Anyone replace radiator/heater hoses on their car? Just wondering, I've asked at a couple local parts stores with each store giving me different information as far as molded vs standard hoses (which hoses are molded, which are standard hoses).
Brian

http://www.lincolnvscadillac.com/showthread.php?t=7392

they replaced it with a standard hose i believe

Way back when I last had to do this to any car, the molded hoses were shaped to fit exactly in your model car. The standard hoses were flexible and were "one size fits all", almost.

Interesting to note that no car I have owened sine 1980 has required new hoses, even after 100K miles. Very strange to me, or the quality is just outstanding compared to the crud we used to get in the 60s and 70s. I used to have to replace ALL hoses on a 74 rice burner every 25K or sure as the sun comes up, some hose would pop within 1,000 miles.

Back to molded versus standard... I used standard before and their pluses are, usually you can just use them and not worry about it and they are cheap. The negatives are they sometimes look sloppy or don't belong. And one I used a standard which I didn't notice til too late, that the standard hose wiggled enough that it would contact the fan belt and eventually I had a leak.

As good as I think the quality of hoses is now, I would get the factory orginals that are made to fit and be satisfied that they will probably last longer than the rest of time I would own the car, assuming I sell before it hits 200K.

Just my opinion,

Jim Henderson

thanks guys. My main question is really what specific hoses are custom molded applications for our cars and which are standard hoses cut to length. From the parts guys I have talked to we have some combination of both, but neither shop agreed on which hoses were custom and which were standard.

I definitely agree, the hoses on today's cars are awesome and I'm not even sure what kind of life expectancy they have. Like my recent coil/plug job, I tend to fall back to what I learned growing up, which is 50k intervals if they last that long. My LS is a 2000 with 65k miles so the belt/hose question is present when I think about PM work to do. BTW already did the belt.
Brian

Usually the way to tell molded from standard is that The molded will usually have a couple curves or two in them. Molded at least in my experience is almost always smooth. Some will also have varying diameters from one end to the other.

Standard hose is usually straight with few or now curves and usually does not have different diameters. Sometimes standard hose is "corrugated" or kind of like accordian to allow it to bend easily without collapsing.

Just my expereince, and like I said, it has been a long time since I needed to change a hose, so things may be different now.

Jim Henderson