**Replacing the Radiator**

We started by removing the radiator cap to begin working on the replacement process. Our goal was to put everything back together and ensure it's properly sealed to prevent leaks. We noticed that the water pump and the straight part were going into the lower radiator hole, so we decided to just put this in there and then connect our bottom hose and make sure it goes all the way down. Once we had it in place, we put the hose clamps on and filled it up with antifreeze.

We took our time to ensure everything was properly secured and sealed. We slid our hose clamp all the way up and then used a little funnel to help us fill the radiator with coolant. Our recommended mixture for this vehicle was a 50/50 antifreeze to water ratio, which is specified in the owner's manual. As we filled it up, we noticed that it started slowing down and coming to the top, so we knew it was time to burp the system. Since there was no bleeder valve on the water pump anywhere in this vehicle, we had to squeeze the upper radiator hose to force all the air out.

We repeated the process until we thought we'd gotten rid of all the air, and then filled it up to the recommended mark. Once everything was full, we closed the overflow tank and put our radiator cap back on. We twisted it until it locked into place and took a moment to double-check that everything was properly secured. Next, we started the engine and watched the temperature gauge closely to ensure it didn't overheat.

We kept an eye on the temperature as it warmed up, waiting for it to reach a normal reading. The thermostat was initially closed, but as the engine ran, it began to open up. We also took the opportunity to check our new hoses and clamps for any signs of leaks. Everything seemed to be in order, and we were confident that our replacement had been successful.

As we waited for the temperature gauge to stabilize, we turned on the heat to ensure the coolant was flowing through the heater core. If there was no heat coming out, it could indicate that air was still trapped in the system. After about 15 minutes of idling and a quick test drive, everything checked out, and we were pleased with the outcome of our repair job.

**Additional Resources**

If you found this video helpful, please consider giving it a thumbs up. We also encourage you to subscribe to our channel for updates on new videos, including how-to guides and tutorials. Be sure to check out our Twitter and Facebook pages for additional resources, top tips, and giveaways. In the future, we'll be publishing more videos on various topics, so stay tuned for those as well.

**Tips and Maintenance**

One of the most important things you can do to keep your vehicle in good condition is to regularly flush and replace your coolant system. This will help ensure that your engine is properly cooled and prevent overheating. In this video, we'll be covering how to perform a coolant flush and add new coolant to your system. Be sure to check back for that video soon.

For now, it's time to wrap up our radiator replacement guide. We hope you found this tutorial helpful in understanding the process of replacing a radiator on your vehicle. Remember to always follow proper safety procedures when working with chemicals and electrical components, and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or need further clarification on any step of the process.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys Chris fix here today I'm going to show you how to change the upper and lower radiator hoses I'm also going to show you how to diagnose a bad radiator hose and I'll also let you know when a radiator hose should be changed and what to look for so here's everything you're going to need for the job in my case I'm just going to need pliers and then the lower and upper radiator hose and then what you also might need is some clamps just in case your clamps are old and they don't spring anymore you could get the springy type or you could get the type that you clamp down yourself like this hose clamp and in that case you might a nut driver or a screwdriver cuz it's a flathead and then you also might need a bucket if you have radiator fluid in my case I don't so let's get to work first thing I want to go over is what a radiator hose is radiator hose is a hose that goes from your radiator which is underneath this fan and there's a top one that goes into the engine or the water pump or whatever and then there's a bottom one which is down here I'll go on the floor right now but it's at the bottom corner of the radiator and you can see it right there that big thick one that's at the bottom and what these hoses do is take radiator fluid and move it from the radiator into the engine then from the engine back into the radiator to be cooled so they're pretty important so that your engine doesn't overheat if you get a leak in one or one catastrophically fails like in my case your engine could overheat this car has about 300 ,000 M on it and it's 20 years old almost so you want to start checking your hoses when your hoses are about 15 years old or your car has 200 250,000 Mi on it hoses usually last a long time A lot of times they never need changing but just to be safe it's always a good idea so what happened in my case is I had a