Eliminate the throttle body water inlet and outlet hoses - What I did !

Jan Larsson

Active Member
Joined
Nov 22, 2001
I'm sure many of you have bypassed, plugged or somehow eliminated the water coolant hoses that run to the throttle body.

Used to be a recommended modification back in the days to help keep the air entering the throttle body as cool as possible.

Anyway, I had a ATR kit installed that was just a small metal insert (plug) in each hose to stop water from circulating via the throttle body ... not a good solution considering these "plugs" do rust over time pretty badly ... so decided to clean up the engine a bit and elimintate those hoses.

Main purpose letting coolant circulate through the trottle body is to make sure that in really cold weather, and we are talking very very cold weather, the throttle body would not ice up; well were I live and most others live and the way our TTA's are being used there's no need for this at all.

What I planned to do was a very clean update that would look like it came from the factory without those hoses; this would include:

1. replace the heater coolant pipe on the passanger side intake with one without the water niples on there (luckily these days you can get a stainless steel reproduction with or without those nipples).

2. Eliminate the nipples on the throttle body completly rather than just leave them or plug them up.

Got the stainless steel heater pipe, had it powder coated black to match everything else; and this is a great upgrade if you ever taken one of these off your engine and looked inside how rusty these end up being after all these years.

Got a spare throttle body and did the following:

1. cut the nipples off flush using a dremel
2. countersunk the area of the nipple
3. used a tap to cut a few threads in the hole left (just to help the JB weld a bit)
4. degreesed and cleaned up the area a bit
5. JB Welded the holes up; make sure you don't use too much just enought to make it flush; you can cut it with a razor blade before it totaly cured if needed.
6. sanded the areas to smooth it all out once the JB Weld dried properly

So once I had all the above sorted I drained enough coolant to be able to disconnect lines and hoses to replace it all.

Turned out really good I think in the end.
 
This is what it looked like before I started (my engine on a stand)
 

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Stainless coolant lines you can buy (both version shown; at the top is the original style reproduction and bottom is the one without the water nipples on there I used).

Second picture is the one I used after having had it powder coated.
 

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Throttle Body

Nipples circled in red that was removed and a couple of pictures of how I cut, countersunk and finally filled the holes using JB weld.
 

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And everything installed and back together again.

Looks cleaner, less risk for leaks, and stainless coolant pipe reduce rusty content in coolant
clap.gif


And I should add those water inlet and outlet hoses were discontinued years ago ... only way to replace them is with same size normal heater hose.

Not the cheapest way doing it if all you want to do is eliminate the coolant to circulate through your throttle body however looks much better this way I think.
 

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Nice write up and that's a clean motor you got there.

Yeah.....it's beautifully clean! I'm actually jealous! Real nice write-up on this, too. Looks like you know what you're doing real well.

(I'm not looking at my GN engine for a while now.:bag:)

Bruce '87 Grand National
 
Yeah.....it's beautifully clean! I'm actually jealous! Real nice write-up on this, too. Looks like you know what you're doing real well.

(I'm not looking at my GN engine for a while now.:bag:)

Bruce '87 Grand National

Thanks much appreciate; always wanted to do an engine up this way and when my crank bearings went south I had the opportunity to spend the time (and money) building the engine properly from the ground up and also do the detailing work (powder coated parts, plated parts, ARP hardware etc) in a nice clean settled way.
 
Stainless coolant lines you can buy (both version shown; at the top is the original style reproduction and bottom is the one without the water nipples on there I used).

Second picture is the one I used after having had it powder coated.

Would you share with us where you got the metal coolant lines? Thanks


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Kirbans has the set that are powder coated black but have the nipples just like factory. I don't think anyone else carries them but gbody parts.
 
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