Bottom Radiator Hose a Common Failure?
 

I took a trip to the grocery store today and come out to a pretty good size leak from the bottom radiator hose. I believe it was a new hose from when we rebuilt the engine (bought a complete hose pack). I attempted to tighten the clamp a little bit but as soon as I did, the leak became faster. I loosened the clamp slightly and it stopped leaking.

Is this radiator port notorious for cracking? Is this a common leak spot? Could the clamp have eaten through the hose?

You can see that the hose has some of its fibers exposed along its cut (in pic 2). This is how it came. We didn't have to cut any of it.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1237761847.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1237761856.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1237761864.jpg

(yes I know I missing a fan mounting bolt. I'm missing three actually and have to replace those.)

Looks like a radiator problem. All the coolant looks to be coming from the end of the hose and the hose looks new(er). I would guess that tightening the clamp would either do nothing or slow down a bad hose. Just the idea of tightening it and it got worse leads me to believe that it is the radiator.

A clamp could eat through a bad hose. I have seen that before, but the hose was very old and very deteriorated. If you look at the pictures well you will notice coolant all around the end of the hose and radiator. If just the hose was leaking I would not expect the radiator where hose clamps to have coolant there. Now if it was the radiator leaking I would expect to see coolant there.

Let us know what you find,

Simple fix is to replace the hose, how old is the radiator? You should be able to tell where the leak is once you've pulled the hose off, don't envy you on this one, it's a messy job.

Yeh, I do NOT want to drain it all. Radiator is factory original I believe...at least, I didn't change it. Previous owner may have but I doubt it.

Do you have to pull the engine out (or drop it) to get a new radiator in? Can it be put it from below easily enough without removing the engine?

Being that the hose is new and the radiator is most likely original, well...
I tried repairing mine( leaked in same place) but in the end I just got a new one.
My friend with his air-cooled 911 thinks it's hilarious.
It's really a pretty easy job to replace, you have to unbolt the cooling fans and remove, then the radiator drops right out. Be sure and disconnect your battery first, LOL.

Don't forget to drain the coolant first, I take it :-P How much coolant is in a 944? Isn't it around 6 quarts?

I noticed your power steering belt is missing in this shot. Still haven't gotten around to fixing that, eh? ;)

Randy

I DID! But turns out the pump is a leaker. The broken mounting bolt is lodged in there and there's no way another bolt can put enough pressure on the pump to seal it completely..so it dumps when there's pressure on it. :)

So that's what that thing is....

I think you are right at around 6 quarts, also you can reuse the coolant you drain if you are able to collect it. If not , I hope you don't have any animals nearby that might be attracted to the sweet smell. Please be careful.

I didn't know you could reuse it! That is a load off actually. Not that it costs a lot, but if I have to end up doing it multiple times for whatever reasons, I don't have to buy it by the barrel.

It is not that hard to fix it. Jack the car up , put bucket under the leaking
radiator hose. Loosen the clamp, let it drain out.
Put the hose back with new clamp. The clamp does not have to be OE.
When you tight the clamp, move the clamp little over toward radiator.

When you fill the radiator, do not forget to loosen the air bleeder screw
near the top engine block , fill until it leaks on the bleeder screw.
Then tight it back on.

Hi, if you need to pull the radiator you drop it from the bottom. Look at Clarks or a Hanes manual for specifics.

I gave it a looksee today and let me tell you that I HATE PENNSYLVANIA WEATHER. Crystal clear blue skies, mid march, 40F out. Impossible to work on a car when your fingers don't work and the wind won't stop howling!

Looks like the leak is coming from around the hose. No matter where I clamp the clamp, it leaks, anywhere from one drip every four or five seconds to every minute. But it continues to drip and will not stop. I don't have the patience to work in the cold weather anymore. I have a drip bucket underneath the car to catch it in the meantime. I can't tell without draining the whole system whether or not it's the hose or the radiator.

Looks like you need to replace the radiator. They're plastic and prone to cracking where the hoses attach. I had exact same issue, as well as a leak around the thermofan switch from stripped plastic threads in the radiator.

It seemed very intimidating, but I put the car up on ramps, and after the very messy drain-out, it was surprisingly easy to drop the radiator out from the bottom. Have to unbolt the radiator fan assembly first. Took me about an hour hrs doing it slowly, not ever having done it before. If I had to do it now, I could have the radiator out within 15 minutes of putting it on the ramps.

My rad had a cracked hose joint where the lower hooks onto it. Tightening the clamp just made it squeeze smaller and leak more.

