heater hose

[BlueBird94]

I just ran into this same problem today. I came to the forum for answers but I couldn't find a great one. Nobody really had any "tips." I figured I'd share how I removed and replaced this hose.

My 2004 five speed started leaking from a pinhole in the heater hose (the one stemming from the center of the block). I pressure tested the system to locate the leak, and then began biting my nails, worrying that I'd have to remove the intake manifold and a whole bunch of other things just to replace a stinking hose. But with a little redneck ingenuity I was able to pull it off with only removing one part. Here goes:

Get underneath the car, put it up high on jack stands.
Remove the starter assembly (two long bolts on the starter itself (10mm), and three nuts to the wires (2x12mm, 1x13mm). The starter should basically fall out.
Once you have the starter removed, you should be able to see straight up to where the hose connects to the outlet on the block. In my case, the prongs for the squeeze clamp were facing the wrong direction (upward toward the hood). This was problematic because the intake manifold braces are tunnel-like and C-shaped, and the hose goes right into one of these "tunnels." There is no room to get pliers or a tool on that clamp. This is when I got creative.. I took a length of wire, and doubled it over, and looped it up over BOTH prongs of the squeeze clamp. The wire was long enough to where I could wrap my hands in it (wear gloves) and heave-ho until the clamp rotated enough to where I could fish a pair of water pump pliers up there and back the clamp off of the outlet. The clamp on the firewall is easy to get to and remove.

When putting the new hose back on, I lubed it up and put a screw clamp on it, facing DOWN. I put a socket on the screw and used every extension I had, which made it easy to tighten the clamp using a ratchet from below the car. Note that the new hose was a length of standard heater hose from autozone and it was STRAIGHT, without the unnecessary bends that the stock ones have for some reason. I put a squeeze clamp on the firewall end of the new hose, pressure tested the system, and reinstalled the starter.

Filled it up with coolant, ran the engine and cycled the heater until it reached operating temperature. No runs, no drips, no errors.

Hope this helps you guys in the future!!!