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I keep blowing the hose off of my intercooler. It's mounted underneath the IC so it's a p i t a removing it all the time. I'm thinking of installing 2.5" shrink tubing around the joint to keep it from happening and just reapplying the tubing everytime I need to get in there for some reason. Any other ideas are welcome.

Is there any type of lip on the hard pipe that its coming off of?

is it the Y pipe thats coming off?
or 1 of the connection points of it?

there is shrink-wrap connections that you can use to connect the 2 rubber pipes (or whatever) together instead of the clamps.

i guess people that mod their snowmobiles use them, the only problem is that when you use them to connect the pipes, the connectors will not come off. they're that tight

napa has them, they're like the electrical-connector versions, xcept they're for heaterhose/rubber hose.

edit: yeah i think that's what you were talking about

Ugghh, the shrink tubing idea was a bust, or rather it busted out driving down the road, leaving me stranded. I'll be heading to the site of my broke down suby today, duct tape in hand. I'm getting fed up with this.

So it was your car I saw this morning heading to work... That blows (sorry for the pun). If you need a hand it's only a short distance to my place for a large collection of tools for the repairs.

Scott, if it makes you feel any better, I still keep staring at my temp gauge expecting it to spike since I had so many problems with head gaskets, the water pump, & the radiator...

A bead of weld & double clamps may do the trick.

Not sure if this will work for you, but when my super cheap-o friends wanted to keep a connector from blowing off & did not want to have a bead of weld put on a pipe they would just put 3 short screws into the PIA pipe to create an anchor for the connector/clamp which slid on over the screws.
This worked well for them.

D'oheth. That sucks, Scott!

Is this the intercooler you got originally from me? Do I correctly remember that it's a plastic pipe with the end cut off and a silicone hose attached to it? And that's the joint that's failing?

BXSS's suggestion of somehow fabricating a bead is probably the right one. If it's plastic, you can't weld a bead on, but maybe you could approximate it.

Clean the pipe thoroughly. Then use a Dremel or something to cut a little groove all the way around the pipe, where a bead would go. Then fill the groove with a piece of weed-whacker line or something. If it's all clean and you use a good plastic epoxy to adhere the weed-whacker line to the pipe, it seems to me that you should end up with a pretty good bead. Then you can put a hose clamp on past the bead and it shouldn't blow off anymore.

It's hard to communicate... Does it make sense?

vrg3 wrote:D'oheth. That sucks, Scott!

Is this the intercooler you got originally from me?

Yes it is. I'm not sure if we ever settled up on that either.

vrg3 wrote:Do I correctly remember that it's a plastic pipe with the end cut off and a silicone hose attached to it? And that's the joint that's failing?

Yep, that's the joint.

vrg3 wrote:BXSS's suggestion of somehow fabricating a bead is probably the right one. If it's plastic, you can't weld a bead on, but maybe you could approximate it.

There is a plastic welder at work, but I'd have to have the intercooler in hand to get it done and that means spending more time there than I would care to...but...all things considered it probably will be worth it.

vrg3 wrote:Clean the pipe thoroughly. Then use a Dremel or something to cut a little groove all the way around the pipe, where a bead would go. Then fill the groove with a piece of weed-whacker line or something. If it's all clean and you use a good plastic epoxy to adhere the weed-whacker line to the pipe, it seems to me that you should end up with a pretty good bead. Then you can put a hose clamp on past the bead and it shouldn't blow off anymore.

It's hard to communicate... Does it make sense?

I did manage to fix it today. It was a pain but I got it done. The shrink tubing blew off of the compressor side of the joint. I taped the shit out of it and even figured out a way to to pull the samco hose onto the compressor outlet. It wasn't easy. I had to take apart the PCV hoses on top (all of which have been modded to fit in my setup) but I managed to get it done in about an hour and a half...in the soaking rain.

Hahaha that sucks, but at least it's done. I was going to recommend using epoxy, because once that stuff dries it holds anything together

I am running up to 18lbs on my vf-34 and I have yet to blow a hose off and I just have regular hose clamps on. I do not know what i did right. I never ran a bead of weld around my fabbed IC pipe either.

Scott - I don't remember either... It's not a big deal to me if it's not to you though.

Sounds like a miserable time fixing the leak... I don't understand, though -- this is still just a temporary fix, right? The tape isn't going to hold forever, is it?

Mike - I think this particular plastic pipe is just not a great fit for the hose. The whole setup is a Frankenstein between the stock 93-96 WRX intercooler piping and a Samco intercooler hose for a 93-96 STi.

its tough without seeing it Vikash. I just went to the auto zone and asked the guy if i could browse the radiator hose rackin the back. I found a couple that had the sharpest bends to get me what i needed and bought that. they fit quite tight on my fabbed up steel tube.

yeah i had to go to napa on multiple occasions this past weekend, i just took them everything i had and was like "help me" and they did, with the hook-ups!

if you bring everything in to the autozone/napa they should be able show you what you need and what you can do

I recently replaced the radiator hose in my I/C plumbing with silicon hose. When I removed the i/c for my second tranny swap, I noticed that the rubber of the rad hose was getting all gooey like it was beginning to disintegrate.

The thing that still worries me is that my 45 degree 1.75" connector that connects directly to the compressor outlet is actually half of a 90 degree coupler. This means that it's kinda iffy about where it's connected to the hose coupler. I have a good T-bolt clamp holding it all together, but I should probably find a real 45 degree 1.75" coupler.......

GOOD TO KNOW.
will take that into account when i assemble...when i assemble. when?
yeah too much stats HW.

Hopefully, my new fix will be permanent. I inserted a 1.5 inch dia section of pipe in the silicone hose so that there's a 2 inch lip, rubber taped the hard plastic hose side, slid a piece of shrink tubing over the joint, sealed it and clamped it on both ends. If that doesn't hold I'll flip.

Forward or back flip? Sorry, I had to Scott...
Sounds like she should be solid now though!

I've used JB Weld to make a lip on the ends of charge pipes before. I've used 5 min epoxy too with sucess. The quality of the clamps makes a difference as well. 28 psi and no issues..