Plastic clutch hose - Bugger!

[loserkid]

I've just checked and I have the wonderful red plastic clutch hose installed in my elise. Anyone had this changed? How much is this going to set me back. Advice so far is it is listed as an 8 hour job in Lotus books.

[adeewuff]

I wouldn't worry about it that much, it's irritating in summer when sometimes reverse is a pain to get but apart from that you should have no other problems.

Some people have reported that they still have a problem when the red hose has been replaced - so don't go wasting any money on it.

[loserkid]

1st and reverse jammed up really bad over our few weeks of sunshine. Scarily the day after I'd bought it! I just wondered why you can't just pull it through with the new one bound to it?

Also some people have suggested rerouting the pipe through the centre of the car rather than with the cooling system

[fergusd]

Get a replacement one from www.eliseparts.com and fit it yourself, IIRC the eliseparts one routes through the passenger compartment (with the rear brake pipe/electrical loom {hidden in the centre partition}), through the fuel tank bay and into the engine bay. This is a doddle to fit in comparison to the original routing and makes no difference to function. There is NO WAY that it's an 8 hour job and frankly you are burning money to pay Lotus that much to change it . . .

hth

Fd

[fergusd]

oh . . . and . . .

This theory about temperature having an impact on a steel braided hose is misinformed BS.

If you have temp related gearbox problems AFTER fitting a braided hose (regardless of the routing) then you have one of the following problems :-

a) Gearbox Fault
b) Clutch Fault
c) INCORRECTLY BLED CLUTCH HOSE

The clutch hose is quite difficult to bleed without a pressure bleeder, I've seen 2 cars with air in the system following a dealer hose replacement, they still have problems until the system was properly bled.

There is no way that coolant at 120C max will have any effect on a braided clutch hose, which will happily withstand 400C+ when used on the brake system of your car . . .

The red hose suffers from the problem ONLY because it is made of a flexible plastic . . .

If you get someone who actually knows what they're doing then you'll get it sorted no probs, however I would not include all dealers in that list of people . . .

hth

Fd

[fergusd]

. . . sigh . . . finally . . .

You will have difficulty pulling the new hose through using the original one, as they ziptie the old hose to the coolant pipes in the chassis. Some cars are easyish and some are a total b***ard . . .

so there you go

Fd

[Spunagain]

Alternatively you can try various bodges which have worked for me: Get some heat shield fabric (rock wool backed with reflective foil) and cable tie it over the exposed red hose in the engine bay. This does help to some degree. It is also possible to adjust the clutch pedal so that it bites earlier, this gives you more play to get the clutch in when the expansion does occur -Haydons did this for me.) The combination of these two has cured my problems (at least the clutch ones) Much cheaper!