3.1L Heater Pipe Connection To Intake Manifold

[clevo]

I'm tearing the top half of my 1990 3.1L Beretta engine down to order to change the head gaskets.

This is a pipe that connects a heater core hose to the intake manifold.


This is the fitting on the intake manifold that the pipe connect to.


I tried sliding a screwdriver in the fitting to get it to release, but ended up ripping the plastic tabs or whatever was in there. What's the fix? Do I have to get a new heater pipe, or new fitting for the manifold?

What is the right way to release this type of fitting?

Thanks for any help on this.

[sharkey]

i beleive you can buy the clips for it, if not, get a new fitting. the other way to do it is to get a barb fitting that screws into the manifold and just run a longer rubber hose right up to the manifold, and forget the steel pipe

[tractorman]

You need a new fitting. They're easy to find and fairly cheap. In my experience, the plastic clip always breaks no matter how you try and remove it.

And yeah, you can also put a hose barb in and run a hose- that's what I did on the wife's car after breaking two of those clips. It's kinda close to the crossover pipe though- I don't know how regular heater hose will hold up. I used silicon hose- you can buy it at any heavy truck shop.

And for tha love of gawd... don't tighten that fitting too tight. I've seen more than one aluminum casting broke when somebody tightened steel pipe threads too tight.

[clevo]

Thanks fo the answers guys. Tractorman, are you saying I would be good to go with silicon hose near the exhaust cross-over pipe?

I took a look on the web and saw that silicone hose is heat resistant, but I have no idea how hot much heat it would be exposed to near the crossover exhaust pipe.

[gboogie99]

silicone is good, but regular heater hose is designed to take that abuse as well. no need to go overboard if not necessary.

[tractorman]

The wife's '94 corsica has had a piece of silicon heater hose in place of that connector for a couple of years with no problems. It's not THAT close to the crossover, and there is a heat shield... maybe I'm just paranoid, but I decided to spend the extra $2 for the silicon hose.

A new connector will fix you up just as well... but it'll break again next time you try to remove the pipe.

There's another way to fix this... here's what I did on my '96 achieva that I just sold a few weeks ago: I already knew that those connectors are crap after my experience with the wife's corsica, so when I did the LIM job on this car, I went down to Home Depot and bought a 5/8 compression X 1/2" NPT fitting. Crimped that ferrule down on the pipe (on the part that goes into the connector), screwed the fitting in place, and it was good to go. No worries about heat, no breaking next time I wanted to remove it. I only kept that car for about 8 months, but I had no problems during that time. If I ever have to take the wife's corsica apart again, I'll replace that silicon hose with a compression fitting.

[Mr Project]

so when I did the LIM job on this car, I went down to Home Depot and bought a 5/8 compression X 1/2" NPT fitting.

Great idea, BTW. I had this same problem, but in my case the fitting crumbled into a million pieces when I tried to remove it from the LIM. There was no way for me to get it completely out, even with the world's biggest easy-out (I tried!) but I was able to tap threads on the inside of the connector and thread in a 1/2" 'barbed nipple' X 1/4" NPT fitting. I just cut the metal pipe down a little, and found a chunk of heater hose that could stretch to fit the metal pipe and still be reasonably tight on the brass fitting. Couple of worm clamps later and it appears to be quite solid.

I did coat the threads of the NPT fitting in JB weld for good measure. Realistically this car won't be around long enough to need LIM gaskets again, but even if it is I'm confident that this is a better setup than the factory one.