Near the end of last season Ruzz scheduled a dyno session for Pepper, his RS, to see how much power it was actually making and how it was running after the initial round of performance modifications. Happily I was free that day so I charged up my cameras in preparation; it had been a while since I’d been present for a dyno run – of any vehicle – and I too was curious to see what the RS’ actual power levels were.

The clips of this day sat for a little while but have now been compiled and posted on our YouTube channel, as shown above. Video is obviously the better medium with which to share a dyno session but of course I also snapped a few photos here and there to go along with it, which I have for you all today.

Worth noting is that you’ll easily spot a difference between some of the photos; I prefer my older camera for shooting video and typically keep my newer unit for the still photos these days, but as I had both with me I ended up taking photos with both as well.

Handling Ruzz’s session was Ecuprogram; I’d never been before but they very kindly let us hang out in the shop and film the session which was greatly appreciated. Of course before anything else, I had to start with a shot of the two Foci together.

A quick photo of Mustard; I still adore how the front flares and wider track result in a bit of the tires peeking out on either side.

A peek at a couple of the parts on Ruzz’s RS: the monster front mount as well as the ram air snorkel with its blue mouth to match the car’s other accents. As mentioned in the video, at this point the RS was just about a full bolt on car with everything save for an exhaust; it had an intake, front mount, downpipe, plugs, tune, and a few other little goodies throughout, which was not bad at all considering it was Ruzz’s first season with the car still! As it stands now it is a fair ways further along than it was here, but we’ll get to that later on in the post.

Pepper was soon brought in to the shop to be strapped down, but after a quick look-over the guys realized that the OEM air deflectors were going to be in the way of the straps so it was taken over to the hoist to be put in the air. If you recall from the install of these on Mustard, they’re only held in with clips so removing them was effortless.

With the control arms now accessible the car was flipped around and backed onto the rollers in preparation for its runs.

My signature shot – you know I had to.

As shown in the video the RS was then put through a series of runs once everything had been checked over, and we got to hear the 2.3 scream for a bit. My camera’s poor little built-in microphone did not do the sound level justice; standing next to this thing in the enclosed room was considerably louder than the video presented.

After its all-out runs the peak figures ended up being 298.7 HP and 346.6 lb-ft. So close to a true 300/350! We were perhaps hoping for a bit more (who doesn’t with a dyno run?), however the importance here wasn’t to see ridiculous numbers but rather know that the car was running well, and have numbers to compare to in the future.

Given it was now lunch time, with the car off the dyno (and reunited with its air deflectors) we grabbed a quick bite to eat before then heading up to Mario’s, where Ruzz amusingly found a parking spot next to some siblings to complete the Focus food chain as it were. We were able to pick up a few pieces Mario had waiting for us – for both Pepper and Dijon – and then went our separate ways.

Speaking of pieces, I’d mentioned above that the RS has seen more since this day and whenever the world can resume its regularly scheduled programming we’re hoping to see it on the dyno once again. Ruzz has not only fitted an exhaust to the hatch now, but it also has an AEM water/meth kit for good measure! On paper this should easily be the fastest and most powerful car in the group and hopefully in due course we can confirm that with some real world testing.

Until then we’ll be keeping busy with installs in our own shops and garages, and the team is working to send me photos of their own progress so that we can keep the site’s updates rolling. I’ve also finally made a page for Pepper (located under the About tab), which you can head to for the full, up-to-date mod list for the car.

-Bill