but it's working for now
The throttle body heater leak was getting ridiculous so I cut the hoses and managed to gently massage* the pipe from the head over to the other side and hook it up to the plastic pipe which promptly snapped and left me without enough slack to join the ends. So I ended up breaking some more plastic pipe off so I could use some of the other rubber pipe in a bodgtastic fashion to make the fine engineering solution below. It isn't leaking now, but the rubber hoses are joined over bits of very brittle plastic pipe so I don't have great hopes for longevity.

So, seeing as the pipes I have don't appear to be very original or even their own shape... should this be a 6mm ID pipe all the way through? We're driving to France on Sunday so I'm very tempted to nip into HellFrauds and pick up some coolant pipe of the right diameter and replace this a run from the expansion tank to a single join to the hose which comes from the top of the engine. I'm not up for taking the throttle body off unless I really have to.

*Pull while swearing

I think most owners have probably come to this solution at one point or another, either on this line or the radiator breather :)

It's 8mm hose. If you can get it (ie, if the useless tossers at Auto Silicone Hoses actually have it in stock and don't randomly send you something else), the single ply 8mm hose they sell is perfect for this and the radiator breather line.

OK, thanks Sloth. I ask because I tried ramming an 8mm-8mm joiner into the existing hose and it wasn't going. I guess the important dimension is at the expansion tank end...
Cheers!
Morat

I'll second the 8mm inside diameter single ply silicone hose from Auto Silicone Hoses and just replace the whole run. That's what I've done on mine. You could always call in at mine on the way past (I'm only 1.2 miles off the A1) as I've got about 6 feet of it. It's red as that was all they had in stock when I ordered black, but it'll give you something else to make look shiny.

That's a kind offer but we're going via Hull... which makes it a bit of a detour!!
(but does leave a bit of time on Sunday if anywhere is open nearby)

He's finally joining the club ;)

As other have mentioned.. 8mm.. If you can find any radiator/heater hose that size, then some 8mm fuel line will do as a stop gap.

I've had some fuel line on part of mine for awhile now as I couldn't get anything else, and auto silicone hoses didn't have the black single ply stuff when I tried ordering it either.... and more recently they didn't have a reducing elbow when their eBay shop said 10+ available...

But a couple of meters of 8mm fuel line will get you by (even the join you have will probably be fine for the trip)

I was going to say if you get adventurous, you can take the belt off, unbolt and move the AC compressor (There's enough slack in the AC lines) to then get to the spout on the top of the inlet manifold, and you can run new pipe from there all the way back to the header tank.

Morat wrote:

That's a kind offer but we're going via Hull... which makes it a bit of a detour!!
(but does leave a bit of time on Sunday if anywhere is open nearby)
ASH does show on their website that they have a trade counter at WF14 8NA ? And its open tomorrow till 2pm?

Fuel hose is OK as a temporary fix and I used it to replace a short hose that goes from the throttle body heater to the inlet manifold on mine (GEMS having a different pipe layout). After a few months it had gone rock hard and I had to cut it off to remove it. Hose intended for fuel doesn't take kindly to hot water for some reason, although not quite as catastrophic as putting fuel through hose intended for hot water, it dissolves. I found very few places, not even my local motor factors who normally stock just about everything, carry 8mm coolant hose as it isn't often used.

Made it out to France 😀I'm contemplating a breakdown before starting the return trip!

More seriously the CO-OP sold me breakdown cover with recovery to the UK for £56 when green flag and the others flat out refused European cover.

Right, time to find a beer 😀

Have a good un!
Interesting on the Euro breakdown cover. Hard to find for 15 year+ cars now. Now you have it, you won't need to use it, unless you want to save fuel cost getting home...

Morat wrote:

Made it out to France 😀I'm contemplating a breakdown before starting the return trip!

More seriously the CO-OP sold me breakdown cover with recovery to the UK for £56 when green flag and the others flat out refused European cover.

Right, time to find a beer 😀

OMG ! Buying breakdown cover, your anger the p38 gods for sure 😤
Just kidding, enjoy your break,

I've got personal full European breakdown cover including recovery that covers me for any vehicle I'm driving or even a passenger in, irrespective of age, from ADAC, the German equivalent to the AA. Costs 80 Euros a year and even works in the UK. You have to phone Germany but they get their local agent to come out to you. In the UK their local agent is the AA but they wanted almost 400 quid a year for the same cover.

That will only work for another couple of years in the UK then ;)

Quite possibly but it doesn't matter as I've got the same cover for UK only with the AA as an add on to my bank account (one of these paid for accounts that people keep phoning me up and trying to convince me to claim the fee back). So it's the AA if I'm in the UK and ADAC if I'm not. Came in handy a couple of years ago when my mates Peugeot 406 HDi ate it's turbo and started trying to run on sump oil on the A8 between Cannes and Nice at midnight. The ADAC cover is worth it for anyone that goes over there more than a couple of times a year (see https://www.adac.de/mitgliedschaft/adac_membership/). It says you have to be resident in Germany but that is only because the fee pay system can't cope with a non-German address, you have to speak to them and pay by bank transfer.

SWMBO always took out AA European when we used to go down to Brittany every summer. I used to poopoo this until the year her gearbox gave up the ghost just 10kms from our destination (she had a Freelander). The best recovery service I have ever used!! The service was excellent and all went well until the AA lost the car when it got back to the UK. As I recall it used to cost around £80 for the fortnight and the cost was age related which is why we used to take her much newer Freelander instead of the P38.

i removed the throttle heater altogether, and blanked the pipe at the manifold and reservoir with a spare bolt. I dont see why you'd need to goto the effort of bodging up a line, just blank it.

Be warned though, if you do remove it, leave the plate in-place, or you'll have four nice holes into your manifold that will cause all manner of running issues and you'll spend weeks chasing your arse before you figure out what you've done.... ;)

The Thor must be different to the GEMS throttle body heater in that case - I've removed it on mine and our red one, no holes in manifold :)

yeh quite possible. On GEMS, the four holes that hold the plate on are imperial and drilled right thru into the inside of the plenum. Needless to say, when i figured out what i'd done, i didnt have the four bolts or the plate any more, having launched them straight in the bin. I had to remove the manifold, drill and tap the holes out to the next metric size, and fit some short metric bolts with loctite.

Ahhh, typical!

I don't think I ever removed it on the GEMS I had - I think I still bypassed it though when I put another engine in it.

Made it :)
Just the one random EAS fault which was quickly cancelled. Valve not closing regularly or something similar. I didn't bother taking a note as we were in Belgium at the time.

Interesting that she uses about a litre of oil a day.... I think it's time to add leak hunting to the list. Perhaps in conjunction with the steam cleaning.
Hope you all had a good couple of weeks :)
Cheers,
Morat