406oc.co.uk

Hello,

So, a couple of months back, my Coupe's radiator hose (which runs from the header tank down to the bottom of the driver's side of the radiator, then runs across the bottom of the radiator, and into the passenger side of the radiator) popped out of its clamp, and was promptly shredded open by the alternator pulley, resulting in a total loss of coolant. Thankfully, just as I was pulling in to park outside my house.

I nursed the car round the corner to a garage the following day. Apparently the hose in question is not only unique to the EW12J4 engine, but is also unique to that engine when fitted to the 406 Coupe. So there were only around 3600 cars ever fitted with this hose from the factory. And it's discontinued, and NOBODY has any inventory, pretty much anywhere in Europe.

The garage cut out the damaged section, then fitted a piece of plastic piping to bridge the gap between the two original sections of piping, holding these in place with a pair of jubilee clips. They said they ran the car for an hour, and the repair was holding just fine.

However, over time, the plastic pipe has warped with the heat, and is now sagging in the middle quite badly, and it's flattened out in the middle of the pipe (like it's been pinched while the plastic is soft), so it's threatening to cut off the flow of coolant.

SO. It's obviously about to fail. And I want to replace it, but the pipe isn't available as a spare part.

What I've done is buy a section of metal piping. I wanted to buy a length of copper radiator piping, as I know that won't rust, and will withstand heat. But I could only buy it in lengths of at least 6ft, and I only need around 4 inches of pipe.

What I ended up with instead was what is basically a rail for hanging coat hangers on inside a wardrobe. It's rolled metal with a seam running lengthways where it's joined in the middle. The metal isn't thick, but it is strong (I can't warp it by pinching it with my hands, and is designed to hold the weight of a bunch of jackets/dresses/trousers/blahblah inside a wardrobe anyway), and being metal, shouldn't warp as badly with heat as plastic.

My plan is to get a volunteer to help me by holding both sections of the original pipe while I loosen the jubilee clips, and get them to hold the pipe ends upwards as soon as the warped plastic repair pipe is removed (to prevent unnecessary coolant loss), then fit the piece of metal pipe and tighten the jubilee clips again. I have also bought 4 litres of Carplan ready-mix antifreeze/coolant to replace any that is lost.

Do I need to worry about the type of coolant currently filling the system? How about bleeding the system, do I need to know how to do that? Or is the system self-bleeding in some way?

Or is there maybe a better material I should source instead? Silicone, maybe? I dunno. I just really don't want to write off my car because of a damned rubber hose I can't replace, especially after all the brakes work Mark.W helped me with back in March, and the clutch failure and replacement that happened in August.

You'd still need to join the silicon somehow. I reckon, providing your clothes rail is sealed, it'll do. Annoyingly I've got lots of 22mm copper pipe hanging about....

I can never get the whole antifreeze thing, it's the sort of thing I find out about when I need to, and then promptly forget until the next time. I know it's important though, get it wrong and it can turn to jelly Fortunately, I can remember the right search term viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5377&p=52358&hilit= ... ood#p52358

For the princely sum of £37.50, this has now been resolved!

I took the car up to Wallace Performance, and they ordered up a piece of alloy piping, 50mm long, 19mm in diameter, and with beading at either end. They then took out the plastic piece, put this bit in its place, and clamped it down tight with the two jubilee clips, so that you can't actually see the bit of metal piping - you just see the two jubilee clips right up against each other.

No water leaks, which is the main thing, but it's also given me confidence that this isn't going to fail any time soon.

The piece of plastic piping is ridiculous. I'll post up some pics later.

Like Wallace and Gromet Get Too Close To The Sun?

That sounds like an elegant solution, not too pricey either

Bear in mind that this was a uniformly straight piece of white plastic tubing ... until someone decided it'd be a good conduit for boiling hot water ...




Best pics I could manage with a phone camera taken in the boot of my car, given that it was getting a bit dark.

Ewww! Looks like a...a... water pipe that's had water at a temperature beyond it's design perameters running through it. I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did!

That's a bit of UPVC waste pipe and the contact area with the rubber hoses on the ends only looks to have been about 5mm

The chafed bits at the ends are where the jubilee clips have been digging in.

The bits in contact with the actual pipe are the relatively straight parts leading up to the first bulges at either end.

The guy at Wallace Performance who specced and fitted the alloy pipe said the plastic pipe was basically like cable trunking ... He couldn't believe his eyes!