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Banks was an FTE sponsor for many years. And specifically, of the 6.0L forum. Now, I see that the Banks banner is gone, but I also consider the many preceding years that Banks sponsored FTE, likely before Riffraff even existed. Banks was paying the bills on diesel enthusiasts forums back when the forums needed the money the most... as fledgling start ups at the turn of the century.
Banks products are very well made, but they are not always perfect. My Banks cold side tube, which I've had for 16 years, didn't line up very well with the intercooler (also Banks). For years, I suffered through this misalignment, and pondered the hypocrisy inherent in Banks claim of "reducing turbulence that is resistant to air flow"... when the over 1/2" lateral offset between the CAC pipe and intercooler induced a staggering jog in the lower boot that clearly created a zig zag far more egregious than any casting slag corrected by porting or polishing.
But all these years went by, and I blamed me. I thought I just wasn't aligning the tube quite right, or I wasn't clocking it's orientation correctly, or that I was too worried about the tube rubbing against other stuff along the route... had to have been my fault, right? I mean Banks is a big operation, in business for 60 years (longer than any other site sponsor, past or present, other than Ford), having held world records in turbo charging diesel and gasoline engines... they know what they are doing, right?
Yet I dreaded removing the cold side CAC to gain access for other repairs or maintenance, due to the difficulty in getting it to fit once again... as no matter how long I worked at it, final fit up was always marginal at best. Recent electrical system upgrades required the cold side CAC removal once again, and this time, I found that boot with the huge yaw induced transistion, now seared into it's elastomeric memory, had suffered a tear on the outside from being zig zagged too much.
That was the final straw. I called Banks. They sent me a new tube, and a new boot to boot. They only asked me to pay for the shipping, which I agreed to. Keep in mind, they took me at my word alone. I didn't have to send them any pictures, nor send back any old failed parts. Nor did I have to suffer any interrogation or belittlement about how I installed the previous pipe. With no "proof" whatsoever, other than my claim that the old tube wasn't fitting correctly, Banks shipped me a beautifully packed new CAC tube and boot.
I think there is an inherent advantage in dealing with a professional, deeply experienced, original developer and manufacturer of products, who has been in business longer than most of today's resellers of these types of products have been alive. Longer than even their parents were alive. I suspected, correctly, that Banks keeps records of any running engineering changes, including changes in the bend orientation of the CAC tubing, which are often necessitated by the running changes that the OEM vehicle manufactures make over the lifecycle of any given engine or model.
The new tube arrived, and it fit like a glove. No misalignment whatsoever. I should have said something 15 years ago, but I was too afraid it was my faulty installation, rather than what turned out to be a running change in the CAC tube design that was made due to a power steering pump reservoir fitting. The fact that Banks was willing to send me a corrected part, some 16 years after the fact of purchase, is good customer service. I often wonder if some of the other performance vendors will even be around in 16 years to support their products. We all have certainly seen a lot of vendors in this niche come on strong, and then go away quietly during the last 20 or so years.
Banks was an FTE sponsor for many years. And specifically, of the 6.0L forum. Now, I see that the Banks banner is gone, but I also consider the many preceding years that Banks sponsored FTE, likely before Riffraff even existed. Banks was paying the bills on diesel enthusiasts forums back when the forums needed the money the most... as fledgling start ups at the turn of the century.
Banks products are very well made, but they are not always perfect. My Banks cold side tube, which I've had for 16 years, didn't line up very well with the intercooler (also Banks). For years, I suffered through this misalignment, and pondered the hypocrisy inherent in Banks claim of "reducing turbulence that is resistant to air flow"... when the over 1/2" lateral offset between the CAC pipe and intercooler induced a staggering jog in the lower boot that clearly created a zig zag far more egregious than any casting slag corrected by porting or polishing.
But all these years went by, and I blamed me. I thought I just wasn't aligning the tube quite right, or I wasn't clocking it's orientation correctly, or that I was too worried about the tube rubbing against other stuff along the route... had to have been my fault, right? I mean Banks is a big operation, in business for 60 years (longer than any other site sponsor, past or present, other than Ford), having held world records in turbo charging diesel and gasoline engines... they know what they are doing, right?
