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TIL a lesson about old coolant hoses the hard way on a 2007 Civic
I had a customer come in with a slow drip from the lower radiator hose. It looked fine from the outside, no cracks or bulges. I gave it a squeeze and it felt firm, so I told him it was probably the clamp and sent him on his way. Two days later, he was back on a tow truck with the hose blown clean off and the engine overheated. When I cut the old hose open, the inside was completely rotten and flaky, like wet cardboard. The outside rubber was just a shell holding it together. The car had 140,000 miles and the coolant had never been flushed, which I found out later. Now I make a point to feel inside the hose end with a pick on any car over ten years old. Has anyone else been fooled by a hose that looked and felt solid but was rotten inside?
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the_hannah13d agoMost Upvoted
Yeah, that exact thing is why I don't trust the squeeze test anymore. The outside rubber can get hard and seem fine, but it's just a brittle shell. The real failure point is that inner liner rotting away from old, acidic coolant. On high-mileage cars, you gotta peel back the hose from the neck and actually look inside. If you see any black flakes or that wet cardboard look, it's already a dead hose walking.
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