Oh the joys of watercooled turbos...
 

They work great....until one of the coolant lines cracks from heat exposure.

I was on my way home from dinner lastnight and all was well. Until i stopped to talk to some friends. One of them noticed a strong smell of coolant coming from my car. I hadn't noticed, but just to be safe, i got out and opened the hood. Well, i found that my overflow tank was almost empty:vash:

So when I got home, i started poking around and found that the coolant line thats between the turbo and the block was soaked:bang:

It only took me 2hrs to figure out how to get that done. At first i tried to get the banjo bolt..but that didn't work. Then i tried using a open end wrench. That was useless... I couldn't get any leverage.:mad: I got smart and went for the hose clamp that wsa holding the hose to the barbed fitting on the turbo. Bingo. The end had split. So I cut it off, peeled back all the heat wrap and then used a spark plug cable heat shield sleeve to cover the coolant hose for even better protection then the wrap that was on it.

Now it's all good again.

Welcome to the club! That happened to me when I went to meet Rafa's son while he was up here.

That's why you make those lines about 5" longer than you need... so once a year you can cut off 3/4" and have fresh hose on the barb.

i used
http://www.xplosiveperformance.com/a...BootRGB300.jpg

It seems like it's a damn good solution too since these things usually sit far closer to the exhaust then where i have them.

It must have been weeping for a long time. Your car has always had a coolant smell to it; every time I saw it I commented. It's possible that the hose had failed in a manner that allowed enough coolant to escape to smell without failing enough to allow coolant to be seen.

Braided lines FTW! It seemed like everyother wee one of the water lines would leak. Finally I said fuck it and replaced both with braided lines.
__________________
Best Car Insurance | Auto Protection Today | FREE Trade-In Quote

braided lines still have plastic/rubber in them...

you need reflective sleeves or you're wasting your time. if the lines aren't physically touching the exhaust housing, they're not getting much conducted heat.

another option is the long-mofo banjo bolts that somebody was selling.

I think many of them are teflon inside. I'm not sure on how they would hold up to heat from an exhaust mani.

maybe... but my coolant level hadn't moved since i bought the car and trust me..everytime i open the hood (a lot) i check the coolant level. It only dropped in the couple days before the major failure. I'll keep an eye on it the next few days. Sometime soon, i'll replace the lines completely and do better heat shielding.

Oh, when i took the car for a test drive i smelled coolant. When i got back to the house we found the leak and fixed it before coming back to Ga.... IIRC it might have been the same hose. I guess the repair was "eh".

I used the wirecare insul therm sleeves, they should work well. Put em on both coolant lines and oil drain.

It's very possible that the failure was so minor that it didn't "leak" any noticeable amount of fluid, yet it could be smelled. Happens with radiators, so why not with coolant hoses?

That stuff looks interesting.. Thnx for the tip.

Where did you get that from?

right click on his image...

and i'm gonna reiterate about having a shiny reflective surface on the outside. if you dont protect against RADIANT heat, you're wasting your time.

lets take the sun as an example. big insulator (vacuum of space) between it and us and it still burns your skin.

Oh, i failed to mention that the one i used was the shiny silver one... not some strange color.

I got the pair from Autozone for like $14. Made by DEI.

i sprung a leak in a coolant line for the turbo on my sr20det... ended up it was so close to the firewall that i found it was easier to pull the motor up a foot or 2 than try and squeeze back there........ managed to do it all in one high school day. (skipped every class)

i miss high school

nice save sir!

another option (under the shiny of course) is a silicone coolant hose. check mcmaster p/n 5133K12 or that same catalog page.

I keep thinking about removing the waterlines from my GT2560, but then a little voice tells me not too.

I hate watercooled turbos... I guess I will upgrade to some S/S lines once I get the ETD coolant re-route on my car. (It has provisions for coolant lines)