First time poster here -- great site! I ordered a V6 premium conv a couple weeks ago. Before ordering, we drove a coupe that had better initial acceleration. The high end is great in the convertible, but the initial "spin-up" delay was noticable. The dealer said it's because of the additional 500 lbs in the convertible mechanism.

Is this a low end torque issue that can be fixed with a change in the driveshaft? If so, what's the rough cost of that change, and what are the cons?

 

Get 3.73 gears

 

I would think that you would see only a minimal improvement with a driveshaft change. I imagine that the 'vert comes standard with the same 2.73 gears that the coupes have. Any higher numerical gears would be an improvement in acceleration. Rando, my car is very similar to yours. I have a '14 grabber blue v6 premium 6mt with the appearance package and comfort package. I added Husky liners inside, tinted the windows and added MRT axle backs so far. Are you running the 3.73s in yours?

 

Your dealer is an idiot. The weight of the 2014 V6 Premium Coupe is 3501, while the convertible is 3630. That's 129 pounds, not 500.

 

With the weights that close, I wonder why there is a difference in the engine spin-up from a stop. We drove multiple cars, so it wasn't a problem with a particular car.

 

It depends on if you drove an auto or Manual trans car. But they all come stock with 2.73 gears, if your ordering it order it with the 3.31 gear set and you will see a BIG difference in the way it takes off. 3.31 is like night and day from a stop sign and it will still run 1750ish rpm's at 70mph, that is were my V-6 Automatic with 18 inch wheels runs at.

 

All the cars we drove were automatics. We drove one coupe and two convertibles. We ordered our car 4 weeks ago, and the option for a different gear set never came up. My wife and I built the car online and walked into the dealer telling him here are the options we want on the car. Oh well.

Still, although the 3.31 gear set will improve acceleration, I dont this gets to the basic issue of engine spin-up time. I would think changing the gear ratio would improve acceleration after the computer has told the engine to start turning the gears faster, and the convertibles had a noticable delay before the acceleration picked up.

Is it possible the tune is different between the V6 coupe and the convertible?

 

Everyone has said gears improve acceleration more than a tune. However if you want the ultimate setup, get the gears and tune. I would not get the tune before gears if acceleration is your main concern (which it is).

 

You don't understand the basic question, which is, why is there a difference between the coupe and convertible?

 

Tune helped my Coupe with the throttle lag, I already had the 3.31 with the Performance Package. Just changing to a 3.31 gear will help acceleration and keep the RPM lower if you plan on a lot of highway travel.

 

There's no differences besides weight. Maybe the other car you drove had higher gears

 

First, if you wanted a car that performs better, you shouldn't have gotten the convertible. It's heavier, the center of gravity is higher, and the chassis isn't as stiff as in a coupe.

Beyond that though, you haven't said anything about what gears you have (you can find it by looking up you VIN online), but I'm betting they're 2.73.

A gear swap is probably the single best way to improve acceleration (at the expense of a little MPG and top end). I would recommend going to 3.31 (if you don't already have them). It's shouldn't cost much more than $400-600 to buy the gears and have them installed.

If you don't have a Ford dealer to the gear swap for you, you're going to have to buy a tuner to tell the computer about your new gears. You'll also get engine and transmission adjustments in the tune and everything together will really wake the car up.

 

a tuner and a nice tune will clear that issue up.