Custom built Intercooler D22 2002 navara

Hey guys,

Been reading through the forum heavily the last few weeks in the lead up to purchasing a navara. Ive found one for a good price that needs a bit of work done to bring it up to speed. Ive lined up exhaust and a few other bits and pieces to strap on. Ive done a fair bit of work myself to my S15, and i have installed intercoolers on S13,S14,S15, R32, R33, Stagea, everything except R34.. so ive had a bit of experience doing intercoolers. Fortunately they were premade kits that were "sort of" bolt on.

Looking at the premade kit for navara, the only one i can find (air to air) is the ASE kit. At 1400 dollars thats pretty pricey.. so ive been toying with the idea of doing a custom install. With a bullbar in the front i dont think the ASE would receive a great deal of air due to having so much in the road of direct air flow. One downside is not having the navara there to do measurements, but i am thinking of fitting an intercooler horizontally rather than vertically where there will be a more significant airflow. Im planning to use the center pillar where the horns are mounted as the support, the piping used would be almost identical to the ASE kit ,though a bit longer.

Ive attached a rough diagram of the intercooler core that im chasing. Has anyone seen this core for sale? i know PWR down in yatla may be able to knock me up one similar to the design on the right hand side of my rubbish drawing, due to similarities to one of their existing products. Whats the general consensus on this idea.. its just a thought not a full go ahead plan, but if its do-able and cheaper then 1400 dollars i think it would be worthwhile giving it a go.


constructive criticism more than welcome

cheers

Brock

p.s if anyone has found out the brand and specs of the turbocharger on the ZD30 for navara pre 06 i would be over the moon, spent hours on end searching for info and the most i found was hitashi HT 19, which doesnt appear to exist.

I got the ase kit fitted cause I am at the stage now where I can't be bothered mucking around with stuff like that, but good on ya for having a go. The only concern I would have with your proposal is the protection from a front end hit, ie a kangaroo or similar. I'm not that experienced with intercoolers but the ASE kit made a massive difference to economy and performance. You may be be spending 98% more effort to make your own to get only a 2% improvement and may end up costing you just as much anyway, thats just the engineer in me talking though.

You are right about the turbo, it is a Hitachi (Hitachi NOT Hitashi) HT 19. I have heard that MTQ now have a replacement turbo for the ZD30 so they may have some specs on the Hitachi or their equivalent model.

Good luck with it, maybe then you can have a cheaper kit for sale on the forum!

The intercooler on the left is the same shape as an xr6 one. You can pick these up for about $50 - $100 as the guys with these cars always upgrade to bigger.

My setup cost me $350. I got an xr6 cooler for $50, the pipework and joiners for $300.

Have a look at this thread for some great ideas and pics. There is an xr6 setup with pics later in the thread. http://www.navara.asia/d22-accessories/184-intercooler.html

Considered water - air.

Can get away with a much smaller cooler and way less intake pipe length
(as the radiator is remote mounted)

Also I think the S15 cooler is way to small for a 3l diesel. It barely cuts it in the S15. Remember a diesel uses a heap more air an than most petrols.

A 3l Zd30 will use close to 500cfm at full noise. (3 litre (displacement) X 4500 rpm X 2 (1 bar boost) / 2 (4 stroke)

But unline a petrol airflow wont drop at cruising speeds and will still consume about 300cfm at cruise.

At this flow pressure drop could be significant with a small cooler.

Thanks for all the information so far guys, the xr6 intercooler looks similar to the idea that i was thinking of doing myself. The most expensive part i think would be getting the piping made up. Are there any active members of the forum who have the XR6 intercooler installed on their car and can provide information in this thread as to how you acquired the piping? I can imagine an exhaust shop could probably do the piping custom, however price wise, im not sure who or where would be able to knock up the piping. Any ideas or contributions more than welcome

Get a 2.5 inch piping kit off ebay. intercooler piping, Cars, Bikes, Boats, intercooler, silicone hose items at low prices on eBay.com.au

It takes a bit of time working out the piping but is a cheap option. The aluminium piping is easy to cut and you just use the silicon joiners to connect it all up to get it to where you need it.

