I recently fitted a Samco inlet hose to my Hawk STi and I referred to a lot of good posts about it before starting the work. After that, I want to share some tips and tricks I found when I did the work.

This has been well covered previously, but broadly speaking, the process had 5 main steps:

1) Remove & disconnect all the components around the stock hose, intercooler, hoses, airbox, vac lines and valves, loosen the engine harness that runs over the top
2) Cut certain piece(s) of the stock tube off
3) Wiggle the old one out
4) Wiggle the new one in
5) Refit all parts

Removing the intercooler, and most parts are fairly straight forwards and well documented, but the two parts that were trickier were removing the BOV recirc hose from the stock inlet tube and removing the bolt that holds the stock part to the intake manifold.


Removing the Recirc hose without cutting the stock inlet tube

The release for the hose clamp was facing downwards on my car, and I couldn’t access it with pliers. It is possible to cut the stub of the stock inlet tube but in some circumstances you might want to keep it, say if you were only changing the intercooler hoses.

To get access, I removed the vac lines and valve in the pic below (blue circle), this gave line of sight and access under the manifold. I took some close up pictures as the hose layout is a pretty confusing!





To rotate the clamp I used a long 3/8 extension bar and fed it under the manifold to push the clamp on one side, then another extension bar from the top to squeeze the clamp and release the other side and slowly rotate the clamp around as far as I could. After that I used my hand (under and through the manifold) and a tie wrap through the other side of the clamp release, and push/pulled the clamp around so the release was facing upwards. Then I could get a pair of needle nose pliers on the clamp, release and move it down the hose. The hose was a bit stubborn so I used some silicone lubricant spray and let it soak for a min or so before removing it.

(more to follow in the next reply...)

 

Removing the stock inlet hose

Once the harness and bolt were clear, I only needed to cut off the top rear most junction (the one just in front of the turbo inlet). I used a new junior hacksaw blade with a handle made from duct tape and found it was pretty quick to cut through. With that out of the way the stock tube could be removed with some wiggling, rotating and bending.

Before fitting the new inlet hose

- I applied a tiny amount of washing up up liquid around the inside of the hose on the turbo side, this made it a lot easier to fit over the inlet. It’s pretty inactive and non flammable so I consider this better than oil or WD40.
- I removed the vac hose from the turbo body. The clamp was easy to move, but the hose was stuck to the metal stub. The hose and stub are pretty fragile so I used some silicone lubricant spray to loosen it off as with the recirc hose.
- I loosely fit the hose clamp on the turbo inlet with the worm screw facing the intercooler side.
- I vacuumed out the turbo inlet to make sure there were no pieces of plastic swarf inside it

Getting the new silicone hose into position

It’s a little frustrating and I would recommend not doing on hot day! There was some cursing, but it did go after enough twisting and turning. I found that once it was half way under the manifold you need to bend it from the rear side and away from the intercooler and wiggle it through, maybe also pushing down the rear most stub. Once I had the first stub on the other side of the manifold, and with the hose in roughly the right orientation, I found the recirc stub was stuck against the manifold underside, and that’s where the trusty long 3/8 extension came in useful again. I pushed the hose with the blunt end at an angle at the root of the stub, so that it both compressed the hose inwards and pushed it towards the turbo. With of bit wiggling the recirc stub went under the manifold and the hose was nearly in position.

Fitting the hose to the turbo inlet

With the hose almost in place, I made a sling from 2 large tie wraps and put this around the turbo end. Pulling upwards and away from the intercooler the hose went on to the turbo reasonably easily. Some videos suggesting using hook tools but I have damaged hoses in the past with these so I was reluctant given the time and money invested!

Once the hose was fitted to the turbo inlet, I moved and tightened the hose clamp and refit all parts. I found that a little washing up liquid on the airbox hose also helped to fit it to the new intake hose.

I hope people find this useful!

 

good info -- thanks..