You know those little tiny vacuum lines? I was thinking of replacing the plastic ones with rubber, then I thought, why not use braided lines? Might look cool, won't cost much- but how would the ends be finished? With heat shrink tubing? It'd look stupid to have the braid just "ending"... and those lines are too small for a "dummy" clamp.

won't cost much? bet you've never bought it before, or you have a lot more money than i do. hose clamp, maybe seal it with some sort of clear sealer, do a neat job of cutting them, use a chop saw or cut off disk in a die grinder

Typically you use a small piece of shrink tubing over the ends.

Spectre makes dummy clamps small enough to fit vacuum lines.

Just cover them in red wire loom like all the ricers do.

I'm just kidding.

You know that stuff you can buy that you can dip tools into to give them a rubber grip coating. Use that.

Just cut your hose to the proper length, stick a screw or golf tee, or something like that into the ends, dip, allow to dry, then use an Exacto knife to cut around the edge of the object you inserted into the hose, pull it out, slide the hose onto you're vacuum port, & TADA!!!

You're gonna be limited on your colors though. I've only seen that stuff in red and yellow. Maybe there are diff colors, but I haven't seen 'em.

AJ

LOL! won't cost much? when was the last time you looked up the price of stainless braided an hose?

would look pretty cool though

How much does that stuff weigh? I bet if you replaced all the vacuum lines with it, you'd add 10 lbs easy. And it would cost hundreds of dollars.

Not to be a jerk, but IMHO using that stuff where inappropriate doesn't look "good", it looks more like the owner doesn't know what he's doing. Go get up close to a "real" race car sometime, you'll see they don't waste money or effort on anything that doesn't pay off, they don't just throw gigabucks at their cars for the fun of it. That sort of thing looks like a street rodder's motor: you know, 2 chrome carbs and a polished 6-71 blower on top of a stock LG4 long block. All "show", no go.

RB brings up a good point.

I went the SS braided hose route on my engine one year and it realyl gets too much. Not too mention in a year it dulls and stops looking as good.

I found just going with simple black hoses looks much cleaner. The SS hose makes the bay look real cluttered.

I'll try to remember to post pics tonite when I get home.

Er, yeah, I actually have priced 'em; I consider 10 feet of Aeroquip -4AN hose for $40 as not costing much. With 10 feet I think that would cover all the vac lines on the engine, with a lot left over. I'm port fuel injected, so the only lines I would replace were the hard plastic ones that run between the PFR, TB, and EGR. I had considered doing them all, like to the brake booster and charcoal canister, but changed my mind for the exact reason RB mentioned... seemed pointless to highlight minor things... and now, it does seem rather pointless to highlight vacuum lines.

Karps, yeah, I have the hose covers on my heater hoses, and the "fake" braided hoses for my trans cooler and trans filter, and they get dirty fast. I figured I'd try out the real stainless as a "test" for dirt, then use it for my trans cooler/filter combo.

But if general consensus is "it'll look dumb", then hell, forget it; I'm not about to pass myself off as a *****!

Thanks guys! Oh and thanks for the hose end ideas!

Oh, haha, that kinda sounded like I'm made out of green paper; I'm not, I just know that when you price stainless, you pay much more than normal stuff, like stainless exhaust tips vs chrome exhaust tips, etc..., so I expected a higher price even before I opened the Summit catalog. 'Course, 10 feet of rubber hose is what, $5?