I was on my way home from work today and I was accelerating when I hit the highway I heard a loud pop under the hood and no power. I pulled over and found the intercooler pipe had come off at the turbo. I got a wrench out put it back on, tightened it up and started out again. Pop; and off it came again. I knew there's a TSB on those fittings so I called my Ford dealer to see if I could get a new piece of hose and some clamps. Luck was on my side and they had them in stock. I nursed the truck home and got my son to drive me down to get the parts. No charge, they were warranty. Although I had to change them myself. No big deal. Both the old and new hoses were blue, but the new one had a red lining. The old one was all blue and kind of soft compared to the new one. The TSB on these states that the blue hose without the red lining requires a coating of motorcraft silicone. The Red one needs nothing. Torque to 9ft/lbs and I'm off again. Drove the truck hard for the rest of the day, no problems. My question is the rest of the fittings are blue on the intercooler intake side and black on the black from the intercooler out to the intake on the engine. Should I change those hose pieces as well or wait to see if they ever give me a problem? Has anyone else had any of the other intercooler fittings fail?

 

Get some brake or electrical cleaner and clean the oil from the pipes and interior of the hoses or they'll keep coming off. Look in the tech folder for a modification called the CCV mod. The crankcase vents into the turbo intake to reburn oil fumes and it puts oil into your intake system causing the hoses to get slick and the intercooler to be full of oil, which is "normal" but will gunk up your intake. The CCV mod eliminates this reburn and your intake will eventually clean out. Also notice that the inside of the hoses and the outside of the boost pipes has a tounge and groove arrangement that the clamp needs to go over so that the pipes don't easily pop out of the hoses. It is a fairly common problem usually caused by a combination of the oil from the crankcase and sometimes a turbo overboost problem. Use of a sticky hairspray on the tubes and hoses also promotes better "adhesion" between the tubes and pipes to keep them from popping off.

 

I installed the aftermarket intake pipe and it did not quite fit correctly to the innercooler pipe. Somewhere on the site I read to install a heavy duty hose connection. Where do I find this and does the new hose connection have to utilize the factory grooves on both pipes ?