Mist

Absurd. Completely incomprehensible. Did it go something like this: Sales Guy: Wow, everyone really liked our Black concept car with the new front bumper, upgraded black brake calipers, wider rear wheels and better suspension. Great feedback Production: OK, lets do it then. Only lets drop the new front bumper, upgraded black brake calipers, wider rear wheels and better suspension. Sales Guy: What? Um, well, can we still have it in black though? Production: Oh, OK, you twisted my arm, don't say I'm not good to you guys! Sigh. I had seriously redone our budget for next year to give me room to buy one if they came out. Guess I get to save the money but geez, such a disappointment.

Never bought a new car, just too much depreciation. Current F6 is closest I've been, 1 year old ex-demo with 11,000k on the clock. BUT reading about and looking at this GT concept car has sure got me considering how much spare money I'll have when the 40 year GTHO anniversary rolls around! Will be interesting to see if FPV do it and what the final details are.

No way! How on earth can it be 250kg heavier? That has to be a mistake...

Yeah, I don't post often but got to say that looks absolutely sweet. Tempting alright...

That's interesting, I would have thought it might be the other way around. I have a BA F6 manual and losing boost between shifts is bit of a downside of the manual - even if you are really fast you still lose some (dunno if the FG has some clevery tricks to avoid). But the F6 in auto has no such problems, it can keep the boost up during the changes. Because the supercharger shouldn't need to spool up I figured it would suit the manual well?

They must be tempted to try it just to find how it goes... I know I would be dying to know if I was on the FPV development team.

rofl Arronm

Anyone know how to download it? Painful to watch from my internet connection in NZ, pauses every 5 seconds for 10 seconds.

That isn't a joke site is it? Because that is just so stupid - it is the sort of silly decision that American courts make, I didn't realise Australia was going the same way! They couldn't keep up in a standard Falcon therefore they couldn't be sure the lambo was breaking the speed limit? Give me a break, if you're doing around 150km and not catching up then obviously its going faster than you! Or do you guys have areas with speed limits over 150?

You were trolling pretty hard and trying to piss off Ford employees who if I was a moderator I would want to encourage to contribute to the forum, not annoy. They're talking about the V8 now, next year (if they hang around) they might talk about a new XRT... But as you wish. Why do you care so much about peak power? (which is nonetheless more than all the other HSV and FPV cars). Have you seen the torque curve? Yes they've left plenty of headroom still but I imagine they have done enough to beat both the F6 and the HSVs in performance stakes (assuming they can get it down on the tarmac, they really need bigger tires). They should blow away all the N/A FPV V8s to date.

Sounds pretty good to me. With the extra low down torque it will be the equivalent or better than the F6 I imagine which is pretty amazing. I have an F6 because I like having a stealthier quieter six cylinder which can still get up and match or beat most things on the road. Having said that when it comes time to trade up next year I'm going to want to test drive one of these new V8 FPVs just in case ;-) One thing that is really irritating me though is Dillz. Why on earth is he a moderator on this site? His hostility and aggression against this new engine is unreal and as bad as you get from the most die hard HSV supporters. It isn't that he is just trying to inject a voice of reason, he genuinely seems to have it in for FPV. Why is Dillz a moderator? Seriously, I haven't posted much and tend to just lurk but I been been tempted to donate to the site in the past because I do find some of the discussion very interesting and useful. Seeing that sort of crap from a moderator totally turns me off. I'm sure I am not the only one.

Interesting read, thanks for taking the time to write it up!

The thing is, with a manual BA F6 (which I have), you have turbo lag to contend with anyway unless you were already driving hard and had everything spooled up. My experience when test driving was that by the time the auto had changed down it had also spooled up the turbo (against the torque convertor presumably) so the lag wasn't really that much different when cruising, with the added advantage that when accelerating hard the auto can keep the boost up during gear changes (no matter how fast you change you lose some in the manual, well unless you hard flat shift maybe). I still bought the manual, partly because it was cheaper than the BF auto I was comparing with but partly because there is more control in other ways . But the BF auto was a slightly faster car in my tests.

I hadn't even heard of Dynolicious, thanks for pointing that out! Might have to pick it up, hard to argue with 13USD.

