No matter how well you care for your car, there are some things that go bad just through time and, well, maybe just a LITTLE bit of use. Well, one of those things of course are brakes…we’re all familiar with that…

But under the hood we have some parts that they wear out through time. And those things are: heater hoses and radiator hoses. Now it used to be that a heater hose or a radiator hose was just a curved piece of hose, or maybe even a straight piece of hose, and that was it. But today we have things like this: this MESS is a radiator hose. And it has heater hoses that are tapped off of it, and so on. Well, it’s made as an assembly. You don’t buy this in pieces, you buy it like this. And it has these special clips that push onto the connectors on the car, and all kinds of things. They’re expensive, and in many cases they’re labor intensive. So, it would be nice if you could do it once and be done with it. Well, you might be able to do that. This hose is from a company called Raine, and it is a silicone hose. Silicone, typically, is going to last the life of the car. So if you plan on keeping the car for a long period of time, you might want to consider silicone hoses and be done with it until you get rid of the car.

Alright, now, another thing that is a big problem, and you’ll find that a lot of technicians are guilty of this…I used to be until I learned the facts on it. And that is: you see the car comes from the factory with these special spring type clamps on the radiator hoses and sometimes on the heater hoses as well. Well, here we have one of those. This clamp is a spring that applies equal pressure all the way around. And you should not throw this away and replace it with one of these worm-drive clamps because the worm-drive clamp has a pressure point right under the screw. And when you put that onto a plastic part, like this radiator, what happens is: because these parts are expanding and contracting all the time, well that pressure pint eventually cracks the plastic, and goodbye radiator. And of course radiators can be expensive. So your best bet is, if you’re going to do this yourself, or even if you’re having the technician do it, insist that they use the original clamps. Because your radiator and other plastic parts will last longer.

And if you have a question or a comment, drop me a line right here at MotorWeek.