Turbo Hose

[Leeboy22001]

Hi All,

Have had my PD150 Revo'd for about 5 weeks now, and this evening when accelerating I heard a loud pop/bang, puff of smoke out the back and the engine was very very rough. Got the AA out, and appears one of the turbo hoses had popped off ! I guess with the increase in turbo pressure with the remap something had to give eventually. I think its the lower hose, as he reached down to the bottom right of the radiator ?? Is this an simple fix ? I managed to drive it (at 15mph for 2 miles) to the garage, so hopefully they'll get it done

 

[cleverspoon]

Common problem, they are push fit, the hoses have an aluminium spiggot on the end with an o ring and held in with a clip, bit of a crap design really.

I did a bit of preventative maintenance and replaced the o ring and clips and strengthened joint with cable ties to pull the joint together.

The only real way is to replace oem hoses with sfs or others.

Sometimes the aluminium spiggot on the end of the hoses can wear causing a poor seal.

But itsusually due to oily vapours in the boost pipes (from crank breather) seeps in to the o rings and causes them to pop off, a good de grease and reassembly is usually enough.

 

[Leeboy22001]

Is this something i can do, or a garage ?

 

[cleverspoon]

Dont know how mechanicaly minded you are but its fairly simple, jack/ axle stand the front, remove under tray and youll see the boost hoses at either side, youll see the joints, unclip and pull apart, clean/ degrease the joint both sides, re fit hose and clip in.

What i did was put a cable tie around the hose near the joint, one around the solid pipe the other side of the joint, then 4 ties between these 2 ties to pull the joint together, then do all the ties up nice and toght, do the 2 around the pipes first then the ones joining them. This should help to stop the joints popping off again.

 

[Leeboy22001]

Great, thanks for your help, will have a chat with my Dad and see what we can do !

 

[Muttley]

The OEM design copes well enough with stock boost on the original engine (0.6 bar, 9psi or so) but the PD 150 runs to 1.5 bar stock (21 psi).

I recently replaced my pancake pipe (one mounting ear broken away, probably by ground impact from a previous owner - the undertray was trashed too) and shortly after that the boost hose on the other side of the FMIC blew its connection.

One part of the problem is that as the engine rocks backwards and forwards delivering torque the hoses to the fixed intercooler have to move. The joints that see most of the motion are the joints to the flexible hoses attached to the intercooler i.e. the joints at the pancake pipe (4-5 below) and the hard plastic pipe with the MAP in (16-17 below). It was the second of those that had blown on my car.

The actual joint consists of an inner sleeve with pressed metal lugs and an outer sleeve with a heavy square-section spring clip held in a groove. The lugs engage behind the spring clip, which needs to be pulled well away from the pipe to release them again. In theory the pipes are push-fit, but the lugs are relatively fragile and it is much better to open the spring clip to fit. There's a loop in the middle of the clip that you can get a small screwdriver into to lever the clip away from the joint.

The lugs are simply pressed out of the sheet metal sleeve that surrounds the end of the pipe, and that makes them weak and subject to wear. On mine, one of the lugs had sheared off completely - the bang was impressive, and the cloud of smoke emitted if I pressed the throttle too hard was a dead giveway.

I put on a temporary cable-tie fix, half-inch wide ties around the pipes and quarter inch ties between them, but it did not restore proper performance and the joint was opening visibly under pressure. A new hose has restored performance, and improved it.

When I replaced the pancake pipe I also put new seals on, and would recommend this as a regular maintenance task on the TDI 150. The seals are double-lipped, not simple O-rings, and do get a lot of wear. It's quite easy to get the pancake pipe off and the joint on the other side of the FMIC is staring you in the face once you get the undertray off.

 

[cleverspoon]

Top man mutley!!
Would you reccommend aftermarket pipes or stock ones should they need replacing?

 

[Leeboy22001]

Muttley, that's great stuff, yeah is it worth using aftermarket pipes ?

 

[Muttley]

I replaced mine with stock items, so can't comment on the aftermarket ones. The weakness is in the lug fabrication, if aftermarket ones come with beefier lugs then they could be worthwhile.

 

[indiemike]

I had a a pd150 and sold it due to the endless boost issues.

The weakest link is the fmic connection, even with aftermarket pipes they still use the same crappy clip lug connection.

changed the whole system for sfs pipes. The turbo-pancake-fmic pipe was a good set and would advise people to get. As for the egr to fmic the sfs is a poor kit. No mounting points, to many connection points, and the fmic connection, was really disappointed with this kit. I think allard do a hard pipe kit which is ment to be better and I would of got that instead and would have got a S3 8p fmic

 

[Muttley]

Mike, yours had a remap which will have increased the boost pressure and just made things worse. I'd say the standard pipework is just about adequate for the stock boost, but the need to transition from rocking engine block to rigid intercooler is always going to cause problems. Stiffer engine mounts would help. I have no idea how a kit containing only hard pipes is going to work unless the intercooler is mounted to the block somehow. You would end up straining the connections to the intercooler itself, which are plastic I believe.

 

[Leeboy22001]

Ended up taking car to garage, there report is as i thought the lower intercooler hose lug has been ripped off, also the connection into the intercooler has been damaged, and may need to be replaced ! Costing in excess of £400 including fitting for a non seat intercooler as there twice as expensive ! Am starting to regret this simple remap :-(, only had it done 6 weeks ago !

 

[cleverspoon]

Damaged lugs on end of hose is common as explained above, a new hose seal and clip should do it, intercooler wouldbe worst case. But i personaly dont think a new intercooler would be req.

 

[Leeboy22001]

The garage are going to try replacing the hose, and see if it holds, they said where the hose enters the intercooler has been damaged, but there hoping it'll be ok !

 

[KarlB1]

If you do need an intercooler I'd recommend the Audi S3 one that darkside developments do, fully fabricated to fit the pd150 as a direct replacement and has metal lugs on the inlet and outlet instead of plastic. But as said, try seals and clips first as I'm gonna be trying this on mine when the weather warms up slightly

 

[Leeboy22001]

I'll let the garage know about the clips etc.. There pretty good at stuff like that

 

[Leeboy22001]

Crazy the vw group felt plastic inlet outlet would be suffi ce !

 

[indiemike]

Mike, yours had a remap which will have increased the boost pressure and just made things worse. I'd say the standard pipework is just about adequate for the stock boost, but the need to transition from rocking engine block to rigid intercooler is always going to cause problems. Stiffer engine mounts would help. I have no idea how a kit containing only hard pipes is going to work unless the intercooler is mounted to the block somehow. You would end up straining the connections to the intercooler itself, which are plastic I believe.

Haha sorry about the rant, just endless boost leaks done my head in.
Yea it was the remap that caused the problems, Like suggested below the dark side s3 fmic is ment to be a good fix

 

[KarlB1]

Let us know the result and how you get on dude, as I said when the weather is slightly warmer I'm gonna be cleaning the pipes and changing the seals and clips and probably a few Tbolt clamps or cable ties for good measure

 

[Leeboy22001]

Yeah will do