Yet I dreaded removing the cold side CAC to gain access for other repairs or maintenance, due to the difficulty in getting it to fit once again... as no matter how long I worked at it, final fit up was always marginal at best. Recent electrical system upgrades required the cold side CAC removal once again, and this time, I found that boot with the huge yaw induced transistion, now seared into it's elastomeric memory, had suffered a tear on the outside from being zig zagged too much.
That was the final straw. I called Banks. They sent me a new tube, and a new boot to boot. They only asked me to pay for the shipping, which I agreed to. Keep in mind, they took me at my word alone. I didn't have to send them any pictures, nor send back any old failed parts. Nor did I have to suffer any interrogation or belittlement about how I installed the previous pipe. With no "proof" whatsoever, other than my claim that the old tube wasn't fitting correctly, Banks shipped me a beautifully packed new CAC tube and boot.
I think there is an inherent advantage in dealing with a professional, deeply experienced, original developer and manufacturer of products, who has been in business longer than most of today's resellers of these types of products have been alive. Longer than even their parents were alive. I suspected, correctly, that Banks keeps records of any running engineering changes, including changes in the bend orientation of the CAC tubing, which are often necessitated by the running changes that the OEM vehicle manufactures make over the lifecycle of any given engine or model.
The new tube arrived, and it fit like a glove. No misalignment whatsoever. I should have said something 15 years ago, but I was too afraid it was my faulty installation, rather than what turned out to be a running change in the CAC tube design that was made due to a power steering pump reservoir fitting. The fact that Banks was willing to send me a corrected part, some 16 years after the fact of purchase, is good customer service. I often wonder if some of the other performance vendors will even be around in 16 years to support their products. We all have certainly seen a lot of vendors in this niche come on strong, and then go away quietly during the last 20 or so years.
Glad to hear Banks is a stand up company. There is a lot to be said for that and from what I understand mostly American Made! They are on my short list for sure but I can only find the complete intercooler kit for the 6.0 and @ $1250.00 THATS A LOT OF DOUGH!
Mishimoto here. I got mine for $400 also. I haven't personally seen the Riff Raffs or Sinisters, but these boots are seriously beefy.
As for customer service....well.... One of the tubes had a ding on the end and it was like pulling teeth to get them to send another, in addition to the agent's inability or unwillingness to answer questions I thought should have been easy for someone on the inside.
On a side note, their torque spec for the clamps is 27 -35 inch/lbs, which is way lower than Ford's 108 inch/lb spec. I asked why the huge difference, and again, did not get any kind of an answer worth repeating.
Also, if you do some research, you may find some posts about Dieselsite's boot's inside coating delaminating. I think they've been redesigned since then, but there were a lot of complaints about their customer service, so that took them out of the running for me. That said, I have been running their HPOP for a year and a half with no issues, and had no problems with that purchase or core return.
Fuzzpuss, it sounds like you got twice as much beef as you bargained for... coming away with a beefy boot, and a beef with the company to boot!
MaxOut, I don't think you have to buy an entire Technicooler just to get the boots. Banks sells them separately... I know, because I decided to buy another one after they decided to send me one for free to make up for the 16 year old one that finally ripped due to CAC piping misalignment, so that I'd have a new boot on each end of the new pipe.
Even though that old Banks boot ripped, it still didn't leak, because the tear was on the outside layer, not the inside. The Banks boots (hump hoses) of both the earlier and later styles are clearly thick enough and layered enough to withstand quite a bit of abuse from oil, vibration, distension, internal pressure, and thermal cycling.
Compare the Banks boot to the stock boot in the photo below:
The stock Ford hose on the left looks ridiculously thin compared to the Banks hose on the right in the photo above, but the difference in ductility between the two hoses is even greater when felt in the hand. It is no surprise that the Ford hoses require an external metal wire reinforcement wrap on the longer lengths, otherwise they might inflate like a balloon.
Below are close up photos of the cross sections of each hose, comparing internal cloth reinforcement embedded into the hose's molds. One can see the layering substrates as well:
01-18-2017, 05:32 PM
