Releasing Clamps to Remove a Car's Heater Core Hose

Video Transcript

"Hello I'm Mark Blocker with expert village. In this segment we're going to show you how to physically remove the defective heater hose from the vehicle. First, now we've got accessibility and gotten our other components out of our way. We need to release the clamps on both ends of the vehicle. This vehicle was equipped from the factory with spring style clamps. These spring style clamps were designed and intended for original vehicle assembly only. They're not to be reused. They're biometalic springs and as the spring gets hot and cold through the vehicle heating up and cooling off over and over again, it gradually takes a spring out of the steel. So the clamp loses its strength and after it's been released once the hose kind of conforms to the clamp. Your best bet is to replace it with a aftermarket screw type clamp. You really don't want to reuse them because there's a good chance that they'll fail at this point. So to release the clamps you just simply squeeze the springs together, wiggle them back and forth a little bit to break them loose from the rubber. They've been sitting in this position for a long time in that one position and they're kind of wearing little grooves. Wiggle it down slowly and move it down the hose so you've pulled it down far enough past the nipple that the hose is mounted on. You'll need to do this with both ends of the hose. This other hose, we're going to use a Chanel off on will give us a better angle for accessibility to get to the clamp. Sometimes you'll still find it necessary to kind of bend and pry back and hold some of the other components out of your way while you're actually releasing the clamp. And you just want to do the same thing you did on the last clamp, squeeze it, expand it, release the tension on the hose and then slide it down the hose itself. Please watch our next segment on removing the hose part two."