2000 996 carrera 2 coupe 6 speed: cooling system hoses

[Philip54]

My 2000 996 has 93,000 miles and I am going to have the water pump and the thermostat replaced soon. I plan on keeping the car a few more years and I am wondering if I should get the cooling system hoses replaced as well. I have the following questions:

Any chance that the existing hoses will last another, say, 10 years?

Does replacing all the hoses require removing the engine from the car and/or diassembling engine components?

Should I replace only the hoses that are most likely to fail and which are these hoses?

Thanks

[Ahsai]

I don't hear too many problems with the hoses, much less than say water tank and water pump. Probably some inspection to check if the hoses are softened will suffice. Besides, there are TONS of hoses. Coolant and vent hoses. Large and small. A lot of them hiding under the underside panels, around the engines, radiators, etc. that are not easy to replace. There are only a few that are exposed and can be readily replaced.

My car is almost 10 yrs with 55k and my hoses still appear in great shape.

[logray]

I haven't read about many hose failures either.

You can replace most of the rear of car hoses without removing the engine.

There are a several in the tunnel you cannot, or at least not without major difficulty.

There are many many more hoses up front where the radiators live, and you pretty much have to take that whole area apart to get to them.

If it were me and they look and feel OK I would just leave them alone. Depending on how the car has been stored, some of the hoses that were not cosmolined and are up in the tunnel or behind the rads might look "new" still...

One critical thing to do when replacing hoses is properly bleed the system. DO it improperly and you can introduce trapped air which will cause localized overheating and possible engine trouble.

[JFP in PA]

Except for physical damage, these hoses are pretty long lived; we have a couple customers with over 100K and 200K miles on the factory units. If they look bad, have soft spots or blisters, change them out; but as others have noted there are a lot of hoses in these cars, and you basically need to disassemble the car to get at them all.

[Philip54]

Ahsai, logray, JFP,

Many thanks for your advise. We will do a careful inspection of the hoses and replace only on an 'as needed' basis

[RossClifford]

along these lines, I have a weep from what I think is the top rad hose (havent stripped the car yet), if the hose still looks good woudl you just replace the clamp where is is weeping or the clamp and hose?

[JFP in PA]

Replace the factory band clamps with stainless steel screw type. But be sure the connection is free of build up or crud from the leak, and that there is no damage to the hose.