Forge Intercooler MK8 GTI/Golf R

Regular price $910.00 Sale

FMINT24 is a performance intercooler for the MQB platforms with the EA888 GEN4 Engine. Produced, designed, and tested, at our headquarters in Gloucester UK. Throughout the development process we have strived to improve the efficiency and performance of the EA888 GEN4 engine. Our project brief was to develop an intercooler that utilised all of the available space in the original position of the OEM intercooler, and to ensure the inlet air temperature is reduced, without any negative effects on the boost pressure or engine and transmission cooling.

In the MQB chassis the intercooler housing is particularly restricted and confined to a small amount of space, due to it not only housing the intercooler, but also the radiator and air conditioning condenser. The front panel in theory is a sandwich pack that houses the auxiliary cooling components. This means in order to increase the size of the intercooler without paying detriment to the performance of the surrounding items, and with also having very little extra space available, that it can be very difficult to execute the perfect blend of a high flow intercooler within such a close proximity.

Our research and development engineers started with a brief to fit our existing intercooler (FMMK7FMIC) that was for the MK7 platform, to our development VW MK8 Golf R. Upon installation, we then tried to establish if we could re-engineer the intercooler with an increased inlet and outlet size along with increasing the volumetric capacity to increase flow along with future proofing the design to work well with highly tuned stage 3 plus EA888 Gen 4 engines.

Using a combination of scanning software and traditional measuring methods, the design was created. This was then fine-tuned by our flow dynamics simulations programs (CFD), and the end tanks were initially created by 3D printers. This enabled us to ensure the fit was perfect on the vehicle before any prototype castings or machined billet end tanks were produced ready for dyno testing.

Several baffle configurations were designed, and flow simulated to ensure the maximum performance was obtained to keep the core working at its optimum, along with ensuring all its cooling capabilities had been upheld, and that the total volume of the core internal is utilised for optimum performance.

With an increase in inlet and outlet sizes, we then turned our attention to the design of our silicone hoses. With flow in mind, we have created a step within the hose so where the hose meets the hot and cold side of the inlet and outlet junctions the transition is seamless, this helps to lesson any disturbance to the airflow and prevent unwanted turbulence. To further aid with flow, the inlet and outlets have been increased to 76mm from the OEM size of 63mm which equates to a 45% increase in surface area.

Testing was completed using Performance Remap in Gloucester with their VTEC 4-wheel drive dynamometer. This was to ensure all our data has been achieved with results as accurately as possible by an independent tuner. As you can see from the dyno results below, peak power was increased from stock by 11bhp and 20nm of torque at 5500RPM with the Forge Motorsport performance intercooler installed.

The best news is that there are significant torque gainsthroughout the rev range, meaning that the car power will pick up quicker and pull the whole way through to redline, including an impressive gain in BHP from 5000 RPM TO 6500 RPM. Gains on vehicles with re calibrated software and further hardware performance parts can be expected to be a lot higher due to the substantial drop in IATS when FMINT24 is installed.

During our extensive testing, we let the car heat soak on the dyno until the radiator fans tripped on and off (which gives an inlet temperature of around 40°C). We then did a dyno pull from this point which gives a more consistent result and reflects real-world driving conditions more accurately. You can easily see the Forge intercooler cools much quicker and delivers a much greater drop in temperature compared to OEM.

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