[FrattonEnder]

Finally got around to replacing the top intercooler hose last week after it was pointed out at last year's Nano that it looked a little 'squishy'.
Pretty easy to remove the old one and get the new one on - I had the bumper off and lights out anyway - and there's a couple of things I noticed.

• My late plate mk2 has no facility for O rings on the intercooler. There's a hefty lip on the end of the pipe but no grooves at all for O rings. Aftermarket replacement or was this how they came out of the factory?
• Buying a single piece top hose, you not only need to cut it to fit the temperature sensor, you also need to cut out an additional length of hose the equivalent width of the temp sensor, otherwise the hose starts to kink too much at the top elbow. This kink creates a reduction in hose diameter at the elbow and so causes a bit of back pressure into the intercooler. Maybe the cause of some of the hose blowouts I've seen documented here. Maybe stating the obvious. My old hose was about 3cm too long for the avaiable space and I could see once off the car it was quite restricted. Comparing old to new (before cutting), they were the same length.

As a result of changing the hose, I've had a noticable change in throttle response and more of a willingness to get up to the legal limit. Not that she was sluggish before. As far as I'm aware, she's a stock 116Ps and hasn't been remapped or anything.