308 Under Dash Heater Hose Access

I believe most if not all can be reached by removing the spare tire and the fiberglass housing under it. A few phillips screws and it's out. Front hoses that connect the front tubes to the tubes that run to the rear of the car are accessed by removing a rectangular aluminum panel under the car.

Spang

 

You can take out the inner wheel well liner and have a little better access but it's still a pain to get in there. The fronts unfortunately are not like the rears that come out in one piece. The fronts are several pieces riveted and screwed in.

 

I posted earlier replacing all the heater hoses, under tr0768. I machined a connector to slide inside both hoses and connect the old hose to the new one and with silicone spray used the old hose to gently pull in the new one. There is an aluminum access pannel behind the drivers seat back that has to be removed by drilling the pop rivets out.

I had to remove the spare tire housing by again drilling the pop rivets and pulling the housing out. It is also held down with body sealer so pulling and slicing the sealer at the same time will make the job easier. This will give you access to the control valves and the heater cores. I used all new double wire hose clamps at all connections.

The heater hoses run from the motor on the drivers side and thru the bulkhead then down the back rest of the passengers companrtment then down the floor sill and out under the hood. This entire job replacing all heater hoses in and out plus the shorter hoses around the heater controls and cores took my guys about 3 hours, a number of very naughty words, and one of my techs quit 3 times during this activity. It is not for the faint hearted.

We replaced all hoses both heater and radiator hoses with silicone hoses and as i mentioned all new double wire hose clamps. I believe there were 17 clamps on the heater side and 21 clamps on the radiator hoses.

Good Luck, lots of band-aids, and questionable words, and patience,


Howard Musolf
1981 308gtsi
1982 400i Cabriolet
Maserati Spider
2 many brass era cars

 

Just don't expect to get your hands in there. You must finagle the hoses side/side using long pieces and once in place cut to fit. Keep telling yourself "It's Doable". And like posed above...keep band aids handy.

I believe there was an attempt to balance lengths of right and left sides so water flow would not favor one side when cutting. So keep that in mind too.

 

The OP is talking about the heater system hoses that are under the dash, and connect to the two heater and blower coils. These are very difficult. I moved mine closer to the front but found out if you connect the T and then slide each heater hose to the heater box you can get it right back where it originally sits. Its a few nights and a few beers. I also installed a bleed fitting where the hose returns from the heater control box down to the pipe under the spare tire. It is very difficult to get the heater system to bleed and have heat in the cab.

 

Chipkent,
I just did this three days ago on my 1981 GTSi. There is a good thread by Bill Brooks here on chat that was very helpful to me. He did this on a 328, but the tee situation is the same. These hoses are the return lines from the individual heater boxes that tee behind the brake booster cylinder to a larger line going to the radiator return line under the spare tire. I ended up removing the two heater boxes for better access to the connection. Then I cut the lines and simply pulled on the main return line to get the tee in the open. As others have mentioned, other than "cosmetics", there isn't any reason to tuck the tee back in there once the new hoses are in place. A bleed valve sounds like a great idea.
Regards
Mike

 

just in case anyone else is contemplating/undergoing the rehosing of your
308/328, here's the thread sepino referred to above.

this is found in the 308/328/mondial section of 1/21/09 under the thread:

"328 heater hose relocation revisited".

i included pictures of the heater hose relocation plus the addition of an air bleed
for the heater boxes.

also pix of new heater supply and brake booter hoses thru the rocker tunnel to the engine.

although not the quality of dr.roses' tutorials from the past, it gets the point across.