FAQ | Fupower

Working pressure is the figure the hose is expected to survive in service. Burst pressure is the point at which it fails, and it is always the larger number. A burst figure quoted on its own is not very useful, because a hose can balloon or leak well before it bursts — and the pressure a hose holds falls as temperature rises, so a figure taken cold overstates what the hose will do in a hot engine bay.

That is why the specification should start with your actual conditions: boost level, the temperature of the medium, the diameter and the routing. Fupower tests hose for high-temperature and high-pressure performance rather than publishing a single headline number, and will recommend a construction against the conditions you describe.

They are two different things, and buyers often quote one when they mean the other. Ply count describes how many layers of reinforcement fabric are wrapped into the hose wall; Fupower builds 3-ply, 4-ply and 5-ply hose. Wall thickness describes the finished wall itself.

A 5-ply hose is not automatically thicker than a 4-ply hose from another supplier, because ply count says nothing about the weight of the fabric or the thickness of the silicone layers between the plies. For a boost application the useful question is the combination: how many plies, in what base fabric, at what finished wall thickness. Fupower will confirm which combination it recommends for your pressure and temperature conditions rather than quoting a ply number on its own.

A two-stroke expansion chamber is not a straight pipe. It is a sequence of cones — a converging section, a belly and a diverging cone — and the angles between those cones are what tune the power band. That shape cannot be produced by bending tube or pressing sheet; it is rolled from flat material into cones, and the cones are then welded together.

Fupower runs a dedicated cone rolling machine for two-stroke exhaust work, alongside the oval and round muffler expanding equipment used on four-stroke silencers. Rolled cones let a chamber be built to a specific taper rather than approximated from whatever tube sizes happen to be available, which matters most on small-displacement engines where the taper does most of the work.

They solve different problems. A heat shield is a barrier that keeps radiant heat off a specific component — a starter, a wiring loom, a fuel line — and Fupower fabricates these to fit the part they are protecting. A heat blanket wraps a pipe or a turbo housing, and is the usual choice when the goal is to keep heat inside the exhaust so gas velocity stays up.

Wrapping is not automatically better. On a daily-driven vehicle, wrap and blanket can hold moisture against the pipe and accelerate corrosion, and road salt makes that worse. The decision follows from how the vehicle is used. Fupower supplies both shields and blankets, and can also apply thermal-barrier coatings where a wrap is not wanted.

Titanium has to be welded in a protected atmosphere. Once titanium is heated in air it absorbs oxygen and nitrogen, and the joint embrittles — a weld that looks acceptable can fail at the seam later. TIG welding suits this because the operator controls the arc and the heat input precisely on thin-wall tube, and the molten pool can be shielded while it cools.

MIG deposits metal faster, but speed is the wrong trade on titanium tube: thin walls give you a narrow window between a full-penetration weld and a burnt-through one. Fupower's exhaust facility TIG-welds titanium parts in-house, including the heavier fabrication work on flanges, hangers and O2 bungs, so the joint and the finish are controlled on the same floor as the bending.

Molds, jigs and fixtures built for a custom project are dedicated to that project. Because Fupower builds its tooling in-house, the tooling library stays on site and is retained for repeat orders — which is a large part of why a fifth reorder matches the first one instead of drifting. Fupower produces custom items exclusively for the customer who commissioned them, and will not run the same design for another buyer.

Whether the tooling is physically transferred to you at the end of a program is a commercial term, and Fupower agrees it at the start of the project rather than working from a standard assumption. If tooling ownership or transfer matters to your business, raise it while the drawing is still being reviewed, so it is settled before the first mold is cut.

When a custom project starts, Fupower can build a sample mold or a production mold. A sample mold is smaller and costs less; it exists to make evaluation samples. A production mold is built to run both the samples and the mass-production batches. Customers with a design they are still refining usually start with the sample mold, confirm fitment and appearance on a real vehicle, and only then commit to a production mold. Projects that are already frozen — a drawing validated on an existing chassis, for example — can go straight to a production mold and skip a step.

There is no default answer, because the trade is a smaller tooling commitment now against a second tooling step later. Fupower's engineering team reviews the drawing, sample or 3D file first, then advises which route fits the project. That advice is given before any tooling is cut, not after.