Coolant Tank Failure

    FYI,
    On a recent vacation i had the return hose plastic nipple on the overflow tank fail.
    The failure started with coolant flowing into passanger footwell. After disassemble I found a couple things that caused the failure. First the heavy 4 ply silicone hose is a great product but it adds weight to the weak designed plastic nipple on tank, second I routed and zip ties the hose causing a tighter bend than the factory hose had and thrid while running mountains roads and aggressive right hand corners I believe the hose was strained even more from forces from cornering. The leak at first was only happening in right hand corner as the hose was being pulled down the nipple was seperating and blowing coolant down firewall and into footwell. Fix, new tank with a more relaxed routing and better support of the hose or maybe a formed 90 degree hose coming off the plastic nipple. The failure caused my vacation to end early so i wanted to share and ask for ideas and also make sure nobody else has the same failure.

    Sorry it caused your vacation to end early.... But I'm glad you shared the issue with us...


    I have thought about moving the burp bottle before and changing it with a stainless container.... I just never sourced a nice container. Problem with a new container is that it has to be mounted at the same height as the stock one. So you are basically trading plastic for metal... (which is good). I just wish we could mount it lower somewhere else...

    Even if they molded into the plastic some brass fitting for support would help, but an all metal would be great. I looked at that and it would be expensive to do with all the shapes to fit the area plus they molded the bottom to fit over frame tube.

    At the other site is a pretty interesting post about the same problem. I don't think it's appropriate for me to copy the posted picture or what the person posted. Just do a search for Cracked Coolant Tank and go to #7

    I like poetry, long walks on the beach and poking dead things with a stick.

    Update!!!
    New tank installed, I added a formed 90 degree hose from PEP Boys and used a 3/8 barb nipple to join the black formed hose to my nice red silicone hose. IMO with a 90 coming off plastic hose nipple the load/weight of hose is not pulling down causing the failure and then I added a zip tie to the vent hose to add additional support to protect the weak small nipple. I like to design and the routing is a little cleaner.

    Owner of Slingshot #263 that has some stock parts left on it. :D