996 Coolant Hose Questions

[JeTexas]

I have a 1999 996 C2 Cabriolet with 94,000 miles on it that I bought last September. During the last oil change, I noticed some of my coolant hoses are looking pretty ragged and starting to bulge. I know that at least some of them have been changed before because they have the screw-tight hose clamps rather than the factory wire clamps, but I have no idea when they were changed.

I wanted to just buy a full set of hoses, do a radiator flush and swap them all out at once. That's when my mechanic gave me a funny look and said, "You want to change them all out?" Apparently, nobody really does this.

The hoses that run to the radiators seem to be in very good shape, so I'm not worried about them, but I want to change everything in the engine compartment.

I started by ordering the hoses listed under cooling for the 996 on Pelicanparts.com. There were 4 with the following numbers:

996-106-625-57

996-106-622-54

996-106-626-53

996-106-621-57

They arrived and as I looked at them and look at the car and looked back at them and looked at the car again, I can't figure out where they even go. I have taken the air cleaner off to get a really good look, but they don't seem to fit the car at all. Anybody know if they do fit the car somewhere or if I should send them back?

I went to the Porsche dealership and got the same stunned reaction that I wanted to replace all my hoses. It took quite a while for the parts guy to decipher to diagrams to figure out what I needed, and even my VIN came into play for one hose.

The problem is, there's a lot of part numbers for these hoses and one supercedes another which supercedes another.

Is there anyone who can check to tell me if these are the correct parts my 99 with a VIN higher than 66x 01814?

996-106-250-55

A 996-106-212-52

996-106-233-51

A 996-106-222-57

Those are the hoses with the most wear, so I think I'm just going to swap those for now even though my gut tells me I should probably do them all just to be on the safe side -- especially since it's proving so hard to find the right hoses and nobody keeps them in stock.

Why have they changed the hose design so many times?

[JeTexas]

Update. These hoses came in from the dealer and are the correct hoses.

996-106-250-55

A 996-106-212-52

996-106-233-51

A 996-106-222-57

I got full exploded parts printouts of the entire cooling system from the dealer, and I still can't match the hoses from Pelican Parts to anything on there, so I'm sending them back.

[JeTexas]

I finally got around to replacing these hoses today as parts of my preventative maintenance on my 99 C2 6 speed.

996-106-250-55

A 996-106-212-52

996-106-233-51

A 996-106-222-57

One runs from the overflow tank down to the bottom rear driver's side of the motor. Apparently this one tends to go out often as it runs right by the headers, and the heat takes it's toll. It had been replaced before on my car. The other three seemed to be original and had the original spring-loaded hose clamps. The two that run to the front of the car were bonded to the little plastic retainer brackets. I guess that will happen after almost 10 years and 94,000 miles. I was able to get the rear two hoses off by sliding a flathead up inside the rim, but I had to cut those front hoses off. They just weren't going to budge.

I had a slight bit of trouble getting the short, bent hose on the passenger rear to seal where it goes into the motor. I kept getting a little drip on the motor side. There's not much space between the flare on the metal spout and the back-end of the spout, so it turned out the hose clamp I had put on there was too fat and not seating behind the flare. I dug around in the toolbox and found a skinnier clamp that just barely fit. As you can see in the pictures, there's no extra hose sticking out on that fixture.

I did it all with the rear wheels up on ramps. I refilled it in this position with the vent valve open and left it over night. In the morning I had to add more coolant. No trouble with air in the lines. In fact, just by changing out that 2 gallons or so of coolant that drained when I pulled those hoses, the car is now running about 5 degrees cooler. That's making me think I should go ahead and flush the entire system soon.