I'm guessing you're right about the squeezing. It doesn't matter, even without a clamp, it won't stop leaking now.

We have a car lift here, but the garage is 12 miles away. Sometimes I wish I lived there. I've never done a coolant drain and am worried about trapping air when I refill it more than anything. Putting in the radiator is the least of my worries.

Get yourself one of those cheap small hand pump vacs (like they use for brakes) and fit the suction hose to the bleeder hole. Fill the tank and start a vacuum at that hole until you get a steady flow of coolant, should be no air left at that point.

After leaks are repaired, fill radiator reservoir, start engine and open bleeder valve, as coolant heats up keep reservoir filled. Keep engine running until hot coolant flows out the bleeder valve and close it. Fill reservoir to full and you're done. Check the coolant level next time you run the car.
I recently had my radiator repaired because of stripped threads for the thermo switch in the plastic tank. The radiator shop ordered a new tank and replaced it [yes, the radiator core is aluminum]. Total cost $130.
With front of car on ramps this is an easy job. Haynes has fairly good instructions.
Do be careful with spilled antifreeze:eek:, it is poison to animals and they really like it!

How can you be sure all of the air has been purged?

The bleed plug/bolt and the overflow bottle are the highest points in the system. If there's coolant coming out of the bleed hole, there should be no more air in the system.

I have heard there's a passage in the rear of the block that tends to trap air. For this reason it's a good idea to raise the front end of the car when you're bleeding the system. The other points to watch out for are the heater system (make sure the heater control is set to full heat) and the radiator itself. When the car is cold, the thermostat will be closed which makes it more difficult for all the air to get out of the radiator. That's why you should bleed the car, run it until the thermostat opens and then bleed again (or do what jackrussell suggests and bleed it with the engine running).

Other than that the only way to tell if it's bled properly is if the cooling system works right.

I feel your pain about the cold. My radiator went in the middle of December and IIRC it was below freezing. I was able to do it in my parent's garage, but it's not heated so it was just as cold as outside (no wind chill though).

Got to the lift today with the car. Stopped on the way to get some more Coolant just in case something happened on the way.

Took a look and it wasn't obvious whether it was the hose or the radiator which was leaking so we drained it. Pulled the hose off and let it bleed (after cooling down of course). And it still wasn't obvious.

It looks like there were a few scrapes on the radiator nozzle from prior attempts to fit/remove hoses...like scrapes from the corner of a screwdriver. One of them was pretty deep, but this hose hadnt been removed since the engine was put back in. Why this would have caused a leak now doesn't make sense. I also don't believe we'd ever use a screwdriver type device to remove the hose so I'm thinking these were there from prior installations (original radiator we think).

On the hose end of things, there were a little bit of marks from the prior clamp but nothing that looked like it was damaging the hose in any way.

What we did was cut 1/4" off the end of the hose. We also sandpapered down the gouges in the radiator nozzle to see if they had penetrated through and cracked it. But after a bit of this, it seems that the radiator nozzle is not cracked at all.

We put things back together, and filled her up, put on two clamps, one larger and newer, the old one back on as well, and it doesn't leak. We ran the car until it got up to temperature while filling and such to bleed the air out and it still didn't leak. I drove the ~17 miles home and there are no signs of any leaks from the radiator.

I honestly don't know what was wrong. There was a point where the clamp didn't want to turn, as if its threads were stripped, so maybe it just wasn't doing its job squeezing the hose enough. I have no answers. But I also have no leak.

I'll put a picture of the new clamp up tomorrow and take a look under for an leaks that may have developed overnight.

Thanks for all the help - especially on the bleeding part.

Here's the final picture of the clamp:

http://www.theexitwound.com/944/coolantleak4.jpg

The leak has not reappeared today.

Don'tcha just love these phantom problems? They seem to disappear as magically as they appeared, immediately following just the slightest bit of attention! :eek:

Now, if only that PS pump would heal itself! ;)

Randy

Heheh yeah that's next :)

Looks good, nice to see you got it done pretty much pain free. I just replaced the radiator on my '88, it was nasty with most of the cooling fins rotted or gone. The rubber mounts on the bottom corner of the radiator were shot too.

I did notice that the rubber mount atop the radiator left was crunched a little and not doing its job well. Ill have to keep an eye on that.

interesting post - would like to know how the radiator/hose is doing now?

this is also a problem I have. first time, I put two identical hose clamps on. No leak for many months. Leak appeared again recently. Radiator is perhaps 10 years old, hose was new at first problem - URO brand.

... might I use the Gillette philosophy and keep adding hose clamps? or could a 10-years-new radiator really be cracking?