theblackpig

Yeah I got Falken 452s on 20's on a Typhoon. Good front tyre for precision and feedback. But after about 5,000km (approx.) the rears started to loose a little bit of lateral adhesion. After 17,000 km the fronts still feel good (65% of tread left). The rears won't last 'till the next service.

I put 20" d'Vinci Lox wheels with Falken FK452 245/35R20 tyres on my F6. With standard suspension the front tyres touched the guards on bends with uneven surfaces. So I fitted Bilstein shocks and a 27mm Whiteline front sway bar. Now the tyres only touch on tight bends with bad bumps. Otherwise, it's an awesome combination. After a coupla thousand k's it sat low at the front with the rear at about standard ride height. Now, it's a little lower at both ends. Looks aggresive. These are big cars. 20"s suit 'em.

You just hit the nail on the head. There a BLATANT rip off. Mind you if the pricing was structured the same as the Force8's it wouldnt be such an issue with me anyway.... ← I have a Typhoon, my business partner has a Force 6. (both in Ego) and I've spent plenty of time with both cars, to study the differences. His cost more than mine but he got a lot more features and comforts and luxuries. So, what's the point of claiming the Force 6 is a rip off when you haven't even bothered to cost up the extras. In fact most of you can't even list all the extras. The only result is you end up discouraging casual observers of these forums from buying the Force 6, which just damages FPVs bottom line. And that doesn't do any of us any good.

Force6 standard extras over the Typhoon are: Shadow Chrome 19" wheels (with SP Sport Maxx tyres), proper 8- way power seat with memory, memory mirrors, fat steering wheel, adjustable pedals, and parking sensors. Exterior trim differences: It also has a little duck-tail boot edge spoiler instead of the 3 pillar wing, chromie bits on the body-kit, chrome mirror covers, chrome grilles, and chrome numberplate surround (a la Fairmont Ghia). Oh, and Force6 badges. It also has a more subdued and coherent interior (leather instead of suede arm rests, dark smokey woodgrain trim instead of imitation carbon fiber). And that's about it, folks. It's just a phoon in a dinner suit.

Good name for the colour of a cop car. I'd feel silly being chased by a big pink thing though.

Interesting to watch it on youtube. Kelly was off the throttle coming in, then on it just as he nudged Lowndes, then off it again as Lowndes slid away.

I got the FPV keyring but don't use it 'cos a) it's heavy, hard and scratchy and b) with the key in the ignition the remote dangles on my knee so a dangling keyring would be more irritating. Within a week I got the leather folio with owner's certificate and some other stuff in it. A $25 free fuel card. A form to fill in for a choice of luggage: either a wheely bag, or a toilet bag and a little briefcase/folio case. The wheely bag is great cos it's well made and has room for a notebook and office stuff - phone, papers, discs, charger, etc, plus space for a change of clothes and stuff - good for 2 nights away. The wheely bag arrived two weeks after I ordered it. Also got an invitation to a track day that has to be taken within 12 months of purchase (of the car). A good bunch of prezzies. But no food items. No bag of chips. No cherry ripe or violet crumble. Not even a couple of those little mini-size Mars bars. Sigh. el pig

To the people who are bagging the Force 6 and 8. Instead of shooting from the hip, just try and grasp the bigger picture: With a broke parent in the US sucking the liquidity out of local operations, FPV/Ford Australia isn't exactly flush with funds. But, for a relatively small investment they've come up with two new models which widen the appeal of the FPV range to a whole new market. That's smart thinking, smart manufacturing, smart marketing. That's the kind of smarts that will keep FPV alive and flourishing and producing the GT/P and Typhoon/Tornado cars YOU love. Secondly, my companies own a Fiesta, a Fairmont S/wagon, a Fairmont Ghia, and a Typhoon. I have a business partner who's never owned a Ford before. He drives a Zed and Merc. Until today (well, yesterday, cos its after midnight now) when he test drove a Force 6 and BOUGHT it right away 'cos it offers him the right package of prestige looks and performance. So now we have a new Ford/FPV convert (and a complete Ford stable) thanks entirely to the design smarts behind the Force 6. Third, we went for a fang round town today (yesterday), him in the Force 6, me in the Typhoon. I was able to check it out from every angle while underway on the road, and the FPV stylists have excelled themselves. The Force 6 looks like it owns the road. It is a complete, integrated Euro-lux package. Solid, posessive and balsy. The wheels in shadow chrome are amazing in rotation - a soft silver blur with the big red brembos and rotors clear as daylight behind them. I got to get the steadycam rig set up and film them, they're that lovely. The interior with the dark tones and dark woodgrain looks a lot more coherent in design terms than the Typhoon with its bits of stick-on imitation carbon fibre. The car in motion, from the rear 3/4, has the look of a big solid, purposeful European performance limo. It PROWLS! Whatever YOU think, this car is a statement in power and subtlety - because not everyone who'd got it wants to let it all hang out. In my colleague's words: "With an edit, this will be a $200,000 car for 70 grand." Finally, just 'cos YOU can't imagine a market for these cars, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. According to media reports, FPV has sold one third of the ANNUAL production of Force 6 and 8s in just ten days. TEN DAYS! So my message is, if YOU don't like 'em, just don't buy 'em. Fine! But stop bagging 'em 'cos in the bigger scheme of things, they're helping keep FPV viable, which is good for YOU.

