Heater Hose Pipe Modification

[BigT]

I’ve been dealing with a coolant leak ever since I did the HO upgrade. It was leaking in between the joint nut in the heater hose pipe. After exhausting every known fix I could try, I went a built a new heater hose setup. I couldn’t just replace the pipe with new heater hoses, due to the coolant temperature sensor.

I took an old pipe from a Mustang intake. I chopped it up and reassembled with JB weld (real welding may be better). I made rings from an old hanger. I placed them on the pipe to give the hose something to hold on too. I JB Welded them in place and ground down the outer rings to make it easier for the hose to slide onto the pipe. I painted it with high temp engine paint. I installed a heater hose fitting into the manifold and used an old “S” heater hose from the back of the engine (only 2 months old) and made a 90 degree angle hose for the pipe. Then finished the rest of the hosing with 3/4 inch heater hose, one to the pipe and one to the water pump. No more leaks!

Not sure what others have done to fix this problem, so here’s my remedy.

[87gtVIC]

I figure now is the time to post this considering you are done and all....

http://www.stangnet.com/mustang-forums/threads/how-to-repair-your-leaky-coolant-hardline-pics.866543/

Hope you leak stays away!

[BigT]

I figure now is the time to post this considering you are done and all....

http://www.stangnet.com/mustang-forums/threads/how-to-repair-your-leaky-coolant-hardline-pics.866543/

Hope you leak stays away!

Oh my goodness! Too funny! Guess I should have asked ya'll first. I knew when I originally took it off, I was going to have problems. I was like cement. So I worked and worked on it to loosen it up. I must have cut one of the O rings.

[His Royal Ghostliness]

BigT, this seems like a lot of work with somewhat questionable durability. What concerns me is that you have the weight on that long hose between the T-ee you made and the heater core to vibrate and tug onto you JB-Welded connection - if a crack eventually appears there it will spread very quickly and result in full failure of the joint, leaving you with a wide open port for the water pump to dump the coolant out of. Luckily for your the coolant will then land onto the hot engine manifold and vaporize near instantly, this will make for a lot of smoke under the hood which you will undoubtedly notice and likely react to by pulling over and shutting the engine over ASAP. This will likely save your engine, as opposed to having the same massive coolant leak but from some place where it just dumps on the ground never giving you any indication something is wrong (coolant temperature sensors need coolant to read properly, if enough coolant is lost the engine will overheat something fierce and the gauge still won't catch it). Unfortunately so much coolant dumped in one spot on the manifold may cause it to cool down too fast and too much in the area of the flash resulting in a crack in the manifold. But even so, a cracked manifold is still way better than a dead engine.

For future reference the same result can be obtained by using a brass T-ee from the hardware store with two barbed ends from the auto parts store ( most hardware stores do not seem to carry 3/8" NPT 5/8" barb fittings) - it will be somewhat bulkier on account of the fittings and the sensor having to thread into the T-ee, but it will last you pretty much forever and being threaded connections all around there is nothing that can vibrate and physically split in half.

Alternatively, you can use again a T-ee but only one barb fitting, and add a what's known as a close nipple, and then maybe a reducer bushing - you thread the nipple into the manifold, thread the T-ee onto that in such a manner that it has one port facing up and one off to the side, then you thread the barb fitting into the side port, the reducer bushing into the top port, and the sensor into the reduce bushing. Use a piece of straight hose sold by the foot to connect the barb to the heater core. It's a bit more expensive this way, but you eliminate that short elbow hose you have now.

Please understand that I am not knocking down your work. I do however drive very long distances often thru areas that may take quite some time for roadside assistance to arrive, and sometimes in weather conditions so adverse that I find myself to be the only vehicle on the road for hours on end even. As such I am somewhat paranoid about vehicle reliability, and try to eliminate anything that could cause a major problem with next to no forewarning, and what you have there is IMHO one such item.

[BigT]

I did think of going with hardware piping, but like you said seemed so bulky. I should have made it clearer and stated it's not a butt joint. When creating the pipe, I tapered one of the ends and tucked (hammered) it into the other end. I’m fairly confident in the new pipe. However, I understand your concern and will definitely be keeping an eye on it!

[His Royal Ghostliness]

Oh, so it's a press fit (since you had to use a hammer to join the two piece), and the JB Weld is just to seal any leaks and provide a bit of extra holding grip while at it? In that case I believe you will be just fine. The cross sectional area inside that pipe is about 0.3 in^2, and you shouldn't see more than 17psi-18psi inside it (assuming 16psi rad cap that works properly), meaning there would be only about 6lbs of force trying to pull your work apart, maybe add another 4lbs for the weight of the hose bouncing out there - still, 10 lbs shouldn't really be very much at all for how you did the joint.