catastrophic failure and you could see here the hose is completely ripped it's just torn open from the pressure and it caused all the fluid to go drain out uh while I was driving that's not good good thing I was close to home and I got home no problem no overheating no engine damage now how I knew this went is because there was a lot of steam coming out of my engine and that's like one of the first things that you'll see when there's a radiator hose going you'll see Steam because the antifreezing water will leak hit the engine and steam up and the last thing is if you get a high engine temp so if your engine temps are up and you don't know why a lot of times it's because your coolant not in your radiator or you're not getting coolant to your radiator it could be a water pump or like I said could be the hose now to try to even avoid this situation like I said before about 200,000 Mi you want to check them and what you do is you just squeeze it people say to do it with the engine warm I don't like that idea because you'll burn yourself but uh you're just looking for inconsistencies you go along and you just you squeeze it so a lot of times this has a cover so I can't do anything this just a heat shield for the airbox but a lot of times you'll feel a really spongy spot or a really soft spot or you'll see cracks cracks mean it's bad if there's a bulge somewhere a bulge in this so it pops up that means it's bad if it's soft here and then hard here a lot of times that means you could be going bad the biggest thing is soft spots a lot of times there's metal wire in here so you won't notice it being soft until something goes bad now if you think your radiator hose has gone bad what you do is you just squeeze it and listen I'm going to put this next to the crack you could hear air coming in and out of that so that's a good way to see where your crack is to see if the hose is bad the other thing is just visual inspection for cracks and and bulges and stuff and obviously that's pretty easy to see this job is super easy and it's crazy how much the mechanics will charge I got some averages for this car I got $175 quote that's parts and labor the parts only cost me 40 bucks so give you an idea on a Honda Accord it's 150 bucks on an Audi A4 it's 250 bucks on a BMW 3 Series it's 200 bucks so you get the idea the average is like $150 to $250 just to change out two simple radiator hoses and on most cars the radiator hose isn't that bad to get to as you can see here so we're going to work on getting this top radiator hose taken off and it's pretty simple there's a clamp on the radiator and then you follow the hose and there's a clamp on the engine and that's actually where the thermostat sits now might be a good time to change your thermostat depending on when you changed it but we'll focus on that in another video cuz I don't need to change my thermostat It's relatively new so you just get your pliers on here and then wiggle the clamp right off and when that one is loosened up we'll make it even easier for ourselves and we'll loosen this one up okay just going to use your hands here might want to use the screwdriver help your pride a little bit and then when you're taking these off I find it's good to wiggle it left and right or clockwise and counterclockwise just to break the seal and then pull it out okay so once we get this side it'll make it easier to get this side if you want you can take your airbox out or whatever's in the way I'm being lazy I'm able to do it without doing that so if you need to use that flathead screwdriver to get underneath to help pry this up that could be helpful just get that lip up just like that just getting that lip up will help a lot cuz then it'll break that seal that forms because it's just you know old and there's fluid and stuff after you break that seal with the screwdriver you want to just wiggle it clockwise counterclockwise that'll break the seal around the whole end and then just pull it right off just like so there's a little bit of extra coolant left in this hose not much so just keep it facing upwards remember when I said we had to use a bucket well here's a good time to use the bucket now we'll unclamp the hose clamps cuz we're going to use them again you can see where this radiator hose split it's completely open here now we'll get the other hose clamp pull it off so my hose clamps are still really good they're nice and tight as you can see it takes good amount of force to open them up there's no cracks or anything so I'm going to reuse them so right now when this is off just slide it down make sure it's not going to interfere or anything do the other side too good and now let's put this on the car now this is just as easy if not easier than taking it off you got your spot here that connects to the engine and your spot here it connects to the radiator I'm going to put the engine spot in first one thing you might want to do before you put them on clean off the uh the nozzle here just to get all the gunk off of it and make sure it has a smooth surface and the other thing is you might want to spray it with some WD40 just a little bit of WD40 like that will help you out a lot when you're trying to slide this thing on so once you get over that lip the rest is pretty easy you just push it right on now