The long awaited release of United Fuel Injection’s UFI VDJ270 upgraded wastegate’d turbocharger has finally arrived.
After many years of testing, refining and engineering HD Auto is proud to present the United Fuel Injection VDJ270 gated turbo. Marking a distinct difference in design to the factory style of turbocharger, United Fuel Injection has opted to design this turbocharger around a traditional philosophy of using a waste gate to control the boost pressure of the turbo. As a testament to it’s designers capabilities, the VDJ270 is a truly unique design featuring direct OEM style bolt on fitment matched with the renowned reliably of over 45 years in turbocharger development. Gated turbochargers have been the talk of upgrades on the 70 Series Toyota LandCruiser from the time they began being modified, often with the drawback of issues such as increased turbo lag, poor fitment as there was no true direct fit replacement, and reliability concerns as significant modifications had to be made to accompany the turbo upgrade.
United Fuel understand these drawbacks, and have succeeded to overcome them, delivering a new and exciting product.
Bolt On.
It’s that simple. This is a bolt on turbo.
United Fuel have designed and cast a customised front compressor housing allowing OEM turbo intake and outlet pipe fitment. It is also CNC machined to accompany an engineered aero compressor wheel. This then fits into their existing bearing housing designed to house an upgraded shaft and highly durable journal bearings which have been used in the 1HD and TD42 turbo upgrade platform for over a decade. Seamless fitment to the factory exhaust manifold and dump pipe is allowed by a customised cast turbine housing.
As this bearing housing is oil cooled only, the factory water lines are looped back on themselves leaving less load for the cooling system to deal with.
Tuning Made Simple.
When the turbocharger is controlled by something as simple as the amount of positive air pressure (boost) it’s making, it leaves little up to interpretation. Boost control is one of the easiest things for tuners to get wrong, and often leads to the most catastrophic consequences. Most of the common turbocharger failures seen on the 70 Series Toyota LandCruiser are due to this reason. Everyone always wants maximum low end response, and some tuners achieve this by being too aggressive on the VNT system. This will lead to overspeed and concentrated heat in the turbine, leading to the commonly seen chipped turbine wheel on the stock turbo. This is sometimes not even all their fault, a malfunctioning boost control solenoid, sticky VNT vanes, vacuum hose leak or leaking vacuum turbo actuators will play a factor or potentially lead them astray in the tuning process. A VNT system must be held to a very high working standard to perform perfectly.
Leaving the boost control down to the turbo alone takes this element away and allows your tuner to focus on other important aspects of the engine, such as the optimal injection timing, fuel rail pressure, engine torque, throttle maps, boost/fuel maps, injection correction factors and more.
The below shows a dyno printout from our Mainline Dyno. It demonstrates the maximum designed power and torque of this turbocharger in the red graph. The blue graph demonstrates the same turbocharger, fitted and run with an existing ECU remap performed that was previously carried out on the original VNT turbo. It’s interesting to note, that it performed identical in response, horsepower and torque as the factory VNT turbocharger with the same tune in it, but with the added benefit of being able to push it out to 823NM and 270HP when the tune is pushed further.
Concerns of a VNT System.
There’s a lot to discuss around the concerns of a VNT system on a Toyota LandCruiser 70 Series. On the surface, there is not much to these simple systems on a 70 Series running the 1VD-FTV engine. The factory 1VD turbo is a variable nozzle (VNT) turbocharger, or sometimes referred to as a variable geometry (VGT) turbo. They run a vacuum switch on the front of the engine that is controlled by the ECU, which has various maps inside it’s calibration data inputing a duty cycle for the switch to operate at. The engines vacuum pump puts vacuum to the inlet of this switch via a hose, it is then output and able to travel to the vacuum diaphragm on the turbo. This allows it to either contract or release it’s position changing the position of the actuator arm which opens and closes the veins inside the turbo. This controls the amount of exhaust gas that can pass through it through the various RPM’s. Few problems with this,
- Who’s leaving their LandCruiser stock? No one.
- What happens once you throw a few hundred thousand KM’s on the system? The boost controller, vacuum pump, and turbo internals (particularly the vanes) deteriorate and can fail.
- It’s a subjective opinion on how they should be tuned to suit engine upgrades.
For these reasons, some may consider eliminating it all together in favour of a simple waste gate controlled turbo.
Below is an example of the amount of different maps that control boost in the factory ECU of a 2024 VDJ70 Series. Keep in mind, these are no where near even the actual full amount of maps, just the most commonly defined in a popular ECU calibration editor program (ECM Titanium).
If you want to know more, we found a good article on how a VNT turbo works here.
Over 50 Years of Reliability.
With a rich legacy spanning more than five decades, United Fuel Injection has established itself as a renowned leader in the fuel injection and turbocharger industries. UFI’s unwavering commitment to exceptional customer service, professionalism, and a team of expertly trained staff sets them apart as one of the largest fuel injection workshops in Australia and the Oceanic region.
This legacy has been built into the name of these turbochargers.