The evidence suggests that in bulk standard 0-100 tests the FG 6T (especially the G6ET) is a little faster than the F6. I personally don't think it is the turbo though, I have my own theory (which I've also heard from others). As you say the F6 has FPV suspension but that actually means it is pretty stiff. Whereas the XR6T and particularly the G6ET have slightly softer suspension (quite a lot softer on the G6ET I think). When the power goes down they therefore transfer more weight to the back and get better grip so a faster start. I reckon it is basically as simple as that, if the FG F6 tries to match, let alone exceed, the power put down by the 6T at launch then it just lights up the back wheels. It isn't until both cars are underway that the F6 can really put the power down (I'm assuming the G6ET doesn't lose traction, if it does then with its diff it is stuffed!). That's my theory anyway. It seems to be somewhat backed up by the results from Autocar NZ magazine. With some work they managed to get a 4.99 out of the FG F6 on normal roads which is pretty good compared to most car mags but only matches the times car mags have got for the G6ET. However Autocar NZ then took the F6 to a drag strip where they could give it more off the line and recorded 4.8 which is faster than I've seen recorded anywhere for a stock 6T.

Congrats. Kind of tempted to upgrade myself...

Heh, nice try! Anyone know what it costs to get the Twin Plate AP Clutch fixed/replaced?

Cool, that sounds encouraging. My car is stock standard so only 220-230 rwkw or so I guess. How high is high? In my car I am guessing (haven't worked out a way of measuring it!) that it bites about 80% the way up the pedal movement and the clutch is probably fully disengaged somewhere around about 90%... hard to say about the 90% though without deliberately trying to see how far you can push the clutch in under some load before it starts slipping and I don't want to do that because it would be bad for the clutch!

They reckoned it wasn't slipping yet and I agree... the question is whether they were right about it being ABOUT to give up the ghost. I'm fully expecting them to have changed their tune now because I went into the sales room and spoke to their new car sales manager about it, along the lines of it being unacceptable for the clutch to be giving up only 26k after I bought it. He was going to speak to the service department about it and probably tell them to shut up I think... but that doesn't help me know if it really IS on its last legs! I take it that the AP twin plate clutch should last quite a while, 100k (or more?), if driven normally (for a Typhoon!) without excessive riding of the clutch?

Thanks for the replies. Apart from asking about the high take up point when I bought the car I haven't really given the clutch much thought. Now that they have got me worried I've been paying quite a lot of attention (as you would). Hard to say exactly how much more play there is in it before it reaches the top of the clutch pedal because it is a little hard to tell exactly when the clutch is fully disengaged but it isn't very much. The kicker is that the car only has 37.5k on it. I bought it at 11.5k ex demo from the dealer (with an extended warranty which is still active too!) and I don't think I have done anything unusual... certainly no deliberate riding the clutch or burnouts or whatever. My feeling is that there is no way the clutch should be on its way out at 37.5k and if it is then either they seriously stuffed the clutch before I bought it (and their line about the high take up being for fast gear changes was just trying to cover up) or there is a mechanical fault. I see my post has been moved to the Driveline Workshop forum :-( . I originally posted this in the FPV forum because I am specifically interested in feedback from Typhoon drivers - I know they have the twin plate clutch unlike XR6T so it is quite a different setup. Anyone who actually has a manual BA/BF F6 Typhoon able to comment? Is your clutch take up point really high too? Has anyone had one start slipping and need replacing? If so how much did it cost to fix?

I have a BA2 F6 Typhoon which I bought ex demo from a local Ford dealer in NZ. When it was recently at the Ford workshop they said that the clutch pedal was catching very high and it probably only had a very short amount of life left before it began slipping (the clutch pedal has always caught pretty high actually when I bought it, I enquired about that before buying and was told it was by design to aid fast gear changes). So I have a couple of questions for all you experts: 1. How long would you expect a BA2 F6 clutch to last given normal driving for a fairly typical Typhoon owner... ie some hard acceleration at times but no burnouts or drag racing at all. Thoughts? 2. If the clutch catch point did reach the top of the pedal and it began slipping how much would you expect it to cost to get fixed? What is involved? Thanks in advance for any assistance!

Octavian, that looks soooo sweet! Ego is a beaut colour, particularly for the Force.

Yeah but as Zap said there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that the Boss motor needs to be worked in rather more than the LS3 does to develop max power through the revs. The reviews are often done on new engines so that may explain it. NZ Autocar did a comparison that had a GT doing 5.3 or so 0-100 while the R8 they had only managed 5.7 or so I think. As for the magazines, well who knows, they all seem to give odd reviews with odd performance times occasionally. I did think the Top Gear Aus comparison between the FG F6 and HSV R8 was crap though... the guy launched the F6 like he was a Granny out for a Sunday drive and then bitched about the start. The F6 still killed the R8 over the quarter mile but it was stupid, no one launches from flat idle in a drag!

Looks great. So what's it called? Where did you get it? (although living in NZ I'm more interested in what it is called than where you got it!).

Agreed - I've never been that keen on the Dark Argents but they look the biz on Octcane.