The ALTA R56 Front Mounted Intercooler goes hand and hand with other performance upgrades on your 2007 Mini Cooper S.  While MINI was kind enough to install a factory intercooler at the front of your MINI, it is still very small and restricts performance.  Seeing this as huge room for improvement we created the first and largest Front Mounted Intercooler for the 2007 Mini Cooper S! Add roughly 20 WHP in about 2 hours of work!  So far, the ALTA Front Mounted Intercooler is near the top of the list for best bang for the buck part availible for the R56. Horsepower We don’t use off the shelf cores and try to adapt them to our applications, we build our intercooler cores to fit our needs. While this process takes more time to get custom cores done, it allows us to tweak how the core is constructed and how it performs. We cannot only change the size of the overall core, but we can use different height fins and bars, or vary the amount of fins, and type of fins.  From this we created an even better performing core you see today. Why does the intercooler make more power than the stock one?? There are 2 main things that make an intercooler make HP. One is by cooling the air better.  A cooler charge of air, means denser air, which means you can add more power to the engine with more fuel. (Luckily the ECU takes care of adding more fuel).  The cooler air also makes the engine less prone to detonation/knock. The ECU is very smart and knows both of these things (by seeing the cooler air) and not only adds more fuel, but also adds more timing due to engine running safer. The other reason that an intercooler can make more power is from it being less restrictive. This is defined by difference in pressure entering the core, and the pressure exiting the core.  This “Pressure Drop” happens no matter what, but the variable is how much.  While the variance from one to the next might be a couple PSI, this couple of PSI effects the overall boost getting into the cylinders and how hard the turbo has to work. If the turbo has to work harder, this can make the efficiency of the turbo worse, and push out hotter air. Alta FMIC Construction Our Prototype and Final design core uses the same basic type of core, known as bar and plate. There are 2 main types of cores, Bar and Plate, and Tube and Fin. While both do very similar jobs, they are very different cores. Bar and Plate (B&P) core are constructed using thin plates, and aluminum bars (extrusions) with fins placed in between all the parts. Its basically a big sandwich of plates, fins and bars. The thickness of each layer, and the density of fins can be change to create the optimum pressure drop and cooling ability. These are then baked in a vacuum, which brazes all the parts together, creating an intercooler core! While there are more parts, and more labor involved with building this type of core, they produce the best most solid type of core. Tube and Fin (T&F) core are limited to their charge side thickness due to their construction.  They are constructed using thin plates, and thin extruded tubes. Between each of these tubes, fins are placed and brazed together in an oven. The picture below shows the difference in cores. The downside is the charge side of the core cannot be as wide as a bar and plate, and also they are not very durable against rocks and road debris. This intercooler is a simple one in that there is a core, and tanks. We explained why the core is made the way it is, next up is the tanks. Like all other ALTA intercoolers we use cast aluminum tanks. This type of tank gives us the freedom to create a perfect fitting, perfectly contoured and perfect internally smooth part. No sheetmetal here!

 

Applications: Mini Clubman S (R55) 2008 Mini Cooper S (R56) 2007 - 2008

 

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Installation Instructions: ALAMP-ENG-420.pdf

This product manufactured in: USA