Minnesota Focus Owners Club

These sadden me:

Neons, with some fantastic wiring ideas:
http://forums.focaljet.com/interior-mod ... focus.html

Removing quarter glass on ZX5 (really? WTF?!)
http://forums.focaljet.com/exterior-mod ... elete.html

Stick-on fender vents:
http://forums.focaljet.com/exterior-mod ... corny.html

CF ricer wing:
http://forums.focaljet.com/exterior-mod ... oiler.html



Apparently we're becoming a bunch of hondas....

You're just noticing this now?

Pretty much FJ has been about looks/styling while FF has been more of the performance aspect since the split way back when.

We should be happy these kids are asking for opinions before putting this ugly shit on their cars. Hopefully they take advice well and think about the image the community would like to portray when they are doing these mods (doubt they will though).

iminhell wrote:You're just noticing this now?

Pretty much FJ has been about looks/styling while FF has been more of the performance aspect since the split way back when.

We should be happy these kids are asking for opinions before putting this ugly shit on their cars. Hopefully they take advice well and think about the image the community would like to portray when they are doing these mods (doubt they will though).

No way John. Not even close. What's happening now is the FF folks are going on FJ. FF has numbers and has always been the site of newbs. That is what the OP is referring to. I've followed both daily since 2002. Believe me when I tell you FJ has always been more performance oriented membership percentage wise.

Another aspect is FJ has lost many of there high performance members to people who moved on/up from the Focus. While there is crossover, FF has many more long standing members I recognize from when I was a mod there long before you. I also see most of them on FJ too.

The split changed nothing other than to have an ass wipe by the name of Tom running a muck on FF, something not missed at all on FJ. Yeah he can tune, and be helpful, whatever, but there are as many people that can't stand him cause he doesn't take the time, comes across as an uneducated prick, has no (our uses no) people skills, and made an ass out of himself on FJ. If it weren't for all the unknowing newbs on FF, Tom would have been gone a long time ago. And Orange has closed more of his threads than one can count. I'll bet no one can touch Tom for closed threads. He's one out of 60,000+.

Something you may not know is Tom was considered for FF b/c FF had no FI performance vendors and FF ultimately took him to even the playing field with FJ (that and the locality of some of the mods put them in McNews territory and Tom was in with McNews and Tom created the east coast west coast drama on FJ). I left just before the switch and I knew Tom needed major grooming, something he's never gotten and it's been that way for years. Had I stayed, he either wouldn't still be the wack job he is today, or he would have left. I knew I would be ridding him constantly to rid him of his out of control personality. His loss in my book. I'm not kidding either.

If you want to cite whp numbers of members to bench race your point, I could care less. Like I said earlier, FJ has always had
more performance, member percentage wise, than FF. I do find it funny the amount of FF members now coming over to FJ.
If you ask me, they are ruining the site. Funny thing is, there's few left of the original crew who wouldn't put up with it and the few that are left are too burnt out to waste any time. C'est la vie I guess. The way things are going, the feel of both sites will be the same. Things change.

Just to clarify, there are 2 Toms. One used to run a shop (1turbofocus) and the other runs the site (Tom). (I know you know this Chalon, just making sure everyone does)


One thing I'm finding fun about FF lately (last year or so) is the influx of European members. It's just weird how many similar problems there are with our cars and theirs, TPS's, IACM's, random water leaks.


What do you think both sites would do if we all went in and knocked some sense into people for a week or so? Just flood threads with common sense for once.

iminhell wrote: What do you think both sites would do if we all went in and knocked some sense into people for a week or so? Just flood threads with common sense for once.

We'd be banned on each one of them. Plus, it would drive me crazy. I've had my moments of drawing lines in the sand. In the end it's a crap shoot. You win some, you lose some. I've gotten more impatient this past year than any. While I am still apt to push, I have cut way back in the past couple of months. Those boards are so big, small battles won disappear under new threads, and big battles fought end up in bans.

MNFOC is really enough for me. But I can't move $20k worth of wheels here.

^Can't beat the national marketplace!

Well, at least the guy is putting the neon inside the car and not underneath.

The guy with the filled quarter windows actually did a decent job and I think if he did something with the tail lights it'd be really sharp.

Stick on fender vents and funky wings?

The one thing I'm disappointed with is the lack of innovation. The Honda guys figured out years ago how to mate a VTEC head to a non-VTEC block. Ask a question about putting an SVT head on a non-SVT block? "Oh, it's too much work. don't do it."

And it's not even coming from people who have even tried it. No one is willing to experiment or try new things. Everyone just wants to do the same old things as everyone else.

It's to the point where people who do try new things don't even bother posting.

Cars get cheaper, the "mods" get ghetto'er...

Try owning a Contour SVT, where you make more money parting out a stock one that runs/drives then trying to sell it.

hafftrak wrote:The one thing I'm disappointed with is the lack of innovation. The Honda guys figured out years ago how to mate a VTEC head to a non-VTEC block. Ask a question about putting an SVT head on a non-SVT block? "Oh, it's too much work. don't do it."

And it's not even coming from people who have even tried it. No one is willing to experiment or try new things. Everyone just wants to do the same old things as everyone else.

It's to the point where people who do try new things don't even bother posting.

FYI, I have the SVT head on my car.
If the SVT VCT was like VTEC would be easy to work with. But it's more of a i-VTEC where the cam is moving all the time. So it's not the easiest thing to afroengineer or retrofit. I'd try but with my clearances I can't risk it. I've only got about 40* cam degrees of adjustment right now and come weeks end it'll be even less (putting a thinner HG in).
If the damn Ford ECU was more apt to accept open source code a guy could just transfer tables from the SVT to the zetec, but the SVT uses a completely different ECU and architecture.

I know you've got the SVT head on your car, but most people on the forums aren't even open to discussing things like this.

Once people catch on that the SVT head is basically a FR head they'll be more apt to do the swap.

See, this is the type of discussion I like.

Imma start a new thread so this one can stay on topic.

iminhell wrote:Once people catch on that the SVT head is basically a FR head they'll be more apt to do the swap.

From what I've heard the SVT head outflows the FRPP head though.

thing is, both fj and ff are losing people by the droves. It's gotten to the point on both that questions have circled back to the same thing from years ago, and older members are tired of reading and answering the same thing over and over so they just stop participating. Alot have also moved on to different cars (I myself may be doing this soon).
I bounce between the two, but lately I don't spend much time on either, they have both retro'd back to 2003.
I've also dealt with many of the vendors on both sites, Tom's not the only prick out there, a couple of others are downright asses.