Building a cooling manifold

outwesty · Post by **outwesty** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 12:48 pm

I am looking to replace all of the diesel cooling hoses on my 95 ABA swapped 82 diesel. I have heard of people making a cooling manifold out of copper tubing istead of sourcing out the expensive diesel radiator hoses. Can anyone show me a picture of what one looks like. I am currently 1500 miles from home and would like to mess around with making one when I stop at a friends garage in California. Here is a shot from a few days ago. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

hoyt · Post by **hoyt** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 8:10 pm

Here are some pictures of the manifold I made to replace the upper radiator hose:

--John

libbybapa · Post by **libbybapa** » Sun Jan 28, 2007 9:04 pm

Nice work Hoyt. I haven't yet had the need to do so, but have been planning on using the easy-solder fittings that have a ridge the inside of which contains a ring of solder already applied. I would then use straight rubber rad hose of the proper dimension for all of the straight sections. The ridge of the easy solder fitting is a perfect bead for holding the hoses on.

Andrew

hoyt · Post by **hoyt** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 12:11 pm

I looked into using the easy-solder fittings, but that did not work out. The OD of the fittings is to large for the rubber hoses to go over. What I did was make a ring out of 12GA solid copper wire. Then solder this onto the end of the pipe. Seems to work well.

--John

stopping · Post by **stopping** » Mon Feb 05, 2007 11:18 am

Yep that looks really good... I appreciate your resourcefulness in soldering the rings of pipe as flanges.

To Outwesty... Do you need the long run pipes too? The ones that go up to the rad? I saw some on line (probably here) made from copper too.