Coolant leak fixed on my 1995 Audi S6

The leaking hose in question had split where the hose clamp held it on the flange that is at the back, allowing a steady stream of coolant to leak out.

I went from having a full coolant expansion tank to nearly empty in about 15 minutes worth of driving from Imola Motorsports back home.

I had about two feet of spare "fuel grade" rubber hose that was leftover from my recent cruise control repair--I thought it would do the trick. Wrong. The spare hose I had was way too small in diameter. It was big enough to use as vacuum hose, but useless as an ad-hoc coolant hose. The inside diameter of this coolant hose is about the size of a plastic Bic pen...

Luckily the original hose I have is about 1/2 inch longer than it really needs to be, which gave me something to work with. With one of ends split, I decided to finish the split of and cut the rubber cleanly with a razor blade. This left a hose with an inside diameter far too large to fit on the flange without leaking.

My first thought was to take what remained of the split end, slice off a bit of it, and stuff it inside the hose. I did that and it looked workable, but nope, that made the inside diameter too small.

I ended up taking some radiator tape I had in my toolbox and wrapping it around a pen with the sticky side facing out. About 3 layers of the radiator tape was all it took to narrow the hose down to the diameter I needed. The radiator tape is about 2 inches wide. I covered the roll of tape in RTV goo before stuffing it into the larger rubber hose. I let the RTV vulcanize for a bit before putting the hose back on the car.

I have ordered a new OEM hose through my local European car specialist repair shop, Imola Motorsports. The stupid hose is $13.95 and has a part number with the prefix "034". :)

I just have to hope the mended hose holds out long enough for the OE hose to arrive. If I had a spare OE hose onhand, this repair would have taken an hour assuming the engine was cooled down. And that's being quite generous. The turbo coolant return hose is pretty easily accessible if you remove the throttle body air intake/ISV hose first.

The video shows the mended hose back on the car... Not leaking anymore.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• Audi
• urS6
• turbo
• quattro
• Audi S6
• Audi S4