you see it's it's sitting up against that Notch from before now we're going to wait to put the clamp on and we're going to do the other side which should actually like it's already lining up pretty good so this shouldn't be a problem let hit this end with a little bit of WD40 so the reason why you leave that clamp undone is because then you could wiggle this beautiful okay now we can put the clamps on another thing to mention is you want to make sure your clamps are in the a good dire Direction so that you could easily grab them cuz if they're not they could be upside down and you might have a hard time spinning them there you go and I just place your clamp right on there you can see the clamp is in a good spot let's go work on the next one just wiggle that in there so now we have our clamp on here and our clamp on here Bolt sitting up against the end of the hose and you want to make sure your heat shield is in the correct spot which it is and the top is done now we're going to go underneath do the lower radiator hose next this is where you're going to probably need your bucket so now we're going to change the lower radiator hose so you can see the lower radiator hose clamp on to the engine part I think it goes to the water pump is pretty easy to get to and this is a little tight in here but if you turn the plier sideways it it should be pretty easy to get to also I have a bucket ready just in case I don't know how much radiator fluid's still in here but you don't want it to get on the ground and pollute so pull that off I don't know how much is left in here here it comes okay that's not that much just let that drain out after most of that drains take off this hose clamp so now we're going to get that hose clamp off and take this hose off okay now once the hose clamp is off and out of the way we're going to pull this hose off twist it clockwise and counterclockwise get it broken loose start pulling there we go now we'll just put the hose clamps on the new one and get the new one in and then fill it up with cool so get your hose clamps put them in the middle get both of them on there and let's go install this another tip to make this install easier is run your hose under warm water you can see my lens is fogging up cuz it's so hot this is really hot you could also use like a heat gun or something this will help make it more malleable spray some WD40 on the inside or on the uh the end one thing I didn't mention before is you should always make sure the hoses are the same the same length the same bends and stuff and uh this is pretty close this isn't as good but uh it's doable so remember the curve part was facing into the water pump and the straight part was going into the lower radiator hole so we're just going to put this in here and then connect our bottom hose and make sure it goes all the way down good once it's all the way down we'll put the hose clamps on and fill it up with antifreeze now we take our hose clamp and just slide it down all the way to the back like so make sure when you let go you let go in an area that you could get your pliers back in in a future date so that's a good spot right in the corner there so let's go do the other one move this clamp all the way up and now we can fill the radiator with coolant so now we'll locate the overflow tank for the coolant open that up and also we want to find the radiator cap and then we take the radiator cap off we're going to fill the radiator up and then we're going to fill this up we're going to be using a 50/50 antifreeze to water mixture which is recommended for this vehicle I'm using a little funnel to help me out if you don't have a funnel you could just cut a water bottle or a soda bottle and uh use the cap end to put the cap end here make sure you use the correct antifreeze for your vehicle make sure you know how much antifreeze you're going to need to use and that'll all be in the owner's manual now once it starts slowing down and coming at the top what you're going to do is you're going to burp the system and there's no bleeder valve or anything on the water pump anywhere in this vehicle if there was you just loosen the bleeder valve and you fill it the rest of the way up but since there's no bleeder valve what you do you go to the upper radiator hose and you squeeze it and you get here and what this is doing is this is forcing all that air out and you can see how much more I could add now you can see it's all the way up to the top and you can see like bubbles are starting to come out Watch What Happens I'm squeezing it right now ready forcing all that air out so you're going to just repeat that until you think you're pretty good and then you're going to fill this up to the mark where it says full cold so my radiator is filled now I'm filling my overflow tank so after that's filled up to the Mark we can take that out close that so now we'll put our radiator cap back on so you just put it back on you push down and you twist until it locks and now we're going to we're going to run the engine and watch the temperature make sure it doesn't overheat and you want to keep an eye on your temperature here that temperature gauge is super important if you have an air bubble cuz it's not being bled properly you could still overheat even though we added all that cooling