I'm doing a coolant replacement and was wondering if I should/need to replace the radiator hoses? They have 15 years and 135,000 miles but they don't seem to show any signs of distress on the outside; I have heard that they wear out from the inside-out however.

Should I replace these hoses as a preventive measure or just keep an eye on them and replace when necessary?

 

9 times out of 10, you'll see them bulging before they fail.

 

and other times, they just fail, no signs.. I mean to ask if a radiator hose is going to last 15 years and 135k miles? Come on, you got lucky.. 5 years is usually the limit, even though I'll get a ton of "stories" that tell how I'm wrong.. lol..

If you have to ask after 15 years.. then there is your answer.. replace them! They're not expensive.. but failure is expensive.

 

Just change them before they burst and leave you stranded.

 

Cheaper and less time involved to replace radiator and heater (coolant) hoses than repair a blown head gasket due to over-heating caused by a hose leak/coolant loss. I found out the hard way.

 

Just replace em.

I had a hose leak for a few weeks... now I'm pretty sure it's getting worse. Just nip it in the bud asap. Replace em. Trust us.

 

I do the replacement routinely, I don't bother to second guess.

 

Alright, I guess the general answers are to replace them. I'm assuming just the one upper and one lower tube are the most important ones?

A bit off topic: If I am changing the coolant, would this be a good time to replace the water pump and timing belt as well? The car is still on the originals.

 

Yes. Those both should have been replaced a while ago. Do them.

I'd argue that the rear hoses are more important than the top and bottom hoses. The top and bottom hoses are easily seen, so if you have to get under the hood, you'll be much more likely to see bulging, cracking, or other signs of failure. With those rear hoses (especially the heater core hoses), you won't see them until it's too late if you aren't looking for them.

If you're going to replace your hoses, replace all of them.

 

There is some logic there, I didn't think about all of those hoses in the back.

I'm assuming it's the ones on the bottoms of this diagram?

How necessary would it be to get pre-molded hoses for all of those? Or can I just buy bulk hosing and bend them into place?

 

You can bend it into place, but bend it wrong, and you'll put a kink in it. Put a kink in it, and it won't flow correctly, which can cause bad things to happen. You're better off just buying the proper pre-formed hose. If you want to get fancy, Hose Candy sells "Hose Bones", which can be formed however you want, and will hold shape. They look cooler, but they cost more, too.

 

You might as well hit up the heater hoses.

 

When my radiator went in my 96 Accord I decided to just go ahead and do both radiator and heater hoses as well as thermostat. Other than the radiator I got all the parts at Honda and the prices were actually pretty good and OEM fit. Just a suggestion.

 

The best response this thread. +1

 

Honestly they'll usually outlast the car. For some reason or other I replaced the upper hose in my '94 sedan at some point around 400,000kms but it wasn't because it failed. I never did replace the lower and when I swapped the engine into my current '95 hatch at 429,000kms I retained the old rad hose since it was still good. There's over 440,000kms on it at this point and it's 21 years old. It's been on 3 different engines in 2 different cars and still going. These things last a lot longer than some people seem to think they do. I did however finally replace all the heater hoses since while they hadn't yet failed you could tell they had deteriorated when removing them.