Hosed

My car got hosed today...

Yes, seems my hoses were in pretty sad shape. I spent a couple hours of my Saturday afternoon getting them replaced. Story time:

   I have been having some leaks from my oil and power steering systems so I jacked up my car the other day to see what I could see and try to find the source of the troubles. At some point while I was poking around my engine I found hose #1, not on it's nozzle and looking really pathetic. Note the 3 holes (1.a) and the cracked openings. It was pretty useless. Ashely came around today to see if I wanted to come shopping with her while she was without kids for a bit so I took the chance to get a ride and we stopped by an auto parts store while out. I had taken off hose #1 to show them, and by taken off I mean ripped the last inch off because it was melted to the nozzle (1.b, you can't really tell, but that end bit isn't connected to the rest cuz I ripped it off. It had to be pried off with a knife.) They didn't really know what I was talking about, what the hose connected to where so, after we decided it would be safe for me to drive my car in, I went home and got it. Well, the specific hose for that spot wasn't in stock and wouldn't be in till Tuesday, so we just fitted some stock hose to it, and it fits so well they said I probably won't have to buy the fancy hose unless it shows signs of obvious distress. Yay!
   While we were fixing hose #1 I observed a little piece of hose that was also cracking and coming off the nozzle, enter hose #2. What you see in the picture is only the top inch or so of the hose. It was actually a hose with a fancy grommet on the end to plug into the air box thingy (yes, I only use technical terms for things.) and they didn't actually have it in stock. We called a dealership and they wanted $25 and a few days to ship it! No thank you, my engine isn't hardly worth $25... So we made our own. We snipped off the bad part (2.a), cut up a connector to be shorter and attached a piece of hosing so it almost looked the same. It was pretty good problem solving from the auto shop guys! We got it all made, but then it didn't want to reattach to the box. We ended up having to detach the box from all it's connections to be able to manhandle that grommet back in there.
    As we wrestled with the box we discovered another nozzle that was running around without it's hose. Later found this hose and it looked like hose #3. so we replaced it with some stock hose. It was by far the easiest of the fixes. But 4 auto part store dudes and 2 hours later I'm all hosed up and ready to go. I've been told I should get better gas mileage now and on the way home I was averaging 24 mpg, I usually only got that freeway driving! Yay.

I don't know when these hoses were replaced, or if they ever have been, but they were in pretty sad shape. I'm glad I found them and fixed them. It cost me only about $5 instead of the $45-50 it would have just for parts if a shop had done it. Car work is so fun! Now, to find see about that power steering leak and see how my break pads and rotors are doing...