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Coolant Cross over pipes , whats it all about ?

deMort

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Joined
21 Mar 2015
Messages
11,244
Ok so you have a slow coolant leak , you get told its the cross over pipes and its about £1100 to repair ..

Heres an understanding for you of just what the hell the garage is talking about...

As per images ..

Porsche use a rubber pipe with a metal collar on the ends , there is a rubber seal at the end of the pipe .. this is the bit that actually seals the pipes .

The metal collars fit inside either a plastic or a metal pipe but upto the seal there is a small gap ..

Water can and does enter this and will stay there most of the time .. there is no engine heat to disperse it only the coolant temp .

Water and metal dont mix over a long period of time and so corrosion starts .

At first this is no big deal but when the corrosion eats away the metal around the seal then it starts to leak .. this will be the occasional drip .. hence its a slow leak over a period of time .

Sometimes you can get away with just replaceing a single rubber pipe .. the difficulty is in removing said pipe .. they will be corroded together ..

More often than not the pipe will be damaged by trying to remove the rubber pipe .

The collar is 2 inches long and inside another pipe .. they dont just pull out im afraid .

We always say to customers .. we can try to replace it but be pre paired for a bigger bill if we cant as once we start your into what ever we have to do .

Why are they called cross over pipes ..

Well each radiator is joined from side to side and then a single pipe for inlet and outlet goes to the engine .. these pipes at the front cross over each other ..

Its also in a X shape so techinically we could call the X pipes .. erm .. we dont :)

The leak may well be one side but unfortunatly there are other similar pipes at the back of the fuel tank so they all tend to get replaced in one hit .. hence circa £1100 .

How to stop problems ..

If yours are ok then something like waxoil or ACF50 sprayed onto the collars and as far into them as you can get .. most garages will do this when fitting new ones reguardless .

Yoy have to drop the front subframe and seperate the steering rack to get access to these .

Right mouse click and select view image for a larger picture .


Pictures are from the net so credit to them and ive renamed Brauton to reflect its their image .
 

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I just changed my cross over pipes (£35 each with discount) didn't remove rack or drop suspension its tricky but doable.
 
another one for my to-do" list- thanks Iain.
Iby- where did you source your replacements from? another for my shopping list.
 
Mine were replaced before I bought my car (2005 on 51k), luckily it was picked up by the OPC as I had the car inspected there before purchase so the seller picked up the tab.
 
I had mine done today under Porsche warranty. On getting it home when looking in the front drivers arch it looks like they have only done the lower pipe, not the upper. There is some slight crystallisation on the upper pipe however not a lot less than what I saw on the lower one. Is there any reason (apart from cost) why they wouldn't do both?
 
boardingnath997 said:
I had mine done today under Porsche warranty. On getting it home when looking in the front drivers arch it looks like they have only done the lower pipe, not the upper. There is some slight crystallisation on the upper pipe however not a lot less than what I saw on the lower one. Is there any reason (apart from cost) why they wouldn't do both?

If it's not actually broken a warranty claim isn't possible. It sounds like your upper pipe was deemed to be serviceable.
 
What a shame that is, only one of mine had gone but I was given the option to pay for the second one to be done at the same time (OPC Bristol), I think it was something like £150-£200 for the part but well worth doing while they're doing the other one as most of the expense in the job is in gaining access to them, it was a no brainer to do both at the same time.
 
Already explained but Porsche only replace whats broken so they will replace individual pipes ( if they can get them out ).. most garages will tend to replace them all if you are taking the time to drop the entire lot out as most will be corroded to some point and it can actually cost more in labour trying to seperate them than to just replace them .
 
I had all mine replaced and it cost $$$
 
Just before my used warranty ran out Porsche Chester replaced mine right though completely all components no charge so I was chuffed with their help & would recommend before your warranty runs out get it serviced & ask they were very fair with me :thumb:
 

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