In doing my engine swap, and wanting to clean up my engine bay as much as possible (and still retain my emissions crap), I was wondering which of you came up with creative ways to route your heater hoses.

I want to replace my stock hard line (comes from the core connected by a short rubber line, and then to the radiator), is corroded and needs replacing. I dont want to use a stock piece, as I need to route it farther away from my headers. At the same time, I absolutely HATE having a heater hose run across the engine to the front of the manifold. So, I want to duplicate the routing of the hard line, and then come straight across from the frame rail, between the front of the valve cover and A/C compressor, and then to a 90* fitting on the front of the intake manifold.

Anyone done anything different? Have any pics?

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

Desert,

Sounds like you want to custom bend some 5/8" steel tubing. Hose isn't going to take the radiated heat of the headers in that location for very long - even with a steel or stainless overbraid. Once bent to fit, the steel lines can be painted with high-temp enamel, or even better - powder coated.

It takes a special (read "expensive" tubing bender to do short radius bends on tubing that large.

Another option would be to cut and solder up 3/4" rigid copper tubing with the appropriate sweat fittings. The copper would take the heat easily, and the solder wouldn't melt at those temperatures - the heater core and radiator are soldered, after all. The copper might look odd unless you powder coated or knew of a place to get nickel plating done inexpensively. Regular paints do not adhere well to copper without special primers.

Just some ideas.

 

Vader, thanks for the reply. I ended up doing the same thing for my AIR hose routing behind the engine. The original stainless line did not really line up with my headers in the first place, so I made my own out of copper. It doesnt look TOO bad.... So I guess one more copper line for the heater hose wont matter. I tried messing with the soft aluminum tubing, but it collapsed easily.

Anyway.... let me know what you think of my solution.