what unit's the best all depends on what you want it for and how you want to use it. A colleague and me do a lot of location work. On one trip we ran a Navman 510 and a Garmin Street Pilot 2610 side by side to compare them. Both are dedicated navigation units with internal antennae and they run of the car's accessory power plug. Navman has battery back up. Garmin only works when plugged in. The Garmin acquired the satellites so much faster than the Navman, it was ready to go within 5 - 10 seconds of starting the car. The Navman took 30 - 60 seconds to aquire satellites, sometimes longer than two minutes. Very boring. The Garmin was more stable, and had more depth to the navigation instructions, the maps, and the 'points-of-interest' database. And was easier to operate on the road. The Navman 510 was $400 or more cheaper, smaller, neater and more portable, had better looking maps (more like street directory maps than the Garmin's stick maps), and had an easier to use address entry and storage system. The Navman can also be loaded with 3rd party speed camera location databases - there are free ones and low-payment (about $20) ones available on line. I did a one month touring trip of Scotland earlier this year and ordered the UK maps on line (Navman maps are cheaper from the Navman Europe web site than the Navman Oz web site). I loaded them into the Navman and scrolled around and ran some dummy drives in the UK (like from the airport to the hotel a coupla towns away, and from Edinburgh Castle to grandma pig's house) before I left Oz. Very fun and interesting. I also downloaded a current database of all the different kinds of UK speed cameras. It even includes locations where mobile cameras are frequently parked. Very useful. Kept me out of all sorts of trouble in the UK where you might go past 30 or more cameras in a day's drive, many of them are concealed, and they are proliferating rapidly because local governments are now so heavily dependent on them for general revenue. In Scotland I set the Navman to 'avoid main roads' and it navigated us point-to-point through all the little back roads, winding country lanes and 'hidden' villages. Magic! The Navman gets easily confused in cities (that poor satellite reception again), but would always re-route and eventually get us where we wanted to go. Muuuuch easier than paper maps especialy when you're a strange pig in a strange land. On return to Aus, I reloaded the Oz maps and used it for a few more months, running alongside a Uniden GPS 301 Speeed Camera warning system. The Uniden has a way better aerial than the Navman. (if it falls off the dash onto the floor, it keeps working!) But it has a sickeningly annoying set of chimes or buzzes for speed cameras that go on and on, and when it does warn of a speed camera with it's incessant honking and beeping, instead of the display giving you a GPS-accurate read out of your speed just when you need it, it scrolls the words "speed camera" over and over. Makes you want to yell at it "I f**kin KNOW there's a speed camera you dumb piece of s**t! Just tell me how fast I'm going!!" Yo want to shake the thing for being so robust and fast and accurate, but so stupidly and annoyingly programmed and set up. Setting the options up how you want is distressingly confusing and counter intuitive too. Hardware engineers: 10, audio and ergonomics engineers: MINUS 8. Total: 2. (coulda been a 20!!). Now I have a Siemens VDO integrated navigation unit in the Typhoon. The CD and processing unit is in the boot, the aerial is fixed on the back parcel shelf where it gets a major good look at the satellites. The unit plays to the console screen and voice commands come through the left speaker. Very clear and easy to take in. The dealer had it fitted. VDO used to supply the Ford factory nav units till Ford went over to Blaupunkt. The installer reckons the VDO is better than the Blaupunkt - faster, clearer and easier to use. But I don't know, not having seen a Blaupunkt unit in action. I'd check 'em both out. The VDO unit (5540) is is awesomely accurate cos it has a built in inertia system so it keeps on navigating you between city buildings and in tunnels. It's brilliant in that respect. address entry and retrieval is good and easy too, using the supplied remote control which works with the infra-red receiver built into the factory console. It uses Sensis maps and data which are more current that the Navman maps and Sensis provide more categories and bigger databases of 'points of interest'. It can't accept 3rd party databases however, and only has a few (some out of date) speed camera locations. So in terms of keeping Typhoon drivers out of trouble it is useless. And it will only indicate cameras when you are actually navigating to a particular destination. If you just have the maps on and scrolling, but you haven't entered a destination, it will not indicate when you're near a speed camera. This I think is a particularly idiotic restriction on the speed camera indication 'feature'. I phoned VDO several times and they said the next iteration of the software and maps would have a more complete database of Strayan speed cameras. But like I said, if you can't set it to indicate cameras when you're not point-to-point navigating, then it's no good for day to day driving. Useless - at least for my purposes. ALso the VDO5540 is touted as the latest VDO technology in Australia but is CD-based, not DVD based like modern navigation systems should be. In fact, the 5540 seems to have been superceded in Europe three or four years ago, when the last 5540s were heavily discounted to clear them and make way for the new generation DVD - based units. So looks to me like Siemens VDO may be dumping old technology in Australia (and presumably NZ). Most other manufacturers of technology products seem to treat us a bit better than that. At the moment, I'm running the VDO 5540 and the Uniden GPS 301 together, full time. The VDO for rock solid navigation and, when I'm not navigating, to have the maps scrolling on the screen while I'm driving around (useful for checking out street names and figuring where you are relative to geographic features and points of interest). And I'm running the Uniden GPS301 for rock solid speed camera warnings. Oh how I wish Uniden would fix the bloody monotonous noise their unit makes, and would re-program it to give useful information,like current speed, when a camera is detected. In ascending price order we have: Uniden GPS 301 (speed camera warning system) coupla hundred bucks Navman 510 (navigation and speed camera warning) five or six hundred bucks Garmin Street Pilot 2610 (navigation) around twelve hundred bucks VDO 5540 (navigation and partial (but useless) speed camera warning) two and a half grand or so. Sorry this is loong but I tried to get useful information in, there was a lot to tell and it went on longer than I expected. Now I got sore trotters from typing. Oh. One last thing. The software upgrades and improvements to the map databases really make a major difference to each unit. I was ready to throw the Navman 510 away till I got the latest software and map database, now it's a bit of a special. Check any unit you're considering to see how often they upgrade the software, if there are any upgrades due now, and how much the upgrades cost (you might get the retailer to throw in an upgrade for free if it's due for release in a month or two). And the maps vary greatly between units and between upgrades. Check out how much and how frequently the maps are upgraded before U buy. Any questions, google 'in-car navigation forum' and you'll find some great resources.

