ecoboost

Simplicity is often the key to great engineering. The
same can be said about Ford’s F-150. The F-150 is about function over frills and
getting the job done. Our 2015+ Ford F-150 transmission cooler will follow the
same formula. Our focus will be on one key aspect: use as much of the space
behind the F-150’s grille as possible. As we saw in our first post, the stock
transmission cooler only utilizes about 50% of the available space. To increase
that usage to 100% without adding unnecessary complications is where we'll get
the job done, plain and simple.

Ford

Like the Roman hero Hercules, the 2015+ F-150 is capable of other-worldly feats. From the street to the jobsite, and even the dunes or the track, there’s little that the F-150 can’t conquer. With three available engines producing over 350 lb. ft. of torque, the 2015+ F-150 could probably stop the rotation of the earth. Even with all that power, many of the F-150’s on the road will never see Moab or drag a 1,000 lb. log up a mountain. But that doesn’t mean your F-150 shouldn’t be your everyday Hercules.

Owning an F-150 should mean being confident that you can tackle any task life throws your way, but that confidence may be shaken if your stock cooling system has seen better days. Hercules is nothing without his strength, and if your F-150 is overheating, all the power in the world means little. That’s why we here at Mishimoto are developing an all-aluminum radiator to keep your 2015+ F-150 going strong.

The term “track day” around here is always surrounded with a certain level of enthusiasm. We’re all aware of the extra labor that goes into a trip to Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ, but everyone involved is more than willing to pitch in for the chance to see our RS thrashed around the track. Think of it like one of those field trips you would take in middle school. Sure, there would be a test on everything seen that day, but that was a small price to pay for a day out of the classroom. After spending almost a week preparing it was time to take the class on their field trip.

Hot Oil and Broken Eggs

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Who doesn’t love a good comeback? Rocky, Hoosiers, Robert Downey Jr., and Lindsey Lohan (kind of) are all prime examples of what makes the comeback story so compelling. The theme behind any good comeback is perseverance – not giving in to the will to stop.

Unrelenting perseverance will lead to beating seemingly impossible odds. It’s what led the 2005 Liverpool soccer team to beat the heavily favored AC Milan squad in penalties, and the 1993 Buffalo Bills to defeat the Houston Oilers from 32 points down, overcoming the largest point deficit in the NFL to date. Without perseverance, you won’t go very far in whatever it is you do. Our engineers take this idea quite seriously at our R&D headquarters, and while the catch can project for this 2015+ Ford F-150 EcoBoost has been stalled for some time, it never really went away. There have been interesting challenges to get around during our R&D, but we finally have something you’re going to love.

Tough Times with

As much as my car enthusiast-self hates to admit it, the days of the gas powered V8 are numbered. Even never owning a vehicle motorized by one of these monstrous power plants, it’s a sad concept to wrap my head around. For decades, we’ve all relied on those eight cylinders for the necessity to haul heavy objects around, and for the sheer enjoyment of speed. For those of you in the business of the latter, you might find this to be foreboding, especially since one of the pioneers of popularizing the V8 is the one driving the final nail in the coffin. You heard correctly, I’m holding Ford responsible for taking one of the biggest steps against the eight cylinder engine. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, however, since their EcoBoost engines are more than up to snuff to fill the shoes of the V8.

We’ve noticed that the 2013+ Ford Focus ST has little wiggle room when it comes to gaining power strictly from bolt-on parts. Even with stage 3 tunes, not many ST’s out there see horsepower numbers beyond 300-350hp. That barrier can be surpassed with the use of ethanol or a bigger turbo, but on a stock turbo and pump gas, those numbers aren’t going too far north.

With our intercooler, we wanted to bring on some positive effects for the power in this stubborn 2.0L engine. While power is important, we also needed to monitor the outlet temperatures with a visual analysis of heat transfer across the core.

Setting up our prototype for some dyno runs

One of our newer pieces of equipment is a neat little camera

Many of you have been asking about the status of this project, and I have concrete information and data for you to look over as you make your decision on an intercooler for summer 2017. In the last update (which, I know was a while ago), we left you with what the final design of the core looked like, complete with renders and studio shots of the physical production sample.

The project’s lead engineer knows that any intercooler design should be able to live up to the demanding performance these trucks require during, off-road or work use, daily driving, and even towing vehicles. Our engineer tested three cores, all with slightly different design aspects, so our R&D bases would be covered. Each core consisted of a bar-and-plate construction, as they are much stronger by design and go with the tough theme of these trucks.

The core we decided to go with gave us a 77% increase in core volume and a 163% increase in external fin surface area - not a mild improvement by any means.

The movement on the 2016 Ford Focus RS intercooler project may seem slow, but it couldn’t be more alive. Our lead engineer for the project, at my request, has completed a plethora of testing configurations to get the most detailed amount of data possible. For the past three months, we have been rocking out on testing, testing, and more testing for the RS, the primary objectives being movement on the upcoming diff cooler and this front-mount intercooler. We know that the RS crowd loves their data, so we want to overload you with what’s finally available.

I won’t sugarcoat anything here. The update is going to be very data-intensive. I don’t have any entertaining anecdotes, interesting fun-facts, or puns about staying focused to fluff this piece with. Today’s discussion will be about our Nitrous Blue hatchback and the focus on data.

These intercooler pipes are now available!
Click here to buy them from our website!

As the old cliché goes, some things just go together like peas in a pod. Peanut butter and jelly. Cold beer and tailgates. Intercoolers and intercooler pipes; you just can’t have one without the other. If you followed along with our 2011-14 F-150 EcoBoost intercooler thread, you’ve probably been waiting for an update on our intercooler pipes for a while now. Well, the wait is over.

Fabrication

In the last post, fabrication ended for our prototype cold-side pipe. Since

Some time has passed since the last update for this 2016 Ford Focus RS intercooler project, but that doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten about it! It’s all-hands-on-deck to get this project back in the swing of R&D as we are getting close to testing and beginning a huge data push. Let’s see what it looks like and quickly go through some of the design specs.