so we'll let it run to get to a little bit warmer of a temperature so the thermostat starts opening up right now the water pump is spinning but the thermostat over here is closed as this is running we'll check our new hoses and the clamps to make sure they're not leaking that looks good that one looks good that looks good and that one looks good we'll give that one more check at the end but everything looks good right now so we're waiting for that to get up somewhere in the normal area and we're going to keep an eye on it I'm going to sit inside here cuz you want to make sure it doesn't overheat another thing you're going to want to do is turn the heat on that gets the coolant flowing through the heater core which could also trap bubbles you want to make sure heat is coming out the heat is coming out that means there's no air in that system if there's no heat you could still have air in the system so you'd want to bleed it some more after about 15 minutes of idling and a quick test drive everything checks out and this job is complete if this video was helpful give it a thumbs up also if you like watching my hatto videos subscribe then you get updates of when when I publish how-to videos also check out the chrisfix Twitter and Facebook links in the description below that'll give you updates on when I publish new videos I'll also put up top tips and giveaways so that's that's helpful up on the screen I'm going to put some how-to videos one of them is going to be how to flush your coolant system to get it nice and cleaned out and add new coolant there'll be some other videos as well if you want to see them click on them the links are also in the description below just in case you can't click on the screenhey guys Chris fix here today I'm going to show you how to change the upper and lower radiator hoses I'm also going to show you how to diagnose a bad radiator hose and I'll also let you know when a radiator hose should be changed and what to look for so here's everything you're going to need for the job in my case I'm just going to need pliers and then the lower and upper radiator hose and then what you also might need is some clamps just in case your clamps are old and they don't spring anymore you could get the springy type or you could get the type that you clamp down yourself like this hose clamp and in that case you might a nut driver or a screwdriver cuz it's a flathead and then you also might need a bucket if you have radiator fluid in my case I don't so let's get to work first thing I want to go over is what a radiator hose is radiator hose is a hose that goes from your radiator which is underneath this fan and there's a top one that goes into the engine or the water pump or whatever and then there's a bottom one which is down here I'll go on the floor right now but it's at the bottom corner of the radiator and you can see it right there that big thick one that's at the bottom and what these hoses do is take radiator fluid and move it from the radiator into the engine then from the engine back into the radiator to be cooled so they're pretty important so that your engine doesn't overheat if you get a leak in one or one catastrophically fails like in my case your engine could overheat this car has about 300 ,000 M on it and it's 20 years old almost so you want to start checking your hoses when your hoses are about 15 years old or your car has 200 250,000 Mi on it hoses usually last a long time A lot of times they never need changing but just to be safe it's always a good idea so what happened in my case is I had a catastrophic failure and you could see here the hose is completely ripped it's just torn open from the pressure and it caused all the fluid to go drain out uh while I was driving that's not good good thing I was close to home and I got home no problem no overheating no engine damage now how I knew this went is because there was a lot of steam coming out of my engine and that's like one of the first things that you'll see when there's a radiator hose going you'll see Steam because the antifreezing water will leak hit the engine and steam up and the last thing is if you get a high engine temp so if your engine temps are up and you don't know why a lot of times it's because your coolant not in your radiator or you're not getting coolant to your radiator it could be a water pump or like I said could be the hose now to try to even avoid this situation like I said before about 200,000 Mi you want to check them and what you do is you just squeeze it people say to do it with the engine warm I don't like that idea because you'll burn yourself but uh you're just looking for inconsistencies you go along and you just you squeeze it so a lot of times this has a cover so I can't do anything this just a heat shield for the airbox but a lot of times you'll feel a really spongy spot or a really soft spot or you'll see cracks cracks mean it's bad if there's a bulge somewhere a bulge in this so it pops up that means it's bad if it's soft here and then hard here a lot of times that means you could be going bad the biggest thing is soft spots a lot of times there's metal wire in here so you won't notice it being soft until something goes bad now if you think your radiator hose has gone bad what you do is you just squeeze it and