If there is one thing guaranteed to ruin your holiday, its dumping the entire contents of your cooling system on the road before you even arrive. Hopefully this will help you avoid that situation…
Front to Rear Coolant Pipes… If your T3 is aircooled, no need to go any further – You dont have them, or need them.
Other than the aircooled models, we all have them. Theyre a necessity on a vehicle with the radiator at the front, and the engine at the back. Theyre a pretty vital part of the cooling system.
So, 2 pipes, what could possibly go wrong?
Well… there are 2 styles of pipe. Early vehicles have steel pipes, smaller bore than later ones and the potential problem is as you might expect… corrosion.
Later vehicles had the large bore plastic pipes. No rust problems there then? Well… yes actually its still corrosion thats causes the problem.
The plastic pipes are made with steel inserts moulded into the ends. This gives something for the hose clips to tighten onto.
Image shows how the end of the pipes should look.
The steel insert is still completely enclosed in the end of the pipe.
For comparison above is one of our stainless steel pipes.
Over time the inserts corrode, and the water pressure starts to force them out of the end of the pipe. At this point they may only be leaking slightly, or not at all. It is however the point you want to catch them at, because they can only get worse.
Image shows the steel insert has started to push out of the pipe.
The plastic sourrounding it breaks and comes away (you can see it on the floor).
This is the point where the pipe will start to leak.
The next stage is that the insert will part company with the pipe completely, and you’ll lose all your coolant. Sometimes they hang in there for ages, just dripping a little coolant until the insert gives way completely.
Image shows a badly corroded insert. This one looks like it had managed to stay in the pipe, and hadn’t actually let go.
It wasn’t far from spilling the contents of the cooling system all over the road, followed by the journey home on the back of a truck.
So, what happens if you do find a problem?
There are a few solutions. There are kits on the market containing inserts which you can fit to the pipes, and hold in place with clips. They seem to work okay, but aren’t exactly cheap or easy to get hold of.
Our solution is to replace the complete pipe with reproductions made from Stainless Steel.
They come in 2 pieces and join in the middle – to aid fitment and make them sensible for posting out.
Fitting them really needs the fuel tank removing, so we try to do any other jobs in that area at the same time. Check the brake and clutch lines that run over the tank, gear linkage, and dont forget the tank itself.
Make sure the tank is near empty, 60 litre of fuel is heavy! It’ll come down quite easily, but lifting it back up might be a challenge, especially if youre doing the job on ramps at the side of the road!
As mentioned earlier, there are 2 different types of pipe, depending on year. There are also variations depending on fuel type and different pipes again for Syncro models:
2WD
Early Petrol and 1.6D – 32mm Metal Pipes Fitted Originally
Diesel and Early Petrol – 38mm Plastic Pipes fitted originally (All Diesel and Turbo Diesel, Petrol to chassis number 24F 060 000)
Late Petrol – 38mm Plastic Pipes fitted originally (From chassis number 24F 060 001)
4WD (Syncro)
