I’m replacing some molded coolant hoses on my RB. There are 3 different sizes of lines that run under the intake manifold. 3/4, 5/8, and 1/2". There are some tight bends and a few T-fittings. I think the best way to replace them would be to use braided line and AN fittings. I’ll take some pictures later today and show you what I have. My question is: Can I use the braided hose with hose clamps for the connections to the heater core? Normally the heater hose just slips on and gets a hose clamp. I don’t know much about the AN braided line.
There are two coolant line assemblies. The one line goes from the coolant neck in the front, T’s to the oil cooler, than to the heater core. The second line, goes from the oil cooler, T’s into the block and than to the heater core. At that last T there is also a small line going to the turbo, but I won’t be needing that.
I can only find part numbers for the coolant hoses (I think) for a RB26. I’ve tried some online dealers that carry other OEM RB25 stuff, but nobody seems to have these. I can’t even find people online replacing them with OEM pieces :lol
I don’t want to sift through racks of molded hoses at advance auto parts either. I don’t want to cob like 10 pieces together to make it work.
AN stuff is going to be exspensive and you I believe have to remove all the hose barbs thread those ports on the black and then put in the adapters for the AN stuff. I’d be way to scared of fucking the block up to do that
I dont have any issues removing stuff from the block. But the barbed ends would have to be cut off, and than what? Find a compression fitting? Weld a bung? And for the heater core I have to use a barb end, it’s plastic. I don’t have any options, the hoses are old and I had a leak before (Thanks Hank for helping me fix it) and want all new now. It’s wicked hard to fix when the motor is in the car. If AN stuff for this costs like $100-200 or so, I’ll get it.
Sliding braided over a nipple an putting a clamp on it isnt a very good clean install. Cant you just omit some of that crap? Maybe some of the kevlar braided stuff would accept a clamp better. You will have to look around summit, the best thing I can think of is a fitting that would A: attach to the stainless braided like an AN, you slide the female threaded collar over the line, then oil up male dinggie on the other half of the fitting. Jamb the dinggie into the rubber braided, and get all the little stainless wires inside where they belong, an then put a tiny bit of oil on the threads and thread the 2 halfs of the fitting togehter. that will attach the fitting to the stainless braided and seal it up nice like.
now on the other side of the fitting, I think i saw some that sleeved over a hard line of sorts, like what you have hanging off the parts on the block. there was a releaf cut in the sleeved part and a pinch bolt(s) to clamp and seal it against the hard line. But for the life of me I cant remember what they call the fitting. I think you can picture it in your head the way I explained it.
I can’t eliminate anything as far as I know. It’s really just a heater core and oil cooler :lol
I was all over Summit but just open to ideas from people that have worked with this kind of thing before. The biggest issue I think is the sharp bends for the oil cooler and heater core.
Thats a really good idea actually. flare it at 37 deg and it will mate up.
There is a guy on Vortex that shave the piss out of the engine bay, and all his lines are SS hard line. he used flare nut fittings. it came out pimp. its just like making brake lines just bigger in DIA. that would be trick too, and you could make them tight to the block and out of the way too with hard SS line.
the stainless braided line but with an looking hose clamps won’t work? even if you turn the damn clamp part so you can’t see it and it just looks like AN? Fuck it, thats what i would do if i didn’t want to spend a shit ton of $$.
I think what I’m going to do is flare the metal fittings on the coolant neck and oil cooler. Than the rear block connection is just a nipple with pipe thread, so I’ll replace that with a pipe/AN adapter. For the heater core, I’ll get a AN/barb fitting and convert to a regular 90deg molded heater hose.