listen I'm going to put this next to the crack you could hear air coming in and out of that so that's a good way to see where your crack is to see if the hose is bad the other thing is just visual inspection for cracks and and bulges and stuff and obviously that's pretty easy to see this job is super easy and it's crazy how much the mechanics will charge I got some averages for this car I got $175 quote that's parts and labor the parts only cost me 40 bucks so give you an idea on a Honda Accord it's 150 bucks on an Audi A4 it's 250 bucks on a BMW 3 Series it's 200 bucks so you get the idea the average is like $150 to $250 just to change out two simple radiator hoses and on most cars the radiator hose isn't that bad to get to as you can see here so we're going to work on getting this top radiator hose taken off and it's pretty simple there's a clamp on the radiator and then you follow the hose and there's a clamp on the engine and that's actually where the thermostat sits now might be a good time to change your thermostat depending on when you changed it but we'll focus on that in another video cuz I don't need to change my thermostat It's relatively new so you just get your pliers on here and then wiggle the clamp right off and when that one is loosened up we'll make it even easier for ourselves and we'll loosen this one up okay just going to use your hands here might want to use the screwdriver help your pride a little bit and then when you're taking these off I find it's good to wiggle it left and right or clockwise and counterclockwise just to break the seal and then pull it out okay so once we get this side it'll make it easier to get this side if you want you can take your airbox out or whatever's in the way I'm being lazy I'm able to do it without doing that so if you need to use that flathead screwdriver to get underneath to help pry this up that could be helpful just get that lip up just like that just getting that lip up will help a lot cuz then it'll break that seal that forms because it's just you know old and there's fluid and stuff after you break that seal with the screwdriver you want to just wiggle it clockwise counterclockwise that'll break the seal around the whole end and then just pull it right off just like so there's a little bit of extra coolant left in this hose not much so just keep it facing upwards remember when I said we had to use a bucket well here's a good time to use the bucket now we'll unclamp the hose clamps cuz we're going to use them again you can see where this radiator hose split it's completely open here now we'll get the other hose clamp pull it off so my hose clamps are still really good they're nice and tight as you can see it takes good amount of force to open them up there's no cracks or anything so I'm going to reuse them so right now when this is off just slide it down make sure it's not going to interfere or anything do the other side too good and now let's put this on the car now this is just as easy if not easier than taking it off you got your spot here that connects to the engine and your spot here it connects to the radiator I'm going to put the engine spot in first one thing you might want to do before you put them on clean off the uh the nozzle here just to get all the gunk off of it and make sure it has a smooth surface and the other thing is you might want to spray it with some WD40 just a little bit of WD40 like that will help you out a lot when you're trying to slide this thing on so once you get over that lip the rest is pretty easy you just push it right on now you see it's it's sitting up against that Notch from before now we're going to wait to put the clamp on and we're going to do the other side which should actually like it's already lining up pretty good so this shouldn't be a problem let hit this end with a little bit of WD40 so the reason why you leave that clamp undone is because then you could wiggle this beautiful okay now we can put the clamps on another thing to mention is you want to make sure your clamps are in the a good dire Direction so that you could easily grab them cuz if they're not they could be upside down and you might have a hard time spinning them there you go and I just place your clamp right on there you can see the clamp is in a good spot let's go work on the next one just wiggle that in there so now we have our clamp on here and our clamp on here Bolt sitting up against the end of the hose and you want to make sure your heat shield is in the correct spot which it is and the top is done now we're going to go underneath do the lower radiator hose next this is where you're going to probably need your bucket so now we're going to change the lower radiator hose so you can see the lower radiator hose clamp on to the engine part I think it goes to the water pump is pretty easy to get to and this is a little tight in here but if you turn the plier sideways it it should be pretty easy to get to also I have a bucket ready just in case I don't know how much radiator fluid's still in here but you don't want it to get on the ground and pollute so pull that off I don't know how much is left in here here it comes okay that's not that much just let that drain out after most of that drains take off this hose clamp so now we're going to get that hose