... the old ones were almost entirely intact. Not going to lie; I was hoping they'd be crumbling. Oh well. Was a fun little project.
I changed my heater Ts and hoses at 98XXX miles and...
- Thread starter farmerjoe
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cc93cruiser
CRUZAHEAD
Are you ok? Ha. You lucked out... Some times they crack and little small plastic pieces fall into one of the hoses and that turns a 30 mins job into a longer one... Congrats on job...
One of mine left a small chunk in the hose, I left it.
What did you replace them with? Brass? Steel? Plastic?
What did you replace them with? Brass? Steel? Plastic?
Well forty leven posts with busted t's and one with em intact. You must be livin right!
Curious what year is your LC? Keep thinking about doing mine and I have 100k miles on a 2003.
Most I read about failing or crumbly are earlier years with way more miles.
Peace of mind will require me to do it anyways soon.
I did the Ts on the LX at ~ 120K. Hot (engine side) T snapped cleanly at the T. What saved a lot of time was a set of HF long long-nose pliers in 4 different degrees of bend. Around $20 iirc. Lots of info on brass Ts here...try a search. Oem Ts are $7 or so. Whatever you use is cheap insurance and requires only draining a quart or 2 of coolant.
Mine were like the OP's... I have a 1998 and I changed them at 95k a year and a half ago. They looked mint. The hoses were in great shape too. I now keep them in the truck as spares.
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- #8
I used OEM replacement T's and hoses so no issues even if the plastic shards had come off. Was easy to just remove the clips on the six feeder lines and cut the hose ends to pull them off. I then rebuilt the assemblies for each side and simply plugged them onto the aluminum ends.
One of mine cracked when i pulled it and left a small chunk in the hose, which was not too hard to pick out. The other was intact when it came out. Once I was all done, I took a pair of pliers to the intact one and it took almost no pressure to make it crumble.
I replaced my Tees a couple of months ago with 260,000 miles on the truck. I feel like they were original because all the spring clamps were pointed in the bottom direction like factory. I went ahead and replaced hoses and tees because I was concerned about a tee breaking off and sending plastic into system. I cut out the old tees and pulled the remaining hoses off and rebuilt the lines on the workbench then reinstalled. My old tees were the aged brownish color, but they are still solid. I tried to break an end with my hands and it didn't break.
