Hi,

I am so fed up with my turbo intake seal. Like others, I know the pain of getting the u tube on and off of my intake. I had a deformed seal, a leak that I duct taped, and an oil drip. I've absolutely had it.

I saw all the great cone filter mods with sewer pipe here. I almost did that. I was at Walmart thumbing over the nice conical Fram filters but I just didn't feel like messing up the original intake of the car. I don't know why...it is the most sucky engineering in the entire car. I've welded and replaced two air cleaner brackets, replaced numerous vibration dampers. You guys know the drill.

So I did something really easy. I didn't get to it easily but here is what I ended up with. I bought this turbo inlet hose 3" or 76mm. Common stuff. A four inch piece cost me $3.



My original intent was to make a replacement rubber seal to go between the u tube and the air cleaner. But I cut a ring of hose and I just couldn't jam the u tube over the air cleaner with the hose in there. It is just the wrong size. I got desperate and put slits in the flange of the u tube inlet. Then I cut off the lip of the u tube inlet. Still no go.

Finally I figured how about just cut off the entire flange of the u tube inlet and slip the silicone hose over the end. I cut it off just at the boundary of the flange and the u tube section where it necks down. The silicone hose slips nicely over the edge. It is a good seal but I black siliconed it just for good measure. The 3" hose easily slips over the air cleaner outlet. Wow. Now that was easy.

Here's how it looks. We'll see how it lasts. Sadly, the PO ran my car with a big leak at this junction and may have degraded my engine. I only have 390 psi across all cylinders. Wish I had the 400+ I see people post here. So if you do this make sure you get a good seal. I'll have to keep a close eye on it.

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles
97 C280 147k miles