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My pipe to nowhere. What is this?


bg35765

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I replaced my alternator earlier this week using the instructions in the FAQ section. (More on that later. My volt/ohm meter test looked good, but I don't want to celebrate until I actually drive the car in case I screwed up the steering or something.)

 

Anyway, one problem that I ran into was that when I dropped the passenger side of the cradle the alternator ended up directly behind this pipe. It starts in a vertical position near the firewall on the passenger side, goes down and then bends toward the front of the car.

 

My pipe had rusted and broken off where it passed above the wheel. So it did not appear to be doing anything and I ended up taking it off to get the alternator out. But it makes me wonder what it is supposed to do. Does anybody know?

 

Here are a couple pics:

 

 

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that WAS a heater core pipe. It should connect to the fitting right near the water pump. I bet if you check it out, someone replaced part of or all of it with a section of rubber heater hose. those things rust out all the time on northern cars.

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To comment further on DiNunzio's post. There was originally wheel well splash guards there (similar to mudflaps) but those are pretty much non-existent these days. I replaced mine with an OEM GM pipe and its already starting to bubble again 2 years later.

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yep, I just spliced a long piece of heater hose in there to replace that section of pipe on my Cutlass. But I retained the stock routing.

 

I'm curious to see how they have run the hose from the water pump housing to the heater core now....

 

On 91 Cutlass's there is another rubber hose running beside that pipe, from the alternator cooling fan in front of the RF tire, to the back of the alternator.

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yep, I just spliced a long piece of heater hose in there to replace that section of pipe on my Cutlass. But I retained the stock routing.

 

I'm curious to see how they have run the hose from the water pump housing to the heater core now....

 

On 91 Cutlass's there is another rubber hose running beside that pipe, from the alternator cooling fan in front of the RF tire, to the back of the alternator.

 

That fan is only on '91 3.4 cars. They all got them.

 

I had a shop cut the line and replace it with a 3/8" heater hose and it still leaked. When you fuck something up so simple as that I'll never go to you again. I've seen cars at the yard have that hose replaced and someone just runs hose from the firewall over the plenum to where it goes which I find very funny.

 

Sidebar: Where the hell do people find green and orange heater hose? I've never seen it at a parts store and it makes me wonder if someone cut a garden hose. :eek:

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I wasn't sure on applications, I thought it was only LQ1 91 Cutlass's for some odd reason...

 

Hmmmm......now that I think about it the '91 z34 that I had did have a fan, but it was a Canadian car.......so maybe Canadian cars got fans?

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I've replaced that entire pipe with heater hose and a few clamps on every GP I've ever owned, retaining the factory routing, but just pulling it slightly higher away from the wheel well opening. Even my AZ GP pipe was starting to rust.. its a shitty location and poor material.

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Yup, same here, just cut out the rusted area and got some rubber pipe and bastard still drips. Just changed the coolant and gobbed some RTV around the ends and let it dry over night and filled it back up and coolant ate the RTV away and leaks again. What a lovely design, wanna whack the guy who thought that up with his pos pipe :lol:

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