2G: Unbelievable flex pipe failure with pictures

[007jimmy]

Heres a little bit of history. A few weeks ago I started noticing an exhuast leak coming from the flex pipe. It's the only possible place since the rest of exhuast is straight pipe. Well the guy I normally take it to had to replace it today. I was shocked when he cut the old flex off. My 14B was blowing through a straw.

[954TalonTsi]

Didnt happen to be an Ebay dp? Seen it happen on cars that gotem off Ebay then came to my shop with same problem

[Bud92gsx]

Wow that is kind of crazy.Well more thank kind of.

Umm an ebay Dp should not matter.We did something close to this a week ago.We backed up my talon with only the Dp bolted on.Caught the back of the DP on the cement.And it crimped it.Have not taken it off to look tho yet.But it dis not look like it did a few minutes before that.

[007jimmy]

Not an ebay pipe. It was an exhaust shop generic flex. The guy that replaced it said over the 1000 he has done he has yet to see something like that. My turbo spooled like shit. Now i know why...

[Anubis_4_99]

Seen that a few times around here and other forums. Still always pretty amazing to see them fail like that.

[JDT]

Wow that sucker caved in pretty bad.


Well, on the bright side, atleast you cured your car's asthma

[crimsondragon]

Get a new flex pipe with an interlock liner and you won't have an issue with the flex collapsing.

[007jimmy]

Im thinking that it was caused by my motor mounts. They were bad... REALLY BAD.. The front roll stop fell apart when I took it out and the others weren't much better. The only one that wasnt really cracked and deteriorated was my upper trans mount. That flex pipe was only 3 years old at most but its all better now.

[MJcanada]

Jeez that's crazy. Is there no liner to the flex wire? My flex pipe broke but it had and accordian like inner pipe that the flex wire wrapped around

[007jimmy]

Yeah theres the inner braid that collapsed and then the hard "accordian" pipe is under the outer steel braiding. Honestly im still kinda dumb founded and i've been "tinkering" with cars for 10+ years. I saved it to hang up on my shed wall with the rest of the FAILED parts. lol

[Hal]

Very common failure.

No more flex section in my car.

[turboglenn]

THis is more common than you might think.. A good friend of mine replaced his low mile BB turbo with the latest version of that model (what's now the 6765) and he was having issues making boost on the first one which is why he replaced it.. Got the new 6765 billet wheel on there and still could barely make 12-15psi out of the car until just a tad before shifting at 8500rpm... He now started wondering what was going on, pulling compression numbers, checking cam timing and so on, it wasn't until he decided to change to a tubular manifold that he brought the DP to me to be modded for the new turbo and awstegate positions and that's when he noticed his had done the same thing and brought it to my attention..

the opening had shrunk down to just over 1.25 inches (roughly measured with a bore caliper/dial)

I garaunteed him this was why he wasn't making boost and wasn't making any good power at the boost he was making.. He was skeptical so i cut the DP apart, made it fit the new manifolds positions and cut the flex off it.. (having no new flex to work with i just tied his cat back up with some SS safety wire and told him to go for a drive) He was instantly boosting beyond 30psi and had to pull over a bunch of times to adjust the boost controller untill he got it settled in the 22psi range (where his wastegate spring is at for a base)

JUst goes to show sometimes it's the simple things you would'nt even consider that needs to be checked on now and again to be sure everything is in good working order..

Do you happen to know what brand that flex piece was?? The one that collapsed on my friends car was a Vibrant piece, I'm just wondering if it's in the build of the flex section or if all of them will do it over time..

We came to conclusion that it was from having the DP hanging from the cat-back connection with it flexing much further than normally required to do it's job, thus causing the steel inside to "bunch up" and restrict the middle in that fashion (we were able to expand it back uot some what and then flexed the pipe repeatedly and duplicated the resulting failure but wasn't sure if it was just becasue that piece had already failed that it re-constricted the way it did)

[gabytech]

thats a pretty common problem on flex pipes... tip, replace the flex pipe with a Honda spring type pipe..