Dyno results for Cam gears-Ford Focus

If you have adjustable cam gears, then Speednation's chassis dyno is the best way to figure out what your settings should be.

The green horsepower curve (above) belongs to a stock Ford Focus. The red curve is from a Focus that had just installed a set of cam gears. Other mods for this Focus include an intake, header, exhaust and a performance chip. As you can see, the stock Focus made more horsepower! This is what can happen if you don't have your cam gears properly tuned. Stock power is 106.5 vs. a disappointing 98.4 HP from the modified Focus with improperly tuned cam gears.

Now the cam gears are properly adjusted (-3 intake, -6 exhaust). The red curve of the modified Focus (above) now shows an advantage of 114.2 HP vs. the stock Focus of 106.5 HP.

Tuning is often a matter of trial and error, and you can't trust tuning by "the seat of your pants". When both of these cars came to the dyno, the drivers felt that the modified car had more power. It sounded faster, but in reality it was much slower. However, after 5 runs on the dyno (making small adjustments to the cam gears between runs), the modified Focus went from it's initial baseline (above-red) to the green curve. There was a net gain of +15.8 HP by using our dyno to tune the cam gears.

Horsepower is not the only parameter to see improvement. The red curve above was the baseline torque run of the modified Focus, and the blue curve above it shows the torque after proper tuning. There was a net gain of +11.2 lb/ft. of torque!

So if you have cam gears, a fuel controller, VTEC controller, or any other parameter that can be adjusted on your car (including ignition timing), then the Speednation dyno can help you to maximize your performance!