I learned this past Saturday at a road course here that I should have wrapped my AC line...
The rubber hose of the ac line runs about 1 inch away from the exhaust manifold (driver side)
I was coming out of a pretty spirited run around the track when i noticed my tempo guage was starting to rise (92 degrees out)...as I pulled off the track I heard a loud "pop" and a sound that sounded like a blow off valve, only i wasn't under boost, so i knew that wasn't it...i pulled over, began pulling my plugs, looked fine, then i noticed that i had green dye all over the driver side of my engine bay...upon closer inspection i found the problem, my ac line had melted a hole right through it!


i had an ac shop replace the hose and fit on the special ac pressed fittings and then picked up a roll of heat wrap...



i fabricated a bracket that holds the ac line away from the manifold(and against the inside of the engine bay) gaining another inch of distance-- difficult to see, bracket connects to same location as ground



thought i'd throw these in there:




in summary, all of you out there with F/I...wrap your ac line...even those NA who spend time at the track (road course)

 

too bad it had to cost you the line ti figure this prob out. i am a huge fan of heat wrap and looks like i'll be doing my a/c line next!!

 

Yep.. I had the same issue with my setup. Once it busted once, we took it back in and rerouted it properly and wrapped it a little better. No problems since then, but it sure sucked to go without AC for a week.

 

Cool but tell u what,,, Alot of installation Is kinda knowin what MIGHT happen --But Ya learned something Thats cool --I still mess up too

 

Good info....thx!

 

all you have to do is bend them, i bent mine away from the heat and put thermal thread, i didnt need it,but i live in texas. I need cold ac

 

i think even in my case, if i bent the rubber hose away from the manifold to gain another inch of clearance, if unwrapped would have still melted through

i fabricated a bracket to pull it out of the way and wrapped it..better safe than sorry, and unless you have conducted research to prove this, the $10 in heat wrap is totally justified

 

Dont forget to heat wrap the vaccum lines that run near heat sources. Those can turn brittle from the heat, VERY quickly.

 

If you run silicone hoses rather than rubber ones, shouldn't that prevent them from turning brittle?

 

I cant recall if the blue hoses included with the Greddy kit were silicone or rubber...maybe someone else can confirm. Those hoses did turn brittle...whatever material they were made of. The real danger area is just above the manifold area. If the hoses are running up by the front of the engine, you wont have any problem.

 

Mine are basically run around the engine to the middle of the back then down near the tranny and out to the w/g's rather than down the side.

If I had to guess I would say the blue hoses from Greddy are rubber. I have some spare blue silicone lines from my RX7 that I will probably replace them with this weekend while hooking up the E-01 solenoid.

 

Will having your manifolds jet hot coated help stop the ac lines from melting ? Ill wrap my ac lines anyways but i just dont feel like making a bracket to relocate the line.

 

I would imagine that would help, since jet hot coatings are used to help keep heat in the exhaust system.

 

Thanks for the heads up!

 

mine ARE coated...so, the answer is, it will help, but can still happen...making the bracket is not required...wrapping should work

 

I wrapped mine, we do this on all customer installs. Relocation isnt necessary, as I've had my lines wrapped for 25K miles, and they are holding up nicely.

 

so why did the temp reading increase when the line melted????

sean

 

Routing the a/c line over the top right side of the motor makes most sense,not as clean or pretty but protects the line. We tried both ways on the first two TN G35 protype kits and the top run line won. Keep in mind you will need to lenghten the line by 4",then Tape it for security..it gets real hot in there..

 

the temp increased due to the abuse inflicted from the road course track (keeping it at 5000-6000rpms for extened periods makes things get hot )
as a result of the temp rising, the heat increasing, the line melted

 

i should have done that what i had the new line made ... well, the setup now should work well, but rerouting that line is a good idea