Page 33 - Engineering

"You know cars, right?" I'm sure that's a question that all of us gearheads have been asked before. It's typically the wind up for a pitch to help them find the car that's going to suit every one of their specific needs, which usually looks something like a combination of reliable, fun, and gets good gas mileage. Oh yeah and it snows like once a year so all-wheel-drive is a must. Their budget is around $30k. I know what you're thinking, a 2013 BMW 328i xDrive hits the nail on the head, but I know most of us would point this friend to the obvious choice"the WRX.

Since 1992, the Subaru has made a name for itself by mixing these characteristics into the affordable WRX. Granted, we didn't see this trim until 2000, but it's no surprise why it immediately took off and became a staple in the enthusiast community.

Becoming "the best" is hardly ever an easy task. Neil Armstrong didn't just wake up one morning in his parents' basement and decide to go for a stroll on the moon later that day. Reaching the top requires hard work and perseverance, and for automotive manufacturers it often requires walking a thin line between quality and cost. After all, if you build an incredible vehicle that performs and looks better than the rest, yet nobody can afford it, is it really the best? Over the past 44 years, the F-150 and its creators at Ford have been towing that line well enough to put the F-150 at the top of nearly every list for best truck in the world.

Staying at the top that long isn't an easy feat either. Each year, the F-150 evolves to preserve its top spot in the truck world. But even if you don't own the newest F-150, you can still make it one of the best trucks on the road with quality parts. For the past 4 months, we've been developing a radiator for the 2011-2014 F-150 to help keep these aging

Sometimes the long road is the path we take when we want
to slow down, take a deep breath, and enjoy the view. Sometimes the long road
is the path we take when we want to do something well. While we love watching
the development process unfold, we're taking the long road to our 2018+ Jeep
Wrangler JL 2.0T performance intake for the latter reason.

"Quality over speed" is our motto for many of our
projects, but in developing complex intakes like the one found on our JL's 2.0L
Hurricane engine, it's a requirement. Rushing through a project like this often
means fighting check engine lights and poor performance. In the end, rushing
takes longer than doing it right the first time.

We've spent the last four months analyzing every detail of the stock Hurricane intake.

What haven't I said about Ford's F-150? It's reliable,
affordable, capable, comfortable, and all the other -ables that you'd want from
a truck, except for one. It's not invulnerable. Like every vehicle, time takes its
toll and something's bound to break. If you're lucky, you have some time before
those tolls hit your F-150's cooling system, but it's always a good idea to be prepared.
Mishimoto is working on a radiator to allow you to do just that.

Our last look at the 2015+ F-150 revealed that our
radiator needed to replace not one, but three different factory radiators. Our
goal was to combine the features of the two light-duty radiators and the
heavy-duty Raptor radiator into one even better aluminum radiator. To start
that process, we measured all three

In their heyday, the American auto manufacturers would make updates to their cars for each model year to keep things fresh. Usually it wasn't anything drastic, but just a tweak here and there to make the next model year in some way better than the last. Nowadays, just about every manufacturer holds off until their mid-cycle facelift, but in some cases we still see some tweaks that differentiate the same year and model of the same car. We saw this with the development of a catch can kit for the 2010-2015 Camaro SS.

The 5th Gen. marked the end of 8 years without one of the biggest names in the muscle car market. I personally remember my excitement over the triumphant return of the Camaro, especially after the Rally Yellow concept was seen transforming into a combat-ready alien robot in the 2007 live-action revamp of Transformers. While

Everyone loves a good underdog story. There's just something uplifting about the little guy persevering. If you know anyone who's a Philly sports fan, you're probably never going to hear the end of the most recent underdog story (S'go Birds). The Eagle's run might have cemented them into underdog history, but that's in the past now. The big game for Mishimoto is heating up with the MK7 Performance intercooler, and we feel like the hungry dogs on the block now.

What exactly makes us the little guy in this story, though? For the most part, it's the placement of the stock unit, and that we're still contending with the proverbial "intercooler sandwich" situation. Though, if you look through our last post, you'll notice we're not going into this entirely

As the 2008-2010 Ford 6.4L Powerstroke enters its second decade of service, wear and tear is certainly a concern for many. Corrosion, heat, and a flexible front end that's notorious for cracking radiators means the cooling system is often the first to require an overhaul on any 6.4L.

When the time comes for a new radiator, many 6.4L owners simply replace it with the same part. But if the radiator failed once, what's stopping it from failing again? Until now, there haven't been many other options for 6.4L replacement radiators. You either pay a lot for an OEM-style replacement radiator or pay a lot more for a performance aluminum radiator. If your stock 6.4L is your daily driver or light-duty work truck, it doesn't make sense to drop in an expensive aluminum radiator that will never really benefit you. So, the OEM-style replacement does the job. At least it tries, until that flexible front end breaks the radiator again, and you end up sinking thousands into the cooling system anyway.

Most of us have that food that we can't resist but we know isn't going to agree with us. We know the outcome is going to be unpleasant, but we still scarf it down anyways with antacids at the ready all the while asking if it's really worth it. That's sort of the same situation that's happening inside your L15B7. We know that there's blow-by. We know the consequences of leaving the intake valves unprotected. Do we just sit back and use a chemical clean as a sort of temporary relief, or do we look for a more permanent solution?

If you already read our last post, you'll know that a cure for this ailment is underway. So far, we've designed our prototype kit and set our donor vehicle out for the Mishi equivalent of clinical trials, a 1000-mile road test. This cycle

We often say that engines are just air pumps. The more
air you can get in and out of them, the more efficient they are, and the more
power they make. While that's true for any engine at its core, computers and
electronic controls tend to complicate the equation. As cars and trucks become
more complex and efficient, the computers controlling them have a hand in
almost every aspect of how they run. Most of those controls focus on how the
engine breathes in through the intake and out through the exhaust.

So, what does that mean for our 2018+ JL 2.0T intake? It
means that "good enough" isn't an option. The sensors attached to the
Hurricane's stock intake and its complex design require precision along every
step of development. It may seem like we're dragging our feet by looking so
closely at the stock intake, but every feature of every component plays a major
role in how the intake functions.