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£3,354.00
The Litchfield Race Intercooler will improve performance for any Nissan GT-R running over Stage 4, but really excels with cars running over 750 bhp.
Developed over a 6-month period of research and testing we created a product that performs exceptionally well beyond 1200 bhp.
The intercooler has been fitted on a number of customer cars with only positive feedback in terms of throttle response, reducing turbo lag and keeping temperatures low, which in turn keeps performance high.
It is a standard part on all LM1 series builds and was installed on the 2015 TOTB overall winner, our own World Record Breaking GT-R and our own LM1 which was invited to take part in EVO Magazines Track Car of the Year 2016.
The Litchfield Race Intercooler is a proven performer.
Since first showing our Race Intercooler design a number of years ago many similar designs have appeared across the tuning world, but few will have had the level of testing to understand what internal structure works best.
We thought it might be of interest to show what went into creating an innovative design and how the core selection process involved more than just selecting something off the shelf.
Our original intercooler design had proven its worth as a highly effective component, releasing over 30 additional bhp on our LM750 cars, and improving engine longevity.
However, on cars running over 900 bhp our testing revealed that when the turbos were running at full aerobic capacity, heat generation would start to overwhelm the core’s capabilities.
Designing the new intercooler we knew we wanted to keep the original’s easy fitment, maintain airflow to the radiator and ideally reduce the length of pipework in the engine bay.
After careful analysis and several prototypes we were able to remove no less than a metre of pipework from each side of Nissan’s original induction set-up; a first at the time. This removed weight and, more significantly, allowed us to increase the diameter of the pipework and improve throttle response at the same time.
New, high-integrity ‘V-Band’ flanges were incorporated to attach our re-designed, larger dump valves, which are required to cope with the elevated power level.
On evaluating pressure data it was apparent that our original design air filters were becoming restrictive over 900 BHp. Working with our technical partners Pipercross, we moved to a larger trapezoidal element using triple layer foam borrowed from their motorsport programme in the BTCC and WRC. The foam is able to filter considerably more air than before and still remove finer particles than the standard Nissan filters.
With the intercooler design complete we chose four intercooler cores and had them fabricated into test units that would all use our revised pipework. We could then swap between them easily with repeatable tests on both dyno and on tarmac.
The four cores chosen were:
The Asian core is used by some very top-end names including Greddy. It balances sensible price with excellent flow rates, although they are significantly heavier than the others.
The British aerospace supplier core offers superb quality and is some 6kg lighter than the Asian model. The main downside of this core was the cost per unit and the long lead times for these, which require labour intensive internal structures.
Australian specialist PWR are at the forefront of cooling technology at the moment, being used by every BTCC team, the vast majority of F1 cars and practically every British and German Supercar manufacturer. Quality and build integrity are stratospheric, which is naturally reflected in their cost, but we wanted to evaluate the very best to give perspective to our overall choice. As an additional benefit, these cores are also exceptionally light; yet another 3kg over our own original design.
The initial test was performed on an independent rolling road (as our dyno was still in the planning stage at this time). The car used was our 2011 Stage 5 demonstrator, usually running at around 750bhp on V-Power fuel at approximately 1.5 bar. We wanted to ensure that turbo efficiency and tuning were removed from the equation. We therefore reduced boost to just 1.0 bar with less ignition timing. This meant that the car was running in an unstressed state, and that any improvements shown would be down to the intercooler. The original design intercooler was run to act as a baseline, before each new intercooler was added to an engine at the same operating temperature.
For additional comparison, we also performed a series of runs at 1.4 bar, again with reduced timing to remove any inconsistencies. With this higher boost level any intercooler differences could be extrapolated over a higher power range.
We were also measuring the charged air temperatures and pressures before and after the cores for comparison over a number of dyno runs for each core. The intercoolers needed to be able to handle more than just one single power run as heat dissipation is key to their use.