coolant hose leaking where it joins engine...and a jubilee clip hasn't sorted it...

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Trevelyan

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Hi all,
I have an ancient Vire 7HP which has a short length of flexible pipe which takes cooling water from one part of the engine to another. Where the pipe joins the engine silencer assembly on one side has started to leak. I've put a jubilee clip around it, but that doesn't appear to have helped. Any ideas please? Should I use some kind of sealing compound? Liquid metal around the pipe end? The silencer assembly is aluminium by the way - i.e. the flexible pipe sleeves over a an aluminium pipe, err, spigot.

It is now too close to the season to want to make more problems by pulling it to bits... ARRGHH!

Best wishes,

Trev
 
I've had some success in the past with liquid gasket which cured a friend's diesel leak for several months. It might work.
 
Are you sure that there isn't a tiny split in the hose under or near the jubilee clip. I had something similar with a toilet hose last summer and tightening the clip did nothing.

If it really is that the pipe has stretched and you can't shorten in and expose a new end, I would try a couple of Pvc electricians tape or even Ptfe tape around the spigot. A bit of trial and error needed to get the right number of turns.

Richard
 
The hose should pretty much seal on it's own if it's the correct size and not damaged or perished. The hose clip is really just to stop it coming off. Replace the hose or at least cut a bit off if you have enough to work with and start with a fresh bit around the spigot.
 
Are you sure that it's the hose and not the pipe stub where it connects to the silencer? On a Vire 7 that I owned, the pipe stubs connecting to the cast alloy silencer were copper, which didn't seem a good idea from a corrosion POV, although you say that yours are aluminium.
I removed the copper and pressed in stainless steel stubs, which worked OK for my period of ownership.
Alternatively, a new piece of flexible pipe shouldn't be too difficult to arrange.
 
If the problem is that the spigot suface is rough from corrosion and the hose won't seal on it, you may find filling the pitting with araldite works.
But a new hose should be softer and easier to make seal.
You can get all sorts of hoses from motorsport people, look for silicone hoses on ebay.
Also, a brnad new hose clip can help.
 
If it is the hose and none of the above, I would suggest that you cut a small piece off the hose end then using a heat gun, soften the newly cut end and push on in place. Use some fairy liquid to help as a lubricant if its a tight fit. You will find that the softened hose will shrink as it cools and then the jubilee clip should merely hold it in place.
 
Earlybird you might know it better than I do! Firstly I've assumed the pipe stub is aluminium, by eye it all looks like aluminium from the block to the edge of the hose, i.e. I haven't seen anything copper looking or any greeny copper staining. The area ABOVE the hose does appear a little wet too, so perhaps the previous owner (I've not had the boat long) did the same as you and pressed in some stubs of pipe. So the question is - how did you seal between the stubs and the exhaust block? If it is leaking how could I fix it?

I'm not sure if I'll be able to change the pipe - because the exhaust stub/spigot and the engine stub/spigot are so close together (a couple of inches) I'm not sure there's enough room to get pipe inbetween the two without taking the engine to bits....

Cheers,
Trev
 
Thanks Earlybird. I'm now wondering if someone has done the job on my engine that Earlybird did on his - i.e. replacing the stub pipes with new ones - and if it is now leaking around where the stub pipe joins the block. Thinking of cleaning it down and applying some JB weld or something similar - does anyone have any suggestion on what product to use for that, and/or what to use to help seal the pipe to the stub/spigot?

As the engine stub/spigot and exhaust stub/spigot are only a couple of inches apart, I probably can't replace the pipe as there simply isn't room to get it off, or at least to get a new one on in one piece.

Trev
 
Replace hose and use fuel line style clamps rather than jubilee

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