well, i did it - became a ricer today.

after a lot of hassle with IC pipes banging around my chassis, boost leaks from couplers, and the annoyances of a low-hanging IC pipe - i did what i thought of as a joke a while ago and redid my IC piping with some radiator hosing.

i went to a local shop that specializes in car fittings, hoses, etc, and bought 20 feet of their best radiator hose that's woven in with like 3 layers of fabric and whatnot. guy told me that no turbo will ever produce remotely enough psi to bust one of these things. just to satisfy me, he hooked up a little bit of it to a huge air compressor and at about 40 psi, you couldn't even tell the thing had pressurized air in it. i'm also only boosting about 17 lbs.

install was dead damn simple, exactly what i wanted. I literally cut two strips of it - one from the turbo, finaggled around the engine bay a little, and then into the IC. second line from the IC to the TB. i now have 4 possible leaking points instead of 18 - win!

thoughts - looks a little ugly, but only about 1 foot of piping is visible on my car (08 civic si). rest is behind/under the motor.

it was also very cheap ($60) and literally took me 5 minutes to install it, vs. the 3 hours it took me to fit together my maze of IC piping i had before.

i did lose about 2 lbs of boost, i'm assuming because the hose stretches a little under boost. no prob, ramped up the boost solenoid duty a little and fixed it.

i'll snap some pics of it tomorrow. i'm actually really happy with it, surprised how well it worked :D IC piping was always my least favorite part of turbo installs because it's expensive to get custom piping, but this makes it sooo fawking easy now. we'll see how it holds up. guy gave me some lube that looks vag lube and told me to stroke the piping every once in a while where it gets hot (once a year or so) to prevent cracking.

 

What diameter is it?

 

2.5"

 

Pics?

 

will upload some this weekend

 

Where are you getting radiator hose that big? Im looking for 1.25" radiator hose in a custom length. My local auto store only has up to 1".

 

same here

 

This is awesome, post up pics and the name of the company you got it from.

I remember the very first turbo honda I ever drove about 14 years ago, it was a dohc zc with I believe a very early greddy turbo kit, the charge pipes were solid blue silicone, no metal, and it looked/ worked great.

 

Wow ok.

 

What engine could have a 2.5" radiator hose?...Ohh wait maybe this one....

 

im interested in pics. this doesn't sound like it can be actual radiator hose. otherwise it would kink when bent. this sounds like some type of flexible hose or something. definitely interested in seeing how its routed.

honestly OP, you shouldn't have even started this thread until you had pics...

 

Def in for pics!

 

haha sorry guys i shouldve known to put up pics when i did it. i will have my car back tomorrow and i will take a few pictures then.

its called radiator hose, i dont know if its actually radiator hose or not since like mentioned, i dont know of a motor that would need a hose this big. i got it from a specialty one off store out here that does all sorts of custom fittings, hoses, etc. midwest conceptual if anyone is interested.

it does kink if bent at too much of an angle. luckily enough my turbo is clocked straight down so it only needed one gentle bend forward, then i routed it along the side of the bay so that i could do a gradual bend back into the IC. same story with the cold side

 

$h!t man this sounds classy, back in the day, before you could buy an intercooler and charge pipes on ebay for $200, people were using pvc plumbing pipe if they couldn't afford it!

 

Sounds very functional and useful

I want pics, Ive never seen anything over 1.25" ID

 

I recently worked at a place called California industrials rubber it looked like they made hose strong enough and pretty big in diameter

 

80's stock turbo volvos & saabs used molded hose similar to radiator hose as ic piping.

 

of course this dude never came back with pics. im calling BS

 

Saabs at the very least were mostly aluminum piping, I have like 20 miles of those pipes in my brothers basement.

The couplers everyone use are just layerd silicone hose, which is essentially radiator hose.

I'd be worried about temperatures degrading it whether that be from under hood temps so close to the turbo or internal temperatures of freshly compressed air from the turbo... But it could very well work just fine.

 

Is it not obvious that radiator hose will hold more heat and take longer to cool down?? I guess if you don't care about that then go for it. I wish I could have seen intake temps b4 and after the install......