intercoolers

Good evening all

Well I've done a little work to the landy over the festive period, namely a camel cut and adding bigger wheels (235/85/r16 if your interested) but because of this it seems a little slower off the mark....... In truth I knew this would happen........ but I've been reading about intercoolers and was wondering off the people who have fitted the larger intercooler does it make any difference?

My landy is a 300tdi auto with the pump tweaked, egr blanked and De-cat if that helps

If you have non edc pump you can clean intercooler out and tweak pump

I've done that..... the intercooler is as clean as a whistle.... I was reading about the uprated intercoolers and wondering do they actually work or is it just a placebo effect?

Unless you have upped the boost by a lot, say over 1.7BAR, then they are a placebo effect, the STD intercooler is actually very good at what it does.

So I would have to mess about with the turbo to make a bigger intercooler work then?? But if this is the case how can the manufacturer's claim that it helps with increasing bhp

You have to remember that there are compromises in manufacturing and everything is a trade off, bigger intercoolers that claim to be free flowing do less than your stock intercooler as they create less turbulence and there for less cooling as the air needs to bounce around the tubes to allow the tubes to soak up the heat, they may well maintain boost pressure at the manifold but the air will be hotter and less oxygen rich.

This is only my own opinion, but if you really want to know if something works then you need to be prepared to spend a few quid on a dyno to really know, failing that then get a good set of thermo couples for the intake and exhaust and tune it that way at home, don't get caught up in hype and sales pitches, when you already have "X" but you can get "Z" with part "Y", then there has to be a trade off or more tuning elements than just 10 mins with a fist of screw drivers and an adjustable spanner, if you see what I mean.

The world of tuning is vast and the majority of it is quite easy as long as you follow basic principles and understand that every action has a reaction within the engine, example being, you increase boost pressure and you then in turn increase the charge temperature, you then need to know if your current intercooler can cope with the new increased charge temp to bring it down to around 60°C(bench mark optimum), then fueling on top of that, so you'll need to know and asses exhaust temps to ensure turbine temps do not exceed around 700-720°C or the blades start stretching and pop goes your turbo.

Like I say, it is a lot more involved but by no means beyond the home mechanic as long as you understand what you are doing.

Just don't make the same silly mistake of thinking a D1 200Tdi will be anywhere near Range Rover Sport performance

You can only go so far before you need to realistically think about changing engines or maybe a whole new vehicle.

I had tweaked the pump etc on my 300tdi a while back and then bought an uprated intercooler 2nd hand. TBH it was not worth it and made little difference to the driving expereince. I would not do it again anyway.

Thanks all,

From the advice that you have both given me, I think I will save my pennies and leave it as stock