PDI Intercooler Kit suitable for Toyota Landcruiser 1HZ 78 79 Series

PDI Intercooler Kit suitable for Toyota Landcruiser 1HZ 70 Series

Performance Diesel Intercoolers kit is the neatest and most effective intercooler kit to suit your turbocharged 1HZ 78, 79 series narrow nose cruiser. It sits directly behind the factory grill for maximum cooling potential and will not interfere with other installed items such as lights or a winch. This is possible with the relocation of air conditioner piping and the drier to the engine bay.

• All parts required to mount the intercooler and relocate the intercooler are included in the kit.
• We recommended this intercooler with our HD Auto turbo kits & Airboxes.
• This includes three flexible hoses and the drier for moving the air conditioner piping from behind the grill.
• The cores are 600mm x 240mm, which fills the space available at the front. PDI kits use molded end tanks to get maximum width.
• 65mm size core suitable for 1HZ engines.
• Once fitted are a zero maintenance setup, and still allow access into the engine bay for any maintenance or inspection.
• Black or silver cores are available.
• Bonnet latch is support with solid steel brackets from lower crossmember.  We do not use the intercooler to absorb the shocks of bonnet bounce.

Why front mount?

Front mount intercoolers are always the best option, they don’t suffer heat soak and any affect on the radiator is offset by providing much cooler air into the engine. Long term testing has shown this kit to be highly effective for the inlet air temperatures and for the function of the air conditioner itself with no impact on the radiators ability to keep the engine cool.

PDI limit the height to the grill opening and stay away from extending the core down to sit both behind the front panel and/or in front of the horizontal crossmember, which means cooling flow isn’t restricted. Other kits, which don’t get the same unrestricted flow, would expect to see dilution of the chilled air with air that hasn’t been able to be effectively cooled therefore becoming less efficient. In short, PDI systems work incredibly well. Being neat, as per factory finish just adds to the appeal.

Turbocharging your 1HZ

The 1HZ can be turbocharged without an intercooler, but the PDI intercooler is highly recommended for towing or increasing the power beyond what a stock injector pump is capable of. Further upgrades such as  airbox and injector pump can be added to support more HP.
We have an entire guide to turbocharging your 1HZ with more information on power expectations here:

https://hdautomotive.com.au/2024/11/01/turbocharging-your-1hz-landcruiser-welcome-to-the-complete-guide-to-turbo-kits-performance/

Air conditioning:
To make space for the intercooler core, the air conditioner piping has to be rerouted.  The components to do this are included in the kit and the task is simple enough.  Spacers are provided to space the radiator back at the top.  Then the condenser has a few spacers and longer bolts to allow that to also be pushed back so that nothing touches.  The condenser stays in place and flexible lines take care of the rest of the relocating.

Testing notes from PDI:

With the ambient temperature 33-37deg a heavy tandem axle trailer was hitched up to increase load.

                                                                     Post turbo inlet             Post intercooler inlet temperatures

• Normal around town driving             50-150degC                               42-46degC
• Highway normal driving (towing)    90-160degC                               48-52degC
• Max load up long hill                           180degC                                      60degC

Under full load thats 36% more air going into the engine, which will result in a significantly improved EGT with the same fuel or add more fuel to make even more power. For those running standard injectors this is an excellent improvement. All these results were using a 500mm wide core.

We have done some more testing of the current 600mm wide core now that we can apply more load.

When working hard the turbo outlet temp was pushed to 260degC and post intercooler temps were down to 70degC – a 190degC reduction.  The results below show how effective the PDI front mount is compared to top mounted configuration.