Giving the N54 a much needed chill pill! FMIC testing underway…
by cp-e™ on Sep.03, 2009,
cp-e™ has suspected that the performance of the factory front mounted intercooler for the N54 was less than satisfactory. This is especially true when folks start cramming unholy amounts of boost into their engines with the various tuning devices that have flooded the market. Interestingly, despite all of these high-horsepower Bimmers, it doesn’t look look anyone has really done their homework to see how the factory components perform, and where improvements should be made. In other words, how do you improve on a product if you don’t have a clear grasp on how it performs? There is some intercooler data out there from other manufacturers, but the majority of the data is incomplete, and as such is pretty much useless. If you don’t know the temperature of the air entering the intercooler, then the rest of the data has no reference, and should not be used! Instead of operating on assumptions or just looking at boosted air temperature, cp-e™ did what it does best and really put the factory intercooler through the wringer. It took some work, but the knowledge we gained was more than worth the effort.
In these pictures you can see the instrumentation we installed into the factory and cp-e™ intercoolers. We installed temperature and pressure sensors on the inlet, and outlet of the intercooler. We also installed an ambient temperature sensor directly in front of both intercoolers. With this data, we can calculate turbocharger efficiency, intercooler efficiency, total temperature drop, and the pressure drop under varying conditions. This orgy of information is enough for us to identify exactly how well the factory core performs, and where we stand to improve on the design. It also indicates exactly how “happy” the turbos are at higher than factory boost levels.
