Club 80-90 Forums

Hey All, I've just bought the front to rear water pipes from Just kampers. Thay are plastic and are genuine vw items(sales at JK confirmed this).JK made me aware that the pipes were a slightly larger bore and that the chassis needed slight alteration where the pipes pass through it. Now my main problem is that the original hoses won't go over onto the new pipes no matter how I try, they're out by about 10mm in relation to the originals.
Has anyone had the same problem or more importantly a solution cos I ain't relishing the trek back down to JK's store to return them.

I guess you had steel pipes, and you've replaced them with the plastic ones. I didn'k know they were a different size (plastic ones are 38mm (1.5") OD). Not exactly a simple fix, but if you got the hoses from a plastic piped van too, Gates make hose bore reducers which you could use to srep the bore back down at the other end. They're like rubber sleeves which fit inside the hose to reduce it's bore.
As I make parts for Subaru engine conversions, I'd be grateful if you could measure the OD of your old pipes for me. Thanks

Richard

Gates make hose bore reducer

have you got a URL Richard for the wiki?

Hi Richard, Thanks for the input,OD is that outside diameter by any chance, pardon my ignorance!.
Yes, you're right about the pipes being metal, part number on the plastic pipes are vw/audi 251/121/397 G for the feed and 399 G for the return. The're made in South Africa on the label so that might be part of the difference.
I'll measure inside and out on the dead metal pipes for you no problem.
Do you know if the later petrol vans have plastic pipes and if they're a bigger bore/, the guy at JK reckoned these pipes were suitable for all the years of the T25 run.
Has anyone out there any idea where to get a long reel of radiator hose, enuoght o run it from front to rear. I'm looking into getting both pipes done in stainless but that could be mightliy expensive but it will be nice to know either way.

Hi Richard forgot to ask where Gates are?. do they have a website at all.
Cheers

You can get gates products from car builder solutions

already wiki'd

http://www.club80-90.co.uk/wiki/index.p ... _suppliers

When I changed my metal pipes for plastic I got one of the rubber hoses to the radiator from jk, the other from VW, at the back end I found some flexible hoses in halfords with the correct (different) diameter at each end. You can use a couple of good pieces from the old metal pipes as inner sleeves for the pipes from halfords to connect them to the existing engine bay plumbing. you should be able to arrange things so that these metal sleeves poke into the engine bay in the same place as the metal pipes used to be.

Instead of routing the cooling pipes side by side with the heater pipes (rubber ones) underneath side by side put one cooling pipe up to one side and the other down to the other side of the hole and the heater pipes the opposite way. That way they'll just fit through. I'm talking about the hole in the underfloor "bulkhead" behind the fuel tank btw. It's not fun but it does work

the early rubber pipe DO go onto the plastic pipes, just use a tad of wahing up liquid and boiling water, , took a bit of doing but they aint going to fall off........

mocki wrote:the early rubber pipe DO go onto the plastic pipes, just use a tad of wahing up liquid and boiling water, , took a bit of doing but they aint going to fall off........

I have fond memories of doing that from the last time I did it - I'm about to do it again as well

autohausdolby wrote:Instead of routing the cooling pipes side by side with the heater pipes (rubber ones) underneath side by side put one cooling pipe up to one side and the other down to the other side of the hole and the heater pipes the opposite way.

No matter how many times, and how slowly I read that, I cannot make sense of it

It's difficult to explain

Here's an artistic diagram:



The blue ones are the solid cooling pipes, the red ones are the rubber heater pipes. I'm going to enter the picture for the turner prize

Thats brillient

Talk about a picture speaking a thousand words ! !

And you did it so quickly, and got it on here so quickly too - I am impressed

If my explanation wasn't so spazzy we'd have been alright

It's still as tight as a duck's @rse in there but they do go through.

dang, spent ages under mine with a hacksaw,

Bentley contains lies as well as Haynes, oh well....

You are meant to enlarge the hole, you can just get away without