Porsche 997TT Turbo Cooling Line
Had this turbo in the shop for a coolant leak. Seems to be the theme with these cars lately. With a gazillion rubber hoses there are a lot of places for these cars to leak from. This car with under 70k miles has had numerous hose leaks which it shouldn’t have at 70k miles.
The passenger turbo cooling return line runs from the turbo to the connection at the oil cooler. Most places would drop the engine to replace the hose. I came up with a simpler and more cost effective solution. The line in question has a short 2-3″ rubber section attached to a metal hard line. The rubber end is stuck way under the intake.
Here you can see the end of the metal hard line. At this point, I had already removed the rubber hose off the line. There is zero access here, so I had to be creative, lol. I won’t give away all my secrets!
The factory replacement line.
Now here is the kicker. You can’t just remove the rubber section and replace with general hose because it has a big step up in size from one end to the other. I scoured the local parts store cooling hoses thinking I could find a larger hose with this change and cut it to size. No go. So I ordered the factory line.
Here you can see I turned the old hose inside out. Look at all that cracking on the inside!
To replace the entire line, would require the engine to be dropped nearly all the way out of the car, which would also result in a large bill. I came up with a little more affordable solution and removed the new hose carefully from the new factory line and used hose clamps in it’s place (the OE clamp on the big end is usually a spring clamp which is a PITA to get off and back on. Worm clamp should work just fine.
And the hose securely attached to the lines.
And back together again. So this car has presented an entirely new dilemma for me when working on them. We already removed the engine to install the sharkwerks coolant pipes and pinned the fittings in the past. While it is out, even with a low mileage car do you replace every coolant hose, coolant oring, etc on the engine while it is out? That takes a $2500 repair upwards of probably 5-6k or more to replace every possible connection/oring that could leak in the future. Turbo cooling pump etc would all have to be replaced, where do you stop? That is a big pill to swallow, and IMHO, there is no reason for these hoses to be breaking down this quickly.
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One Comment
Leave a commentAlbert
July 13, 2014 at 6:22 AM
Doing the same repair on my car. At home with a two post lift, makes it easier to access. Ironical in a sense that the my coolant line is leaking from the front of the metal pipe were it is compressed fit. That plastic elbow seems to be fine but the bigger hose is also leaking. I have not dropped my engine yet but I am considering it. I can do the same thing if you would reveal your little secret to me. I am a DIY guy, promise I won’t tell.