This is what I did and have barely lost 1 psi of boost.

Piping isnt hard to do but only if you have acsess to a mig drop saw ect.I did all mine myself with the help of a mate but if your not that handy an exhaust place should be able to do it for a resnable price. Check my members thread for pics

the other consideration is that diesel intercooler need to be quick at cooling. they don't have the opportunity to act as a heat sink as they would on a petrol motor. thats simply due to diesel being on boost almost constantly compared to a petrol which rarely gets on boost.
a petrol intercooler is cool to start with then heats up under boost and then cools down when off boost. but a diesel is always hot as its always on boost and doesn't get a chance to cool down.

so ideally you want an intercooler thats thinner and bigger compared to a petrol one. ie big frontal area for the same volume.

hi there.... I own/operate a parts and performance business specialising in customer alloy and steel fabrication for street and race cars.... I can tell you there is a reason why most people remove the XR6T intercoolers as they are designed to flow 6-7psi of the flacon and that is it... on a flow bench when compared to a after market core there is a massive restriction in the XR6T intercooler when it goes anywhere over 10psi.. i have not had much to do with the theory's behind the airflow of deisel's but from what i have read above and if its true then the XR6T one would not be of much benefit as it is not high enough flowing.

IF you had a core I can laser cut and fold soem end tanks to your specifications and do mandrel bent alloy piping at a pretty decent price that is all hi-quality and australian made.

I have used many of ASE's turbo kits and products before and fidn they are excellent..., but at the same time there cores are pretty much the same as the ones you will buy in all the chinese intercoolers off ebay... which by the way i have never had an issue with their ability to cool and flow the numbers...(recently a single turbocharged VZ 6L clubsport that I biult for a customer from scratch made over 500rwhp with an ebay intercooler!)

But yeah let me know if you want any pics or prices on anything you may need as i usually have all the alloy piping in stock.

VEE8SS said:

hi there.... I own/operate a parts and performance business specialising in customer alloy and steel fabrication for street and race cars.... I can tell you there is a reason why most people remove the XR6T intercoolers as they are designed to flow 6-7psi of the flacon and that is it... on a flow bench when compared to a after market core there is a massive restriction in the XR6T intercooler when it goes anywhere over 10psi.. i have not had much to do with the theory's behind the airflow of deisel's but from what i have read above and if its true then the XR6T one would not be of much benefit as it is not high enough flowing.
........

Click to expand...

theres not a whole lot of difference, just flow rates vers pressure. falcon is bigger motor doing more rpm (so high flow requirement) but low boost, diesels are smaller motor lower rpm but double the boost pressure.
i think the XR6 IC is a bit small but i think theres a few on the is forum which do actually run them with minimal drop in boost.

Yeah i suppose it depends.... it is hard with intercoolers soemtimes as you can get a better effecient cooling core such as PWR or HYBRID or PLAZMAMAN but then you need a bigger core as to get better cooling there is some restriction so bigger cooler reduces the restriction and so forth.

I find with the cheap intercoolers there is next to no restriction but there is not as good of drop in intake temps as say a PWR but then you can sometimes loose a bit of pressure... It is all a compromise which changes according to the situation.

For example:

More effeicent cooler = more pressure drop = cooler air = more power more air density

cheaper less effeicent cooler = less or no pressure drop = more power but less air density

so both ways work well and acheive the same to a certain point at either end of the power scale where one will be more beneficial then the other if that makes sense... just my 2 cents anyway

Thanks for the input from everyone so far, interesting discussion from tweake and vee8ss, If you could post some pics of what you can knock up VEE8SS that would be great, im sure there are others on this forum that may hit you up for business if the product you are offering is spot on. Definitely interested mate. On the same topic, has anyone who fitted an ASE intercooler kit done a comparison of intake temps and or power before and after the install?

cheers

Brock