Good day turned bad

So i had washed my car and took it out for a nice ride, got back and parked in the garage. Opened the engine room in order to make sure my tiptronic "breather" filter was in place ( i installed a cold air tube kit a couple of days ago). I was not 100% satisfied with its position so i moved it a bit and must accidentally put some pressure on a cooling hose and "swosh", the fekking hose snapped resulting in coolant spraying all over the engine bay and down the garage floor, emptying it all I feel like just going to bed and hope to wake up and its just a bad dream..

Shytty...good news that it didn't happen while driving.

Be happy. If you made that discovery on the road..... Do you mean the 'hose snapped' or the hose fitting snapped? I wonder how many other hoses/fittings need replacement?

Listen: That does not constitute a bad day. Your coolant hemorrhage did not occur out on the road and unbeknownst to you. If you had seen the coolant temperature gauge peg to the far right as the first sign something was wrong, what would you have already done to your cylinder heads? This is a mercifully inexpensive issue to repair. I think you are exceedingly lucky!

Quotes source post: 12060523

Well, the hose fitting (small plastic bit that the rubber hose is put over) broke. Kinda hard to explain. Yea i�m happy it didn't happen on the road all tho it was me, accidentally putting weight on the hose fitting, that caused it to brake. Thanks for the cheerful reply's. PS, having coolant sprayed all over the engine room - do i need to do something special except wiping of what�s visible to my eye�s?

Simple Green and a pressure washer will be your friend here.

I had the same thing happen to me when working on the engine. That is the most useless excuse for a water union I have ever seen in a car. I replaced with brass. Made a total mess. And then I overfilled the coolant and made more mess with overflow all over the engine while driving it. All fixed up and good now but what a poor design and location. I just barely touched the hose and the plastic snapped and instant fountain.

Quotes source post: 12060729

I would caution against Simple Green due to its corrosive properties on aluminium. As you are using a pressure washer, you're probably removing all of the product so it is perhaps less of a concern. Nonetheless, I suggest using a citrus-based degreaser or at least diluting the Simple Green.

An update: I have always suspected it but now i know for sure - my dad is the Swedish Macgyver. Called him up and told him what had happened, talking about my options (towing, getting the indi to drive to my house etc). He wouldnt agree, 1 hour later he was at my house ready to do his magic.... This will do untill i get it properly fixed (all tho i suspect this is just as good ot better but not a s good looking as original parts). Took it for a drive and it all seemed ok temp and other wise.

Quotes source post: 12060635

Use extreme simple green, designed for aircraft and aluminum and use a simple garden hose to hose off. Pressure washer could damage the plastic parts and wires/connectors. Make sure the drive belt is free of coolant and also cover your alternator and don't get any water inside it.

[QUOTE=Daniel Kant;12061029]An update: I have always suspected it but now i know for sure - my dad is the Swedish Macgyver. Called him up and told him what had happened, talking about my options (towing, getting the indi to drive to my house etc). He wouldnt agree, 1 hour later he was at my house ready to do his magic.... This will do untill i get it properly fixed (all tho i suspect this is just as good ot better but not a s good looking as original parts). Took it for a drive and it all seemed ok temp and other wise. That's all you need unless you want to replace it with a shorter piece. I used this one, but either way its better than putting an OEM stock plastic piece back in. As others have said, you broke it in the best place possible being at home =)

This is a very common coupling to break. It is a poor design. I replaced mine with a factory part and in the process had to remove parts of the plastic that were left in the coolant tube. Others have replaced with a plumbing connector from a home improvement store, which is arguably a more robust solution.

Pretty minimal in the scope of things. Usually a thread with a title like that means something a bit more catastrophic. Anyway, glad to see you have a fix in place!

Quotes source post: 12061218

For me, not being a diy guy or experianced in cars or engines, it initially was real bad as i pictured the worse. Did not mean to dissapoint you. But yea, it was not a blown engine

If that's the worst thing that happens to you.........not a bad day.

Just a little nitpicky point...It's not the "design" of the part that's bad per se', but the execution in that particular plastic (that degrades over time and breaks) that makes it "disposable" when obviously it shouldn't be. I'm in no way apologizing for Porsche in the use of a plastic part in this spot...I'm not sure what the cost differential would be to have the part made of aluminum or brass, but you'd think that in such an expensive car it wouldn't be a deal breaker. BTW, I love the " Swedish MacGiver" fix! If you don't want to see the copper tube, just undo the hose clamp(s), and slip a piece of heat shrink tube over the end of the hose so it covers the copper and butts up to the plastic "bracket". Shrink it over the end of the hose and the copper, reinstall clamps - Nice factory look!

The design of a part includes the materials used so I would still say this is a bad design.

I am willing to bet that anyone who DIYed anything around the air intake box, the drive belt, or alternator has broken this POS part. I snapped mine the same way, and so did countless other people based on this forum. In all cases the plastic used in the fitting has degraded to the point of being so brittle that it snaps and crumbles if you squeeze it. I ended up doing the brass copper swap on my car after removing all of the remaining fitting pieces from inside the hose.

I know that brittle plastic plagues BMWs. My Z3 was a fine example of replacing a part and then waiting for the ancillary plastic bits that broke while doing it to come in before you could drive it! I don't know if it is true or not, but I have heard that this is a result of Germany companies being required to meet "green" standards by using a certain percentage of recycled materials. Plastic is a cheap recycled material.

Quotes source post: 12062889

Well, you can "still say" whatever you want, but that doesn't make it so. While the material may have been part of the design, it was more likely dictated by the "bean counters" that were hovering over the engineers shoulders and looking for ways to cut production costs. Check out this article (and more importantly the first comment directly from designer Pinky Lai). http://www.total911.com/in-praise-of...e-996-carrera/ ** Unfortunately we live in "the age of plastics" and generally speaking, plastics don't age well - especially in engine bays where heating/cooling cycles really take a toll on them.