It’s always in the last place you look

[Ryan H]

Sometimes, finding the cause of your problem is made impossible by overthinking things and not thinking outside the box. Even then, you sometimes become complacent and assume that you will never experience a weird problem again. I love the learning process from this mentality, because it explains why I spend so much time looking for things that aren’t the problem and I get to laugh at my own ignorance.

Take this as an example. I refreshed the cooling system on my car, an Audi A4. The coolant flange on the back of the head is a notoriously weak item in these cars, and as such, it goes bad and starts to leak coolant and opens up the cooling system, leading to overheats from air pockets. So I change it and all the major stuff associated with it and thought I’d be in the clear. Nope. My engine kept overheating, so I did all I could to try and figure out what was causing the problem. I quickly discovered that coolant simply wasn’t flowing properly and I thought it was going to be a huge problem. With all the times it overheated… quickly, I’d like to add……….. no gray area, just fine one second and in the red the very next… I may have extra work to do, I could not pinpoint what was going on. I tried everything I could. So when nothing made sense, I decided to rip it all apart again and look for bad components. I found nothing. In my frustration, I just started to clean parts off that had become caked in grease and mud and whatever else. That’s when I noticed this hose.

It turns out that these hoses have a lining on the inside of them which randomly goes bad and will just wad up on itself when you connect it to something. That’s why this looks like someone put bubble gum in this hose. The rail this hooks on to pushed this stuff down and made the transfer of coolant impossible This hose was before the firewall, but after the air release valve. So when I’d open up the air release valve, coolant would come out, but nothing made it to the firewall and into the heater core. I know this because that is the second area on this car with an air release system. This stupid little hose caused all those hours of frustration. And I never would have noticed. It’s hard to see without light pointed directly inside the hose. It looks fine to the naked eye. This picture was taken in broad daylight, with a powerful flashlight shining on the hose so the wad can be seen.

But this isn’t the only hose that had this issue. Another coolant hose on the other side of the engine had a similar issue, but since it was a much larger hose, it didn’t clog up. The plastic just came undone and made passage difficult, but not impossible. I saw that clearly because light traveled through the hose and it was very obvious. So did I learn from that situation the first time? Nope. Now look at where I am. And I can only blame myself. Always remember to check things that shouldn’t cause problems, but which still CAN cause problems. It may save you from a gigantic headache and waste of time.

Attachments:

• IMG_0293.jpg

Topic