clamp off and take this hose off okay now once the hose clamp is off and out of the way we're going to pull this hose off twist it clockwise and counterclockwise get it broken loose start pulling there we go now we'll just put the hose clamps on the new one and get the new one in and then fill it up with cool so get your hose clamps put them in the middle get both of them on there and let's go install this another tip to make this install easier is run your hose under warm water you can see my lens is fogging up cuz it's so hot this is really hot you could also use like a heat gun or something this will help make it more malleable spray some WD40 on the inside or on the uh the end one thing I didn't mention before is you should always make sure the hoses are the same the same length the same bends and stuff and uh this is pretty close this isn't as good but uh it's doable so remember the curve part was facing into the water pump and the straight part was going into the lower radiator hole so we're just going to put this in here and then connect our bottom hose and make sure it goes all the way down good once it's all the way down we'll put the hose clamps on and fill it up with antifreeze now we take our hose clamp and just slide it down all the way to the back like so make sure when you let go you let go in an area that you could get your pliers back in in a future date so that's a good spot right in the corner there so let's go do the other one move this clamp all the way up and now we can fill the radiator with coolant so now we'll locate the overflow tank for the coolant open that up and also we want to find the radiator cap and then we take the radiator cap off we're going to fill the radiator up and then we're going to fill this up we're going to be using a 50/50 antifreeze to water mixture which is recommended for this vehicle I'm using a little funnel to help me out if you don't have a funnel you could just cut a water bottle or a soda bottle and uh use the cap end to put the cap end here make sure you use the correct antifreeze for your vehicle make sure you know how much antifreeze you're going to need to use and that'll all be in the owner's manual now once it starts slowing down and coming at the top what you're going to do is you're going to burp the system and there's no bleeder valve or anything on the water pump anywhere in this vehicle if there was you just loosen the bleeder valve and you fill it the rest of the way up but since there's no bleeder valve what you do you go to the upper radiator hose and you squeeze it and you get here and what this is doing is this is forcing all that air out and you can see how much more I could add now you can see it's all the way up to the top and you can see like bubbles are starting to come out Watch What Happens I'm squeezing it right now ready forcing all that air out so you're going to just repeat that until you think you're pretty good and then you're going to fill this up to the mark where it says full cold so my radiator is filled now I'm filling my overflow tank so after that's filled up to the Mark we can take that out close that so now we'll put our radiator cap back on so you just put it back on you push down and you twist until it locks and now we're going to we're going to run the engine and watch the temperature make sure it doesn't overheat and you want to keep an eye on your temperature here that temperature gauge is super important if you have an air bubble cuz it's not being bled properly you could still overheat even though we added all that cooling so we'll let it run to get to a little bit warmer of a temperature so the thermostat starts opening up right now the water pump is spinning but the thermostat over here is closed as this is running we'll check our new hoses and the clamps to make sure they're not leaking that looks good that one looks good that looks good and that one looks good we'll give that one more check at the end but everything looks good right now so we're waiting for that to get up somewhere in the normal area and we're going to keep an eye on it I'm going to sit inside here cuz you want to make sure it doesn't overheat another thing you're going to want to do is turn the heat on that gets the coolant flowing through the heater core which could also trap bubbles you want to make sure heat is coming out the heat is coming out that means there's no air in that system if there's no heat you could still have air in the system so you'd want to bleed it some more after about 15 minutes of idling and a quick test drive everything checks out and this job is complete if this video was helpful give it a thumbs up also if you like watching my hatto videos subscribe then you get updates of when when I publish how-to videos also check out the chrisfix Twitter and Facebook links in the description below that'll give you updates on when I publish new videos I'll also put up top tips and giveaways so that's that's helpful up on the screen I'm going to put some how-to videos one of them is going to be how to flush your coolant system to get it nice and cleaned out and add new coolant there'll be some other videos as well if you want to see them click on them the links are also in the description below just in case you can't click on the screen\n"