Page 4 - turbo

As we approach the holidays, I want to get into the giving spirit by sharing some photos with you of how our final 2015+ F-150 EcoBoost intercooler will look. But first, I'd like to thank you all for your patience. This is a busy time of year, and the R&D for this intercooler has been an iterative one, but quality takes time and we've got a part on our hands that looks fantastic - I'm sure you'll all agree. You can see evidence of this by checking out our 2011-2014 EcoBoost Intercooler!

Last time, we 3D-printed some EcoBoost intercooler end tanks and sized up some foam to represent our intercooler core. For all our projects, this step in the process serves not only to save resources, but also to give us some flexibility in changing our design quickly and experimenting with numerous philosophies. Let's dive into the 2015+ F-150 EcoBoost Intercooler project a little bit to find out why this is important.

Laying the Foundation for LOTS of Testing

With any project, the name of the game during

If you remember from our last post about the Titan XD catch can, we ran into some challenges with the first prototype. Since our existing catch can design did not agree with the Titan, it was back to the drawing board for our lead engineer, Dan.

Updated Design

Our standard catch can when installed on the Titan was generating a code causing the truck to go into limp mode. The cause of the code stemmed from our standard catch can being too restrictive for the Titan's beefy Cummins engine. This is not surprising, given the 50 micron filter and smaller design of the can, which was originally designed for gasoline-powered cars. This catch can design functions beautifully on smaller turbo engines such as the Focus and Fiesta, as well as larger American V8s in the new-generation Camaro SS and Mustang GT. It just might not be suitable for the turbo diesel V8 in our Titan.

With some creativity, we modified our original design and got to work on some interesting design changes to our can.

Updated

Last time, we took an in-depth look at coolant filtration kits and how they can benefit our Titan. We gave you a sneak peek at what the final bracket for the Titan XD coolant filtration kit will look like. If you missed out on that you can check out the whole post on our engineering blog.

Finalizing the brackets

These brightly colored brackets were created with the help of 3D printing. This is just one of our rapid prototyping techniques that helps us create accurate prototypes the first time around. This allows us to bring great-looking AND great-fitting products to you in much less time.

Prototype bracket for the Titan XD coolant filtration kit

Prototype bracket for the Titan XD coolant filtration kit

Since our last post, we have finalized the bracket design and it's looking great. We were going for a stealthy look to complement the Titan XD's already excellent-looking engine bay. Check out some installed photos of the final product, and let us know how we did.

Titan XD coolant filtration

We have been working on the Titan XD for quite some time now. We have gone through a variety of products like the intercooler pipe kit, coolant filtration kit, and exhaust. Now we are down to the bread and butter of our Titan XD parts: the intercooler.

When we begin projects, we like to start by evaluating the stock component and looking for areas where we can make improvements. The stock intercooler in the Titan is fairly sizeable and features cast aluminum end tanks, which we don't normally see on stock intercoolers. Nissan has started off on the right foot with this intercooler. Still, we are confident that we can take it a few steps further with our intercooler design.

Stock Nissan Titan XD intercooler

Stock Nissan Titan XD intercooler end tank

Stock Nissan Titan XD intercooler end tank

After having a look at the stock unit, we began work on our upgrade. The first step was to take some measurement with our CMM (coordinate measuring machine). This would give us data points to use

I think we can all agree that the past couple weeks have been quite eventful here in the United States.

Regardless of which political candidate you supported, it's time to move on and unify now that our election has concluded. Whether or not we're happy about the outcome, we - as a society - need to be working together now. But certain Facebook friends can't seem to figure that out. You all know the one(s). Regardless of their political allegiances, they flood our news feeds with statuses high in pressure and often full of hot air. It's utterly exhausting - if only there were some way to get these people to pipe down.

The Camaro downpipe connects to the back side of the turbo.

Well here's an unpopular opinion for you" let's find a good, level-headed automotive engineer and elect him or her as the next president! Because if our goal is to exhaust the high pressure and hot air out of our system, they've already got that figured out - it's called a downpipe, ladies and gentlemen, and there's

We are back with a much-needed update on our 13+ Dodge Cummins intercooler. For most of our projects, we work with a donor vehicle to conduct fitment and performance testing. Unfortunately, this also means being patient when donor vehicles are not available for us to use. The good news is that we will not have to be patient for much longer, because testing is on our schedule! Once we complete testing in the coming weeks, we will be sure to share the results with you. In the meantime we can take a quick look at our finalized prototypes for testing!

Prototype Cummins intercooler and shroud

In our last post about the Cummins intercooler, we created a foam prototype with 3D-printed end tanks and cut a shroud on our waterjet. With our initial prototypes complete and fitment confirmed, we can move on to creating our final prototype for testing. That means handing the design over to our resident drafter and render wizard, Josh. He created some awesome renderings of what the final intercooler

Since Mishimoto's inception, we have grown to become more than just a radiator manufacturer; have expanded to offer many other performance parts for a variety of applications. For the Titan alone we already offer a several products, including an intercooler pipe and boot kit, exhaust, and coolant filtration kit. We have not, however, forgotten our roots. That being said, we have begun developing a radiator for our Nissan Titan XD.

What improvements will we make?

The stock radiator is sizeable compared to other stock units we have seen, but we still found some areas where we can improve on the factory design.

Stock Titan XD radiator

We plan to increase the core thickness and create a fully aluminum radiator, including the end tanks, for added durability. The factory radiator utilizes a detachable, plastic fill neck, which we will include with our radiator, but ours will be constructed out of aluminum to eliminate another potential failure point.

Prototype

Thanks to our rapid prototyping

Well, our SS and our 2.0T have quite the sibling rivalry, and as a fellow older brother, I can empathize with how the SS must feel to be challenged by this little 2.0T. However, older siblings are also often blessed with an innate ability to do things far better than their younger siblings (my sisters don't read car blogs, so I've basically got free reign here). As such, I'm sure the SS has some confidence in its oil cooling ability, and rightly so. But how will the 2.0T stack up?

Younger siblings, ungrateful beneficiaries of free-ridership, often enjoy the ability to hop on the coattails of big bro and whisk themselves away into a world of PG-13 movies, unearned responsibilities, and other undeserved privileges. The 2.0T is no exception, as it's already been able to finagle itself this oil cooler. And guess what! You don't need to wait any longer to also benefit from this, because the pre-sale for the Mishimoto 2016 2.0T Camaro oil cooler begins today.

2016+ 2.0T Camaro Oil Cooler Pre-Sale

One of my favorite things about working for Mishimoto is the sheer breadth of our many different projects. We're working on much more than only Chevy parts! Our garage always contains some interesting combination of trucks, hot hatches, muscle cars, and more. With all that fun stuff just meters away (separated from me by nothing more than a thin layer of clear glass, no less), it's a small wonder I get anything done around here.

All this considered, I still occasionally receive some form of the following response after telling people where I work. "Oh yeah, I know Mishimoto. They make radiators, right?"

"...we engineer an array of Camaro parts that encompass everything from oil coolers to intercooler pipes."

This would be like calling Google a search engine company" is it? Yes. But that doesn't account for the tremendous success of all its other products, from email clients to artificial neural networks and self-driving cars. (Though, I'm sure the automotive arm of Google would be even