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Trying to fix up this SS I picked up. It was intercooled (saab900) in a very ghetto way.
I have replaced a piece of the turbo-to-throttle body plumbing with a piece of pvc tube. (which, believe it or not is actually way less ghetto than the original install.)
It has a piece of 1/2" pvc coming out the side of a 4" long section of 1 1/2" pvc.
It is basically one of these, but made from pvc: (stolen from a post made by laurelthequeen)

How long do y'all think will this last?

A day?
A week?
A month?
6 months?

I am planning on having a buddy make me one out of steel, but I'm not sure when he can do it. He's a pretty busy guy.

Thanx in advance for any opinions...

PVC will burn very very quickly under those conditions, depositing crap inside your engine.

My friend used to smoke pot out of a PVC bong and now he has brain damage.

It'll probably last quite some time, and chances are your engine will simply ingest and burn whatever comes off of it, but if I were you I would actually just replace it with a piece of metal pipe for now, even if it meant having no blowoff valve (just set boost down low and try to be gentle whenever letting off the throttle, which isn't bad in an automatic).

But you might be able to get a copper piece similar to this PVC piece... Lowe's, I think, carries some pieces like that.

Splinter wrote:My friend used to smoke pot out of a PVC bong and now he has brain damage.

Really? That sucks. It'd be interesting if someone smoked through an intercooler.

As for the PVC pipe? I wouldn't really use it.

I WOULD suggest either Schedule 80 PVC pipe, or better yet, ABS.

Home Depot often carries ABS pipe in the plumbing section. It's black, and offered in all of the sizes PVC is. Some Home Depots don't offer it though.

They DO make clear PVC pipe. Might be kinda cool to have a clear PVC charge-pipe. I guess all you'd see is oil residue, but it'd be cool I bet.

Pics of the ghetto-fab install?

Thanks for the info y'all.

Pics of the ghetto-fab install?

Hee... Naw, I thought about it before I started "fixing" it, but didn't have the camera with me at the time.

They DO make clear PVC pipe. Might be kinda cool to have a clear PVC charge-pipe. I guess all you'd see is oil residue, but it'd be cool I bet.

Speaking of using clear tubing...
What about glass? I know it sounds like a terrible idea, but I know I can do it.
Flame that idea all you want. I am just wondering what would happen if it were to fail.

Your engine would eat it and likely melt the glass in the combustion chamber and coat places that shouldn't be coated with varying thicknesses of glass and various other things that would contribute to kill the engine.

... that's what I thought.

Actually, the engine would never get hot enough to melt it, but it could certainly ingest some of it and some crazy s#!t might happen to the internals.

A rather unusual (and pretty stupid) way to kill an engine I suppose.

This reminds me of the BMW guy that used a sock to plug his oil pan.


Just dont do it.

I remember the sock thing.

I want to see the clear PVC would be cool for the novelty of it.

I'm not REALLY gonna do it...

...yet.

I like my new toy.


Just talking S#!t here, but someday maybe I'll grab up an old ea82t rustbucket that I don't care about and i'll make a handblown glass charge pipe for it. put it to the test. there's one for sale locally for 150$ (rusted out xt turbo) but i'm way overspent right now

I looked in to the potential PSI that borosilicate glass can handle and it's pretty good.
Theoretically it would hold up just fine. a piece of tubing about 1.5 inches in diameter and 4mm thick will hold over 242 psi.

Clear PVC carries the standard schedule 40 pressure rating. 300psi.

Phil, where can you find pressure rated clear PVC? I want some. McMaster perhaps? I should look there.

I always thought that Pressure Tested Sch 40 is Sch 40 wall thickness, but not all Sch 40 is Pressure Tested.

I found some when I was researching clear PVC for my engineering project.

A quick google gives sites with 2" clear pipe rated to 140psi but I definately remember seeing 2" clear rated to 300psi.

In reality what psi rating do y'all think is necessary?

I realize you'd want some kind of buffer zone above the actual level of boost you are pushing, but I wonder how much... 3x, 10x, 30x?

Remember that any pressure rating is usually tied back to a known/given temperature rating.

If you increase temperature, typically the pressure rating decreases.

Josh is right.

Remember, that pipe also see's absolute pressure, so add atmospheric to the amount of boost you are running (PRE intercooler boost).

I'd want something that clears at least 200psi.

Use ABS. It's tough to melt, and while it can't really handle rapid temp changes, the air in the charge pipes change fairly gradually over time, so it should be good.