Silicone Hose Kits

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What Do Silicone Hose Kits Do?

Silicone radiator hose kits, as the name gives away, are hoses that are made up of silicon and carry the coolant or water from the radiator to the engine block.

On almost all factory fitted parts, these hoses are made up of rubber and as rubber is inferior in quality to silicone, the rubber hoses are normally cheaper but don’t offer the added benefits of the silicone hoses.

How Are They Better Than Rubber Hoses?

The factory fitted rubber hoses become more vulnerable as the vehicle or its radiator system ages.

The brittle rubber starts breaking on the inside and the small fragments of the rubber start circulating in water or coolant. This can be dangerous for the radiator.

How To Check If The Rubber Hoses Need To Be Replaced With Silicone Hoses?

A common method of checking whether the rubber hoses are good for further use or not is to press them and if you hear a crackling sound, it indicates that it’s time to change the rubber hoses and replace them with the relatively more expensive silicone hose kit which doesn’t need to be changed that often.

What To Look For When Silicone Hose Kits?

Silicone hoses are composed of different layers of silicone and they have a heat resistant fibre that is embedded in the hose.

The purpose of the fibre is to prevent cracking when the coolant or water passes through it.

While looking for a silicone kit, it is important to get it from a high-quality manufacturer that ensures proper layering of silicone and whose heat resistant fibre has more longevity.

Why Do People Change To Silicone Hoses?

There are several circumstances under which people change the rubber hosing with aftermarket silicone hose kits.

  • While Upgrading Or Repairing Radiator System

Silicone hoses are fitted when vehicle owners upgrade the radiator systems.

They are also replaced when the OEM radiator system has malfunctioned and needs to be replaced and normally under such situations, the OEM hoses also malfunction.

  • For Handling Higher Pressures

The silicone hoses are much better at handling pressure and temperature changes than the factory fitted rubber hoses.

Keeping the vehicle cool often necessitates high pressures but the factory fitted hoses are not designed for this purpose and thus can’t handle this increased pressure effectively.

By varying the pressure of the water or the coolant, its boiling point is altered which is a common sight in racing vehicles, that often have a temperature gauge to keep an eye on the temperature.

This is where the aftermarket silicone hoses show their dominance.

Silicone Hoses Look Really Cool

Another domain in which silicone hoses are much better than their OEM rubber counterparts is the way they look.

These hoses are much more aesthetically pleasing as manufacturers often give them bright and punchy colours instead of the dull black colour of rubber hoses.

They can also be colour coded to suit your engine bay or you could choose green for air and intake pipework and blue for pipes that carry coolant around the engine.

Personally I think it looks better to use the same colour throughout your engine bay.

Which Are The Best High-Quality Silicone Hose Kit Brands?

Some of the high-quality silicone brands include but are not limited to

  1. SFS Performance;
  2. Ramair;
  3. Forge Motorsport;
  4. GPI Racing;
  5. Samco Sport.

As silicone hose kits can play a pivotal role in making your vehicle’s cooling system more effective, you must replace the OEM parts with them.

However, choosing reliable parts is a serious matter and if you ever find them, they normally cost a lot of money.

Our eBay link to buy  silicone hoses lists some of the best silicone hose kit options which are not only high in quality but also reasonably priced.

How Hard Is It To Fit Silicone Hose Kits?

Silicone hose kits are not that hard to fit mainly because they have the same sizes as the OEM ones and thus fitting them doesn’t include any complications.

There is a tonne of videos available on the internet that explain how to fit silicone hose kits and also offer tips on what should not be done during the process.

I would rate fitting a silicone hose kit as a 3 out of 10 experience in terms of difficulty (10 being the most difficult).

What Are The Benefits Of Fitting Better Quality Silicone Hose Kits?

The main benefit of high-quality silicone hose kits is that they are much more durable than the inferior quality ones.

Here are some other benefits offered by them:

  • Lifetime Warranty

The premium brands usually provide lifetime warranties with their parts and thus while buying them, owners don’t need to be much worried about how well such hoses kits will perform.

  • Better Heat Resistant Fiber

The heat resistant fibre in high-quality silicone hoses is of much superior quality than the non-branded ones which help such high-end silicone hose kits in outliving the low-quality parts.

  • Higher Flexibility

An additional factor that makes the superior quality silicone hose kits much more tempting is that they have more flexibility and it retains this property even throughout their life cycle.

Low-quality silicone or rubber hosing kits on the other hand become brittle and disintegrate much more quickly.

  • More Weather Resistant

Higher quality silicone kits are more weather resistant and thus for those residing in areas where the climatic conditions vary a lot, they prove much better.

  • Better Noise & Vibration Resistance

When it comes to noise and vibration resistance, silicone hose kits, in general, outperform their rubber counterparts. However, superior quality silicone hose kits outmatch the relatively low-quality ones.

What Safety Steps Should You Take While Fitting Silicone Hoses?

As running a vehicle heats the coolant or the water in just a matter of seconds, the silicone hoses must never be fit when the engine is running.

Besides this, the antifreeze is highly toxic and can be extremely dangerous for animals.

Therefore, ensure that when you fit a silicone hose kit, you have a small bucket placed under the vehicle to avoid any sort of spilling.

Please support us and use our eBay link to buy  silicone hoses.

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