The original project that spurred all of the additional projects this year was my intention to replace all of the rubber coolant lines in the car. I received a silicone coolant hose kit for Christmas from DeLoreanGo and started on this project a couple of months later. I first drained all of the coolant, and with one of the first hoses that I removed near the radiator, I found that the aluminum coolant pipe had some pretty significant corrosion.
This was the end of the pipe closest to the radiator on the passenger side:
As I continued removing more of the rubber hoses, I found more and more corrosion on the pipes. I found they were generally in very sad shape. I considered doing a restoration of the pipes, cleaning them all up with a wire wheel, coating them in some high temp aluminum paint, and fixing any holes, but decided to simply replace them with new pipes as it took an extremely long time to clean up just one of them. So I ordered a pipe kit from DeLoreanGo and started documenting the locations of the various pipes so it would be easier to put it all back together when the time came.
I had read of other people's experiences with not having pipes line up, or having a tough time remembering which pipes go where, so I took several measurements and photos to help me get everything back together properly. Here are some more pics of what the old pipes looked like:
Looking down the barrel of this pipe, you can see what the inside of the pin holes look like. Almost every pipe in the car had corrosion like this. There was only one or two pipes that I would have felt comfortable using again after I removed them from the car.
I also discovered that the supporting brackets were in terrible shape:
I spent several hours at the wire wheel cleaning up the brackets and getting down to the good metal. I also got new hardware to replace the rusted nuts, bolts, and washers. I used some high temp aluminum-colored paint to breathe new life into the brackets. Here is how they turned out:
There are a couple of support brackets in the engine bay that hold the coolant pipes in place that were in terrible shape as well. The metal was rusting and the rubber was cracked and hard. I got replacement brackets and hardware to make them look new again too. I also wanted to make sure I hooked the otterstat back up correctly, so I made sure to document how it was hooked up in the car before taking it out:
One thing about the DeLoreanGo silicon hose kit that's nice is that it includes absolutely every piece you need to replace all of the rubber lines in the cooling system, including the heater hoses and the hoses for the water pump. As I have yet to dive into the valley of death to replace the water pump and its hoses, I don't have any updates about that yet. The water pump is original and does have quite a bit of corrosion on it, which led me to buy a replacement so I can tackle that in the coming months, hopefully. Here's what the water pump looked like with the main hoses removed:
Here are the hoses that will be accessible once the intake manifold is removed and I can get to the water pump hoses:
I have read that you have to re-torque the clamps on the silicon hoses, but I have been leak-free for the past month by just making sure I had them as tight as I could, so hopefully I'll have that same experience when it comes time to replace the hoses on and around the water pump.
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