The coolant hoses

Yesterday (6-10-2006) I went shopping at the autoparts store and some junkyards, and bought me this:

From left to right: 15 and 8 mm hose with clamps, corners and T-pieces. Two bleeding screws from two old peugeot 205'ers, a 15-8-15 mm T piece from an Alfa Romeo 33 and a heater hose valve form a Honda Civic ( I think..). I intent to use the two bleeding screws for the heater matrix under the rear seat. I am not sure yet if I'm going to use the heater hose valve. I am thinking of using it as a winter/summer switch. I am afraid the heater matrix will deliver heat even when the fan is not on.

This is the plan for connecting it all:

I also bought a coolant reservoir at the junkyard, it's from a Volvo 440. After looking for the best place to mount it in the engine compartement I finally came up with this:

This reservoir is nicely square and flat. I wanted to place the reservoir as high as possible, because it should be the high point in the system. Now the upper right radiator connection is at the same hight as the reservoir. I was amazed at how much room is left in the top of the engine compartment. If you see it, you wouldn't think the decklid can be closed, but it can. It doesn't hit the reservoir.
I like the looks of the position of the reservoir, it's wearing it's water reservoir proudly like a crown.. :-)

In the previous picture I allready made the brackets to hold it, but hadn't connected it yet. Here I have connected the 8mm air-bleed lines:

This Volvo reservoir didn't have a 8 mm connection under the waterline. So I put a T-piece in the 15 mm fill hose, and connected the breather line to it.

I also connect the engine-part of the heater lines, I am routing them along the right side of the car. Because of that I had to guide hose that goes on thermostat to the right. I did this by using the 15 mm corners:

Here is also a 15-8-15 mm T-piece in it. This is for the airbleed-hose that goes to the throttle body.

edit 15-10-2006: I routed the heater hoses along from the right side of the engine, crossing over the gearbox to the old left warm-air inlet:

The bracket will keep the hose from hitting the gearbox.

Here the hoses enter the cabin through the left old hot air channel. The aluminium piece is a heat-shield which will shield the gas-filter from getting hot from the hoses.

The heater is connected. I put two air-bleed screws in the hoses. These are a high point in the system so I must be able to bleed the air out of it. I also placed a valve in the feed-line, it's hard to see in the picture because it is partially hidden by the other heater hose. I want to connect the valve via a bowden cable to the original VW beetle heater lever.

I also painted the reservoir bracket:

edit 18-10-2006:
I connected the heater valve to the original left heater-lever (one of the two next to the emergency brake handle). I connected a piece of bowden cable from the Alfa heater system to the original cable:

Yeah, it's a fussy picture. It's the place where the bowden cable exits under the back seat. On the right is the Alfa cable. The outer cables are joined together by a strip of aluminium attached with some fuel hose clamps. The inner cables are joined by a little thingy with screws....( I don't know how to call it....)

That cable leeds to the valve:

Now I can adjust the amount of hot water that goes to the heater matrix while driving.

edit 01-11-2006: Because the radiator is lying almost flast, the hose connections are pointing upwards. The coolant hoases have to make a 90 degrees turn when they are connected. On top of that, that turn had to have a breather point as it is a high point in the system.
I ended up using two metal corners normally used for 28 mm heating tubes. The outside diameter of these corners are 32 mm which is very nice for my 30 mm inside diameter flexible colant hoses. But, these corners don't have 8 mm breather hose connections. I made connections for the heater hoses by drilling and tapping (for M8) the top of the corner. After that I srewed in a drilled out M8 threaded bar, and soldered it together. This is the result:

I hope the soldering holds out and won't leak under (mild) pressure. I also put some soldering tin on the threads to make the connection more smooth.

Surprisingly this "home-depot" solution looked quite nice once installed:

The breather hose on this connection goes to a T piece where it meets with the original-top-of-radiator point, and from there goes to the filler-tube that comes from the reservoir, an "under-water" point. This is because this coolant hose is connected to the sucking side of the waterpump, negative pressure. Another picture from the other side:

This picture, and the next one, are taken with opened radiator box lid, from the inside of the car.

I made another corner with breather connection, only this time I made the breather connection slightly to the side because of clearance issues with the lid of the radiator box:

This breather connection goes to an "above-water" connection on the reservoir. This is a positive pressure point in the system.
The "big" 30 mm coolant hoses I use here are "flexible" hoses. I put flexible in quotes because they can only bend to a certain extend. Very narrow bends will make the hose collapse. Because of that I had to think of a solution to connect them to the thermostat and waterpump. For that I used 30 mm sewer drainage pipes (yep...more home-depot engineering...). I think these are chromed brass pipes:

The pipes where quite thin, I hope they will hold up. If not, I will have to use some stainless steel pipes of muffler pipes.
As you can see I had to cross the coolant lines. Because the radiator is on the opposite side of the engine than originally intended the in- and out-connections on the radiator are swapped.

I still need a little piece of 25 mm hose for the thermostat to manifold connection (I allready orderd it at the Alfa Romeo dealership).
When that's installed, I can fill it!

edit 11-11-2006: I installed the last piece of hose and filled the system. It bleed the air out very well. I only had to squeeze the big hoses to get all the air out of the system.
After filling it, I replaced the spark plugs, installed the alternator belt, connected the battery and started it for the very first time! Without exhaust it was pretty loud... See: The Video

edit 10-06-2007: Yesterday, a testdrive ended in a cloud of steam. The hose from thermostat to the radiator was blown off. I had coolant all over the engine bay...

It appears that the piec of pipe was to smooth and the hose was pushed off by the pressure of the waterpump.
I am going to replace all these pieces pipes with the angled pipes I uses at the radiator side. Those had a threaded end what will keep the hose on, I hope.

edit 17-06-2007: Replaced the smooth pipes with corners. But first I brazed a ridge on them. I did this by wrapping a stripped piece of electrical wire tightly around it and then soldering it.

The end on the left is allready soldered, the copper ridge on the right not yet.

Alle new corners installed:

After a few testdrives it still held, so it looks to be OK now.

edit 19-08-2007: I recently took the engine out to replace the gearbox (see gearbox section), I re-routed the return hose and bleed-lines. The return hose now runs behind the reservoir just like the feed-hose:

This way the radiator can get rid of hot air a little easier. The return hose was blocking the airflow a bit. The bleed lines were accros the ceiling of the radiator box, now they run along the big main lines.