Intercooler Piping

[94Jettameowpsst]

Who all here has made thier own intercooler piping and how long did it take? As for the actual tech part of this post, how many of you have had your pipes blow apart at the welds?? I cant keep my pipes together..i blow couplers and welds.

 

[blcknspo0ln]

check forums > tech articles > intercooling > my articles

use 3 ply silicon couplers [not HD style rubber ones] and get someone who can actually WELD to do the pipes for you..

 

[Budget90GST]

I welded my IC pipes together then took them to Road Race to get them beaded (I am fortunate enough to live within driving ditance) then bought some silicone couplers from them and have had no problems whatsoever. Silicone couplers + beaded ends = no blown IC pipes in my book. Oh and you have to know how to weld (or at least get pointers from people who do for a living). This is only my second attempt at welding and it gets easier as I do more. Good luck.

 

[94Jettameowpsst]

Yea i wouldnt say that im the most proficient welder but i welded, hit it w/ grinder 2-3 times, and pressure checked it and it was good to go. You think maybe it could be the wire or not enough heat w/ the welder?

 

[deusxmachina]

Damn, I was almost done typing a reply and then *poof*. Here's the highlights:

If you are using a cheap, gas-less welder, you might be trying to make the welds look too pretty, which is hard with such a tool. If so, don't be afraid to make a mess and get good penetration and pooling the metal. If you overdo it and burn through, that's annoying but fixable, but any decent penetration on an intercooler pipe should make it extremely hard to get those pipes apart again. If you pool the metal to bright red without burning through, that ain't coming apart.

Especially without gas, it's easy to have pinhole leaks. Cover the weld in JB Weld. It looks a little funny. Oh well. Can also make a ring around the end with JB Weld if you don't feel like beading it with some other method.

After tightening couplers, drive around a bit to warm everything up and then re-tighten them. A few re-tightenings when everything is hot should keep things together.

 

[Thomas91169]

as long as youre making good penetration at the correct setting, dont worry about how beady or perfect the welds look.

you can always go over the crappy spots with a grinder, and if there are holes, some jbweld then grinder again till its smooth and lookes like one single pipe.

 

[blcknspo0ln]

94Jetta - I didn't mean to insult you with my comment. I assumed you went to come incompetant meineke welder that didn't give two shits about how well the pipes came out. no harm done?

anyway, everyone seems to have explained what you need to do to fix your problems. I've actually managed to do a custom short route with NO welding at all

 

[94Jettameowpsst]

No harm done ^, but i have a 90 talon....w/ my maft in blowthru and my cruise sitting on the side, it'd hard to have short route piping w/ out changing the throttle cable considering my endtanks are on the sids <=>. Although i do have some pin hole leaks i found that not even to be my problem. I was drivin just a little while ago sittin at 10 psi when all of a sudden it shoots past 27psi. I get home and realize that my mbc is the culpret...first off it must have been stickin and while i was drivin it backed out to the point where it was like the w/g wasnt even hooked up

 

[blcknspo0ln]

I've had that done... thankfully my friend was just happening to look over at my boost gauge. the entire screw + spring fell out WTF