I recently had a shop replace a leaky intercooler while away from home. On the drive back home I had one of the boost pipes next to the intercooler partially pop off on the highway.
I've now gotten some new boost hoses in case it was because of wear on those tabs at the ends, but when I put them on I realized that it seems the clips are too short to be able to hold both hose tabs in place at the same time - i.e. depending on how I position the clamp either the top or bottom tab will be held in, but not both at the same time. This is with both the original factory clips that the shop reinstalled and with the clips that came with my new Gates boost hoses.

Here's how I have the clips on:

 

bottom (holds):

 

top (doesn't hold)

 

 

you can even see that the top isn't correctly seated by looking at it from the side - you see the top side protruding outwards from that slit it sits in while the bottom side is flush:

I've tried pushing the hose all the way in and wiggling it around to no avail, so as far as I can work out the clips are just too short. OEM number for my car would be 1J0145769H, any other versions I could try? Sadly I can't really go back to the shop in question with this because this was on a trip so they're far away. I'm thinking they installed some weird intercooler with poorly made hose fittings.

Also, on the other side of that hose (where it goes into the pipe towards the intake manifold) I have the same clip installed in the same way and there are no problems, no leaks, which makes me suspect the intercooler further.

Does the clip on the hose that is not seating right, need to pull all the way back past the notch to allow the pipe to be fitted in and then the clip pushed back to the tab where it belongs?

Edited 17 April, 20242 yr by TheClient

The clips aren't too short looking at those pictures - the hose just isn't in all the way and  fully home, thus preventing the clip from seating properly.

 

 

 

In my experience from our previous Mk2 TDi 4x4 doing a similar job (turbo to intercooler hose) they can be a bugger to fit and do take a fair bit of fiddling and wriggling and forcing to get the hose to seat properly - I'd therefore be tempted to take the hose off and try again (I know it took me a few goes to get mine on fully).

Turns out that both the clips the shop used (presumably came with new intercooler they installed?) AND the new clips delivered with my Gates boost hoses were not the right size, just a bit too small. I looked up the exact part number clips for my car, then based on that I found and bought Febi Bilstein 49756 and those fit perfectly.