Ford Focus 1.0........

[face]

Ford has announced its 1-litre EcoBoost petrol engine will power the Ford Focus, C-MAX, Grand C-MAX and the upcoming B-MAX, despite being small enough to sit on an A4 piece of paper.

 

 

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/articles/2011/11/cars/ford/focus/ford-announces-1-litre-focus

 

Is this a coming trend of tiny, powerful engines such as the Fiat Twin Air thing?

[Shep Shepherd]

123bhp from a 1-litre engine? Now we're motoring!

[ashmicro]

Mega stressed 3 pot turbo. It can be done right, as we know, but I'd bet this one'll be a turkey.

[morris_ital_lover]

Ford will also produce a version with 99bhp, reducing emissions even further, to 109g/km.

 

What is this... the 1960s? I think these Ford will be TEH SHITE in the future, afterall it is not as if anybody is going to plump for these other than old giffers and those who are trying to keep up with the Jones on a budget!

[cort16]

I wonder if they've ditched the camshaft like with the Fiat twin air? I think these titchy engines are all well and good but you have to work them quite hard, which means the mpg is really representative.

They may well be enginereed just to get the c02 down for the requirements of the c02 output test.

 

Still better than a diesel though.

 

http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/green-motoring/2011-02/500-twinair-economy/

[wuvvum]

Pish. Yamaha were getting 123bhp from a 1-litre engine 20 years ago. And not a turbo in sight.

 

(OK, it only made about 40 lb-ft and would have struggled to haul a Fiesta at town speeds, but that's beside the point.)

[M'coli]

The power output is not such a big deal, really - 2-litre turbos have had been pumping out roughly the same bhp/litre for some time. In normal driving, both engines will have to develop the same power to keep the car moving - as in, to keep the car at 70 (for example) will take, say, 35 bhp - and both large and small engines will produce that and the car will bimble along nicely. What'll make the difference reliability-wise is that the 1-litre will be producing more of its total power output (as a percentage) more of the time, but perhaps these engines have been "lifed" so that they begin to fail a year or so after the warranty's out...

[Father Ted]

Like Citroen with the HDi - give me a lazy unstressed 2.0 90hp over the 1.6 110hp any day of the week.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

I wonder if they've ditched the camshaft like with the Fiat twin air?

 

Fairly certain these still have a camshaft, but the follower is split into two with an oil passage/chamber between the two that can change its volume via a piston to modify the effective profile of the cam as seen by the valve. Its a proper ace idea, super neat.

 

[cort16]

So it does. That'll learn me for believing the bollocks they put in car magazines. After doing some reading on it, it does seem very clever although I'm not 100% sure I really understand it.

[Luxobarges_Are_Us]

Worrying stuff. Hopefully in a few years they will come up with a version that doesn't blow up after 70k miles.

[Felly Magic]

Another car with an engine too small to pull it along. BANG! All to get green 'brownie' points. A 1 litre might be ok in a shopping car, but in a Fucus/S Max...Nope. Overstressed, head gasket & turbo failure will be rife.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

These engines have to work a lot harder than ‘oldskool’ lazy 2.0 engines of a similar power output. Their rev range is similar to a 2.0 Zetec or whatever, so maintaining the power with half the cylinder volume is achieved by doubling the intensity of the ‘bang’ in the cylinder. Pistons, valves, bores, conrods, big end and little end bearings are twice as hard-worked so when one of these engines is on 100k miles you could equate it to an ordinary engine on 200k. Obv materials technology etc improve as time goes on so 2012’s engine has more wear-resistant big end bearings than 1990’s for example, but these things are under a lot of stress and when they do get old they won’t struggle on getting progressively smokier, they’ll just grenade themselves and you’ll need a new one. I strongly suspect regrinding cranks and honing bores will be out of the question on em.

[andrew e]

Do these use any patents from fomoco's orbital engine fling?

[M'coli]

Here's a Ricardo development of the Ecoboost engine, there's a video of it here:

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/video/rica ... cmpid=TE01

and more info here:

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/a ... 42.article

[Pillock]

123bhp..... 56mpg..... one litre "hard work" petrol engine.

130bhp..... 54mpg.... 1.9 litre lazy turbodiesel.

 

Not going to get into a diesel vs petrol argument here but everyone anti-diesel feelings seem to revolve around how much gearchanging you have to do on a TDI to keep it well supplied with torque. This new high-stress petrol sounds exactly the same! Yes I've quoted the best figure for a Leon I can find - I get closer to the number in my signature in day to day use - but so will Ford have.

[rml2345]

I wonder if they'll do an Automatic 1 litre Focus for a properly miserable experience.

What are the torque figures for that engine? My experience of wee engines is that they aren't the gruntiest of things...