PROTOTYPE

Hyundai may have never been a brand synonymous with producing the driver's car. Their models are often used as some sort of punchline to illustrate what we gearheads don't want in our cars. There have been some contenders throughout the years to ward off the bad jokes, but the quirky, asymmetrical Veloster that followed the Genesis earns the most credit for injecting new energy into Hyundai's image. Its release had us all thinking that the real spirited driving experience finally made its way to the well-known manufacturer.

While the Genesis Coupe might be a piece of Hyundai History now, the Veloster still delivers the sporty flair to the car maker's lineup.

The twin-scroll turbo and edgy styling put this strange hatchback in a category of its own.

Hyundai upped the game with their unique take on the hatchback by making a hot, twin-scroll turbocharged version that could compete with the likes of the hot-hatch godfather, the GTI, or Honda's souped-up Civic. And now, as 2019 rapidly approaches,

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.

This RS was laced with monitoring systems to capture every facet of the performance

Temperatures

Let's start with temperature reduction, because this is a big

Everything about Ford's Super Duty Powerstroke brand screams, well, Super Duty. It has done so since they were first put in the Econoline Vans in the mid "90's. Our 2011 is equipped with the 6.7L turbodiesel V8 engine, and it's clear Ford has engineers who really took the Super Duty term to heart. There are two batteries, two radiators, two thermostats, two coolant expansion tanks, an engine oil cooler, a transmission oil cooler, an EGR cooler - this truck even has a fuel cooler. Just looking at the engine bay of this monster can be a bit daunting, especially to a guy used to dealing with smaller, beat up, four-cylinder engines. Fortunately, our engineers are well-versed in the nuances of this truck, as we already have many items out on the market for this application including a full charge pipe kit and both upgraded secondary and primary radiators.

The engine bay of this 6.7L is very busy

One component we have yet to tackle is the intercooler, or the charge air cooler (CAC) as it's

Our Performance Intake kit is now available on Presale! Act fast to take advantage of the special pricing! 

Chevrolet Camaro Performance Intake Kit PreSale

It certainly has been no picnic to get to this point. However, working on this unique, factory-turbocharged application from Chevy has brought to light the importance of the type of testing we do for our intake projects. We've gone through many configurations, spent countless design hours and logged hundreds of miles of road testing. This isn't overkill at Mishimoto, we deem it a necessity.

The amount of time that passed by was no mistake. We spared no R&D expense with this kit. Being as thorough as possible with every aspect of how it looked and the type of performance it delivered was a priority. In the last update, we went through why we encountered a few hiccups during testing, but we took our time in working through the problem instead of rushing a less-than-perfect product to market.

Top to bottom: 90˚ bend, 50˚ bend, and design

Research and Development (R&D) - Work directed toward the innovation, introduction, and improvement of products and processes.

The research and development process can get tricky. Sometimes, at a moment when you think you have a perfectly working product, that's ready for the masses; something just goes awry. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. We welcome situations like this, especially during this late in the development stage, because we're able to catch unexpected issues early. It's not like we want you to deal with them. That's why we do so much testing. As the definition states, this work needs to be directed, in part, toward the improvement of products and processes. We take this attitude with each and every design that leaves our R&D facility for production. As an example, we implemented some modifications to the last design you guys saw for this Camaro 2.0T intake project, even though those changes were minor. I still want to walk you through why we amended the promising previous

It may seem that we have been dormant on this project, but trust me, the activity around this 2015 Mustang GT intake could not be more alive! In this update, I'll outline the results of the extensive R&D we put this prototype through. Our Mustang's V8 Coyote motor has spent a lot of time running with this our prototype intake, and we wanted to document the many steps along the way of this research. Our engineers believe they have tweaked this product to its full potential. So let's dive right in!

The GT looks ready!

We wanted to look at several things in this car. We know a few intake kits out there require tunes to run with this S550. One of our priorities was to ensure that this this intake would safely run on a stock tune while making reliable and repeatable power gains. This gave us a direction as we dove into development. We knew that closely monitoring the behavior of the air-fuel ratios (AFRs) throughout the progress of this design would be important. To get accurate numbers, our

We have had some radio silence with this F150 catch can project, but we now have some updates that we are ready to spill! This has been an interesting project from the beginning. The bulk of time has mainly consisted of road testing; we've logged thousands of miles so far, and every single mile counts.

Let's backtrack a bit. When we began this project, we intended to see what a dual-can setup would accomplish. In the last update we explained the benefit of having a catch can as part of both the PCV and CCV systems. Also, our engineer, Dan, was in the process of creating a mounting bracket for the cans and getting ready for some road testing. Our prototype looked great, and the hoses were neatly situated to allow the engine cover to stay in place.

Mounted Ford F150 EcoBoost catch can prototype!

Mounted Ford F150 EcoBoost catch can prototype!

Routing of some of the lines

The 3.5L

On to road testing! When we make a catch can for any vehicle, road testing allows us to be sure that no codes