Coolant hose from hell

[Afrosheen]

Ok here's my problem.

Yesterday after I parked my car I smelled antifreeze. Popped open the hood and saw it spraying from somewhere between the valve cover and the intake manifold. On closer inspection it was coming from the hose buried deep beneath the PCV mounting block. There are 2 hoses that go into that block and the pcv is one of them. There are 2 hoses coming out of the bottom of it...one goes straight out towards the left and kinks back towards the thermostat. That's the damn hose that got a tiny split in it.

I spent about 2 hours trying to remove shit to get it out but the god-forsaken rear engine mount strut and bracket are impossible to get around. Anyone have any idea what this hose is, where it goes and how to replace it? I'm about to take it to the shop tomorrow..it's driving me mad.

[BoredRec]

If it's taken you 2 hours to get that far, I'd say take it to a shop. It's just gonna piss you off more. It's a bypass hose to let part of the engine to warm up before the thermostat opens up.

[Afrosheen]

Is it possible for a human being to replace it or do they leave it to Asimo?

[DarknessRS]

Ah you are a lucky one for noticing early. Sometime in the winter i noticed my car was leaking engine coolant also. It didn't spray in the engine though, so I suspected it was the resovoir leaking (since i'd recently over topped off the coolant).

Come spring it stopped leaking, but sometime in April I was on the freeway when low and behold my car stalls and I open up the hood to see coolant sprayed everywhere. It cost me about $100 parts for the hoses and friggin' $500 in labor.

I can understand that it's pretty difficult to do yourself if you're not very experienced spinning wrenches. But it's worth the price so you don't have a disaster like I did.

[POS carb]

are you talking about the heater hoses that plug into the firewall?

[Afrosheen]

Well I got it fixed today, $86, $60 just for labor and the rest for parts and antifreeze.

And no, not the hoses that plug into the firewall. Trust me, this was really really difficult and the guy at the shop who's been working on Hondas for 10 years said it's probably the biggest pain in the ass he's had to deal with, hence the $60 labor.

Anyway I got some really bad news. The techs said the coolant system was full of rust and my engine will keep rusting inside and shit will continue to break on it. Hoses and all that. Both guys were just shaking their heads saying it had "red river syndrome". Said that the iron blocks have a tendency to do that if the coolant isn't properly changed on schedule. Since I bought the car which had sat dormant for 3 years on my dad's property, I suspect it started then.

So now I'm looking for another car...probably a 95 civic hatchback that I can swap something into. A sad, sad day.

[POS carb]

yea sitting still for all that time builds some nasty corrosion