Quote:
Originally Posted by cxp213
Is your car tuned? There are plenty of cars at your mileage and year mark on stock tune and piping so flashing a tune for your experiment would be better served, if not already, I'd think. I do like the thought process behind it, though.
That said, I'm also inclined to believe that the culprit is movement and heat cycle related. I don't know about a crack developing and staying like that until it finally lets go, but I can certainly see the material being weakened over time before bursting one day due to the stress. I recall my CP let go right upon upshifting when there's inherent movement and less boost.
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Yes, depending on my mood and ambient conditions, the motor is pushing +2 to +4 psi. It's been that way for about 5 months. I have a 6MT and routinely punch it in 2nd and 3rd with lots of fairly hard 2-3 shifts. I also punch it pretty hard in 4th, 5th, and 6th from around 2800-3200rpms which can create quite a bit of load and heavy boost quite rapidly.
The front of the charge pipe is mounted to the intercooler which doesn't move. The other end of the pipe is mounted to the throttle body/motor which is always moving, especially on hard acceleration and shifts. The accordion section of the charge pipe is to offer some movement between the pipe ends and the pipe mount on the engine helps reduce pipe movement/load as well. However, there is still some tugging/lifting load on the lip of the charge pipe (at the throttle body) as the motor rocks around, especially on the portion of the pipe lip facing the front of the engine. If you look at where most of the charge pipes break, it's in this area.
I think what happens is a small hairline crack starts to form in the lip after lots of heat cycles and the constant stressing of the lip. It continues to get worse over time, probably rapidly. Then one day you hammer the gas, you downshift, the motor rocks violently in the mounts, boost hits very hard a split second after the shift, the crack says enough due to the violet rocking teamed with a big gush of air and POP, the pipe lip breaks completely and the pipe is pushed off the throttle body.
Adding some level of additional support at the pipe lip may help combat this issue. With all that said though, the OEM charge pipe should be considered a wear item and owners should expect to replace them at least every 5 years (or once if you buy a quality aftermarket one) because they will eventually break.