 Now, of course, they're not murdering my specific car, since I own it, and I would fight them to the death. But, they won't be selling any Focus STs in North America in the near future. This sucks. For this beautiful 5 year »
It Is Spring, Time For New Spark Plugs
My basement is slowly getting transformed into an auto parts store, so yesterday when we had a nice 55 degree day, I decided to do the first Focus ST project of the year, swapping out my spark plugs. »
It's Not Warm Yet And It's Garbage
It's the last Sunday in February, and fitting for this garbage month, the weather outside is trash. Cold, rainy, and trash. This is the time of year I seriously consider moving somewhere else, where it's warm-ish all year round, and everyone doesn't hate each other. OH WELL. On Thursday it'll be March, and we can all get our hopes up for that month to be warm, but because we live here, it won't be. I really wish we hadn't had that one 72 degree day a week ago, »
Installed My Cold Air Intake
I'm continuing to make my way through the Make My Car A Race Car plan, and until today I had: * Upgraded the brakes * Installed a great big intercooler * Installed a stiffer rear motor mount (courtesy of Jake, who was nice enough to replace my cracked charge pipe while I was in Europe, and also install the mount so it wouldn't crack again) The next step was to install my cold air intake. Why a cold air intake? Well, because I can't really tune the thing with the stock intake, and that »
A Big, Shiny New Intercooler
All of my new parts came 2 weeks early (thanks Cobb!), so I decided that this weekend I'd get to installing them. I ended up ordering a * Bigger intercooler [https://www.cobbtuning.com/products/cooling/ford-front-mount-intercooler-v2-focus-st-2013-2017] * Cold air intake [https://www.cobbtuning.com/products/air-induction/ford-focus-st-cold-air-intake-1/] * Rear motor mount [https://www.cobbtuning.com/products/drivetrain/ford-mazda-rear-motor-mount-2013-2017-focus-st-2017-focus-rs-20 »
Hell Yes I Did Those Brakes
After being delayed by having to replace all of the lug nuts, I started the job on Saturday morning. I decided to start with the rear brakes, for two reasons: they're less important on my front-wheel drive car, and they were in worse shape. After getting the thing up on the jack stands, I removed both rear tires, and disassembled one brake. Turns out this is more or less straightforward, though I took a long time because I was both trying to internalize what I was doing, and trying not to break »