You may have read my recent posts about changing the water pump, heater hoses and heater valve over the weekend, and a creepy and gnawing fear that something was wrong. Well . . .

Checking the cooling system pressure and coolant level this evening was not enough, although those were perfectly fine. I thought that another, detailed and thorough inspection with a light and inspection mirror couldn't hurt. Just to make sure that everything was OK. That is when I found that the heater return hose, the one that goes from the firewall to the red pipe under the distributor did not have a hose clamp on under the distributor where it joins the pipe!

I thought I had checked everything over several times in the past two days, but obviously had missed this. It explains my obsession with the cooling system: somewhere inside I knew that I never tightened a clamp on that end of the hose.

What is quite amazing is that the car has made two trips up to Gainesville and back, several shorter trips and some errands without that clamp. It has gone over 150 miles without that clamp! I had been concerned about a tiny loss of coolant yesterday. And yesterday I did play with the heater for a while. That must have pressurized the return hose and caused some leakage. Apparently when the heater valve is closed, the suction from the water pump keeps the pressure in the return line low enough that it won't leak, hence the perfect performance of the cooling system today.

Since I couldn't find the original, genuine Volvo hose clamp, I just put a normal clamp with the threads cut all the way through on. Took barely a minute and, since I'm a hair over 6', it was easy enough to do just leaning over the engine with the hood in full, special Volvo 90 deg. open position.

It scares me to think that I could screw up like this and overlook that clamp when I was putting the cooling system back together.

Whewwwwwww! My heart is still fluttering from this. Maybe someone up there really is watching out for our family.
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Scott Cook - 1991 745T, 1985 RX-7 GSL-SE, 1986 Toyota Tercel (Don't laugh, it is reliable, faithful AND gets 41 mpg!)