Like every other 30v owner, my PCV hoses were becoming brittle and clogged up. I bought the "Stage 1" kit from ECS and spent the afternoon installing it.

Audi B5 A4 Quattro V6 30v > Engine > Emissions > ES#1899536 PCV Service Kit - Stage 1 - 3B0198001

At $143 I expected reasonable quality. It turns out that I was expecting too much.

The hoses are extremely flimsy, the supplied clamps are 3x too big, and to top it off, the ends are made so poorly that they would not clip into the valve covers/intake. I actually had to remove and clean the original ends from the old hoses and use them with the ECS hoses. This was especially convenient as the ECS ends were not sealed onto the hoses, they were just slid into the hose.

In the coming weeks I will be replacing the hose with some higher quality and cheaper material from McMaster-carr. At the same time I'll replace the junk clamps. Boy do I love doing jobs twice. Just wanted to let other owners know.

 

I just got off of the phone with ECS. They acknowledged that they had received and shipped out a poor batch of these. At the same time they said that since I had "modified" the hoses by installing the original ends, they would not exchange them.

 

Wow, that's shitty man. Sorry to hear.

 

FYI, ECS kits are useless if you're willing to spend the extra time to buy parts individually. I priced out the parts to that exact kit about a year ago and I would've saved around $20 - $30 by buying everything individually, the only thing missing was the hose clamps. This was the case for basically every kit I priced out, it was actually more common for kits to cost more than individual parts.

Now last time I said this I got flamed from all directions, so I'll just say now: this is my anecdotal experience, take from it what you may. I'm not trying to say this is the case all the time or that ECS is a shady company, I have nothing but praise for them. This is likely just a case of kit prices not being in line with the constantly changing individual part prices.

 

I've purchased from ECS in the past with no trouble, but after this experience I NEVER will again. I realize that they will probably survive without my business, but the quality of the parts and the poor level of service are simply unacceptable.

I did look at buying the individual parts, but couldn't find the shorter hose that goes below the intake manifold. I've priced out some hose and tubing on McMaster-Carr and I'm confident that with about $35 I'll never have to replace the hoses again. I'll update with more info when stuff gets here.

 

That one short hose was a pain to find, I remember I had to look up the part number because it wasn't on ECS's regular catalog. You should be good with that hose though, the only real advantage to plastic hoses is they look better.

 

I was able to find the lower, short hose on ebay for cheap a few months back. It was actually pretty nice. I bought the remainder of the PCV system off of ebay as well and it was very cheaply made. Post what you bought and how you did it when you get the stuff. I'm interested because I might end up doing something similar.

 

I had been planning on building a replacement setup using the OEM connectors and silicone hose, but at a junkyard one day I found a 30v engine sitting out of the car with the PCV setup complete and undamaged. I removed it and paid $4 for it so I'm just going to swap it on. Once my old one is out, I may use that to reverse-engineer a silicone setup. If I do, I'll put up all the info for what hoses and lengths I use, as well as assembly info.