melted heater hose

[Peter Lucas <lucas@xxxx>]

As part of my ongoing quest to discover and demonstrate every possible 
way to screw up a simple job, I respectfully submit the following report:

Last summer I decided to buy some peace of mind and replace my water 
pump and all coolant hoses. Doing all those hoses were tedious but not 
difficult. When it was all done, I figured I was set for awhile.

So, I was pretty annoyed last week when my car sprung a fairly major 
coolant leak. Turned out to be the heater hose that connects the heater 
vacuum valve on the right front of the engine to the metal pipe in the 
right-hand side of the frame (under the dust shield). What happened was 
that when I routed that particular hose, I let it touch the front 
exhaust pipe where it emerges from the right-hand exhaust manifold. The 
pipe has a heat shield, but I was able to carefully avoid that. As a 
result, the hose spend the summer slowly melting its way toward the 
aforementioned leak.

Just one more thing to add to the "worth checking for" list.

--Pete Lucas
VIN #06703