How to Change a Radiator Hose

By Doug Jenkins
Doug Jenkins

Doug Jenkins runs Doug Jenkins Custom Hot Rods in St. Louis, where he restores classic cars and creates mild to wild custom street rods. He races a 1972 Corvette in the SCCA performance rally series, and drives a Ducati Monster to work every day. Doug got his start in fixing, customizing, racing, selling, restoring when he was in the fourth grade, fixing bicycles for anyone who would pay. By sixth grade Doug had bought non-running motorcycles and fixed them (and wrecked them as well). He had purchased his first broken down car by fourteen, which he fixed and sold for a profit. Now he runs his own body shop.

Change a radiator hose in a car when replacing a car engine; learn how with tips from our expert custom-car mechanic in this free auto-restoration video.

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Video transcription

Now we're going to install radiator hoses. What we got going there is the thermostat housing on the top, so this is the return line to the radiator from the engine. The radiator in this car, in order to maintain a nice low hood line, the radiator is actually lower than the motor. A lot of these old Ford's had a tank, an overflow tank, mounted up high. That's too much trouble to install here so we're going to go ahead and use that adapter in the middle of the return line on the upper radiator hose, so that you can fill the radiator from the highest point in the car, in the cooling system. If we just used a radiator cap or something like that it would be actually lower than the motor, and you wouldn't be able to get enough coolant in it. So when we're done it's pretty good looking.