Land Rover 109 coolant hose issue and PS pump adjustment

Ohhh another fly in the ointment!

    So you know I did around 26 miles on Monday to the store and back. Very thrilling! Of course I got up Tuesday morning wanting to show it off, but I wanted to check for leaks and stuff before I took off. Well, upon inspection I found that the lower coolant hose had kinked/collapsed.

I'm not enamored of these hoses as they have a wire coil in the inside to hold shape and it rusts out. I don't know if this rusted out or just bent but it needed to go. I thought I would just put on my spare but I just couldn't bring myself to put on another one.

   I also found that my used power steering pump was leaking by getting a drop on my glasses!

    those are expensive so I'm going to try some transmission leak treatment by Blue Devil first. I'll let you know how it goes.

   The fan belt and power steering belts were loose too.

Back to the coolant hose;   Setting about with draining the coolant I looked around. I have some old hoses but nothing quite fit. I tried an old trick. I cut 2 hoses and spliced them together with a piece of 1-1/2" steel tubing. with some trial fitting I finally got something that worked and I was OK with. Not happy with putting steel in the tube for the splice, but it was all I had. After I had it all on I decided not to put the antifreeze back in. Instead I would wait until today and try to find a piece of stainless tubing.

With that done I started working on the belts. The fan belt was easy enough but the alternator belt is tough due to the tight space. One of the bolts I can only turn about 1/8 a turn at a time so it takes forever and my hands barely fit. I finally got it loose and put the pry bar on to take up the tension but I couldn't get it to move far enough!  %^&&**!!! Puzzling it out, the tensioning link was too short. I needed to make a longer one. First I had to take off that bitch of a bolt holding it on. Probably took a half an hour to get the 1" bolt off. By now it was dark and the mossies were out so I quit for the day.

Today Wednesday;

While I was doing that my mind was working....thump....thump....clunk...there has to be an easier/better way!  Then whilst under the front I saw it! EUREKA! I could make a longer one and run it off the bottom of the power steering pump bracket instead of the top. It would be a straight shot and much easier to adjust.

Using a piece of 3'16" flat plate I had I drilled some holes and marked out a slot and cut it out with me Dremel and filed the sides for the 5/16" bolt to fit.

You can see the wrenches on the bitch bolt.

Flat plate work;

I know it's off center and I'm not sure how that happened but it should work. Here's the old and the new.

Test fitting showed I needed to put in a slight offset

And the final fit.

I waited until around 1000 to go in search of stainless tubing and rode down to the Daren at ARC-TEC. We gabbed for a bit and he came up with a piece of stainless perfect for my need.

The stainless and the steel tubes

Stainless on the left

It was fairly easy and quick to remove the steel and replace it with the stainless. What happened to my text??

This is the approximate position it needs to be in. On the 200 the outlet is more vertiacle than the 2.25's.

But I got it on. Here's how it looks on Thursday morning,

About that time I decided to rid myself of the top hose with the wire in it. So I removed the 200 t-stat housing and hose.

Look at the rust!!!!

It was replaced with on older 2.25 model and a 90 degree hose was put on.

I filled it with coolant and ran the engine and so far there are no leaks, well other than the power steering pump. Fingers crossed!