Hey, just giving a little insight on this job.
3400 V6 LA1 motor*
I noticed that my upper rad hose was collapsed with the car cold and sitting for almost 24 hours so it was time to fix it, before it left me stuck on the side of the road somewhere.
On the way to my mom's house (where I do a lot of my car work, esp under car work) I'm thinking about the lower rad hose. It is also orginal with the same 130,150 miles on it in it's 11 years of service, so I figure it's a good idea to replace BOTH hoses since I'm losing coolant anyway.
I do the lower first. The OE clamps are tight and a real PIA, but neither hose needed to be cut off. I remove the upper hose clamp, most of the coolant goes in my catch pan and now it's time to do the lower clamp on the lower hose. What a pain in the balls. I got it off by removing the bolts from the fender liner (just the bolts along the edge) and squeezing my hand up behind the panel with the A/C condenser bottle in front of it. I use my other hand to hand myself the clamp pilers and then postion the piler ends on the clamp and squeeze and pull. Don't wory, I didn't forget to pinch my finger on the AC clutch
Couldn't get the pilers to get the stock clamps back on. Plus I broke them a little bit (return spring) so I jump in mom's car and head back over to Pep Boys to pick up some regular worm clamps. The parts guy kinda chuckeled a bit because he asked me if I wanted clamps or not and I said no when I picked up the hose
Clamp them down and it's sung and secure, so I move over to the upper hose. Very little probelm here. I did have to remove the battery and battery tray to get the clamp on the rad, but it's cool, It gave me the chance to clean up some wires for my mirror compass, train horn, and oil gauge sending unit. The replacement hose is a bit longer than the stock. It kinda pushes the battery cables down a hair because getting the battery back in place was a bit hard. I had to repostion the battery a few times. Not really a big deal.
Start the car and checked for leaks. No leaks, no overheat, decent temp for a 90* day.
Get home, water level in the bottle is perfect, before I go to work (car sat for almost 9 hours) water level still the same
