Generally how often do you guys replace your hoses?

I've had two hose issues in the last year. The first was right off the reservoir (quarter sized hose rip) while driving, (easy fix). The second was the upper radiator hose that appeared to have been put on backwards and resulting in not getting enough clearance from the pulley wheels near the radiator connection. Again a easy fix (small hole temp. patched with duct tape, later replaced the tube) but still slightly worrisome.

Right now I'm thinking I'll drop my car off and have a mechanic go over all the hoses, and or replace all the hoses.

Thoughts?

8/17/2012 2:40:21 PM

.... inspect your own hoses

...replace questionable hoses

8/17/2012 2:55:22 PM

I have never replaced a hose or had one fail and my cars are 35 and 18 years old. I guess i am just lucky.

8/17/2012 3:43:23 PM

its more of a maintenance and wear thing...

i mean if i repair something and i have to remove a hose... i'll usually replace it. but for the most part if you're in a relatively mild climate and use your car regularly your hoses will probably last a lot longer then cars that just sit outside dry-rotting.

8/17/2012 3:56:39 PM

I have had relatively few hose issues overall. Had to do the lower radiator hose on the fiancee's Alero as it spontaneously started leaking, but that's the only one I can think of in any recent memory.

Though I did have the rubber boot that connected the PCV breather tube to the intake fail on the Marauder (essentially a very short length of hose). That was all kinds of fun. Ended up replacing the entire PCV breather tube and both boots with a length of heater hose, which was still on the car when I sold it.

8/17/2012 11:34:11 PM

I've had to swap almost every hose on two trucks now (both radiator hoses, both heater core hoses, etc on my current F150), and random hoses on other vehicles that developed problems.

You can generally tell the condition of a hose by squeezing it. This is a good article: http://www.gates.com/brochure.cfm?brochure=1022



Biggest factor is probably how nasty your coolant is. On this F150 it had probably never been changed in 20 years, and came out looking like diarrhea when I flushed the cooling system. If your coolant is squeaky clean and flushed at the proper intervals hoses may never be an issue, just depends.

8/18/2012 3:27:11 AM

Damn. I thought the title said HORSES.

8/19/2012 7:13:10 PM

Shit. I have to say the one type of part that I've bought the least of is hoses. When it comes to my own shit, I rarely if ever replace the damn things. The only ones I've had any real issues with are ones that have come in contact with oil and have softened to the point of catastrophic failure.

It's not a bad idea to do some preventative maintenance, say around 100k miles or so.

Other than that, fuck it.

8/20/2012 11:56:40 PM