Intercooler Pipes 1994 850 Turbo ~160K miles

[RABrillhart]

Hey guys,

I thought I would pass this along.

I was getting a mixture codes for mid throttle and idle mixture issues. So I thought I had a vacuum leak somewhere. I also had low power not terrible, just not what I remembered when the car was new. I really believed I had a week turbo and or a bad diaphragm on the waste gate on top of everything else.

Well... when I looked at the 3 way hose going into the throttle body it looked OK from a top view. But, when I pulled it off the hose looked like a sponge on the inside. It seams that a slight misting of oil was on the pipes and where it had settled on the bottom the rubber was completely disintegrated. The hoses reinforcing fabric was showing. Really, this looked porous. On top of this, the pipe had a 1.5 inch crack along the bottom; It looked like an aneurysm.

So, being the amateur back yard MacGyver that I am I patched the inside of the hose with a section cut out of a spray paint cap, put tie wraps around it to support the fatigued rubber and put a liberal amount of silicone sealant around the crack. I then put the tube back on. This allowed me to continue driving the car. I also looked at all of the other inter-cooler hoses, they were all spongy and porous.

I then promptly ordered a full set of inter-cooler hoses from IPD. (BTW they have all aftermarket hoses, the other companies are selling a mixture of aftermarket and Volvo hoses for some reason. I saved over $30 off of FCP Gorton's price).

I got them today and put things right with the Inter-cooler piping.

For those of you wondering, the 3 way hose actually held up pretty well. When I took it off it only had a slight crack starting to form between the two tie wraps.

When all was done I took the car out fro a drive. You would not believe the difference.. the car is again a rocket sled.

So, the moral of this story is, if you have an older turbo and have not checked the hoses, DO SO. They may look good on the outside but be rotten on the inside, and hemorrhaging turbo boost.

[lucast]

Yes, the first things I had to do to get my (also) 1994 T-5 going right were changing the leaky intercooler hoses and all the vacuum lines.

I used Samco silicone hoses and silicone vacuum lines and they made, as you have discovered, a massive difference to engine performance. If you still haven't done your vacuum lines, I'd suggest that to be the next thing to attack.

Then, I'd move on to spark plugs and distributor rotor + cap, and the spark plug wires if necessary.

As a precaution, I'd also suggest a trans fluid flush/replacement using the oft documented method.