300 AA A http://www.fk452.com/ These tyres are a real surprise from Falken. Very nice.

Typhoon needs 20" wheels. Anything else is undersized and weak and 1990s. After that, chromies, smokies, alloys or painted - that's individual taste and should be respekted.

Body on the F6 is pretty stiff. So no need for strut brace. And apparently (meaning I read it on the forum) the F6 tends to lift the inside wheel when pushing on with a heavier rear swaybar. I'm waiting for Race Brakes HB193 (RB24 compound) pads for my 4 spot Brembos. Cheaper that factory pads, easier on the disks and less dust. Let you know how they go.

If it was me, I'd fit Bilstein shocks and a 27mm Whiteline front swaybar. It'll totally transform the car into something wonderful while you're going through the first few months without engine mods. What brake package have you got, or are intending to fit?

Just checked it out on youtube. What a hoot! Really nice, off the wall fun. Can't see what anyone in their right mind could complain about. Nipples? We've all got 'em. And there's no regulation about showing blokes' nipples on TV, even extended ones. Must be really chilly mints.

Decent wheels - helps 'em get good 0-100 numbers. Fords have always been povvo in the wheel department. But the thing with Force 6 and 8 is, for next to no development dollars, they get two new models to launch, to take some of the media attention away from General Motors launch, to take some sales away from HSV, to develop a new (for Ford) luxury/performance segment, to replace the LWB models, and to keep the pot boiling 'till the new platform is launched in a couple years. Ford /FPV are getting an awful lot for not a lot of money.