Hi, new here. My aerostar has been leaking coolant, and I've detected the leak is coming from the bottom of the right part of the Y hose in the picture. What exactly does this part of the hose go to and what is the proper name of the hose so I can order a new one. At first I thought the heater core was leaking because white coolant smoke was coming into the cab, but then I pulled off the removable piece underneath the stereo(by the shifter) and saw the smoke was coming from behind it. Im a c
omplete newb to fixing cars. Thanks.

 

it's a Y hose or a Y Bypass Hose. you might find it at O'Reilly's. you will have to remove it to get it matched.

If no luck, you can get a metal "T" adapter-fitting to which you can connect 3 separate hoses, or just cut off the hose that's bad, cut the "Y" and use a separate T adapter with a new hose, or just cut the bad section of the hose, use a straight adapter-fitting and splice a new hose to it.

There are alternatives.

 

Thanks! What exactly does that hose connect to?

 

It goes to the two heater cores in your van, which evidently has a rear HVAC system. The other Y hose is the return from the cores. If it's actually leaking from the swaged fitting, then you need to replace it. If you try the parts houses, make sure you look for the exact year, as the layouts for different years were different, and the hoses were different.

The other option is to make up something from standard parts, like Jose suggested. It's possible to remove that slip-fit connector from the aluminum tube and install a standard hose with a hose clamp.

 

Alright, cool,thanks

 

Here in Florida we just bypass the heater cores, ha ha,, its only cold about 5days a year

 

not this year, it's been cold as hell!!

 

Any advice on how to get the serpentine belt back on? Got a pipe to stick on my ratchet for extra leverage and got the tensioner to go as far as it can go and I'm still about a 1/4 inch off mark

 

I seem to recall there were a couple of tricks, including routing the belt through all the pulleys except for the alternator and the tensioner. Then pull up the tensioner to slip the belt under it, then slip the belt over the alternator pulley because that requires the least amount of slack to pull over. Also putting the starting position of the lever so that you can get the biggest swing. You might want to remove the air box if you haven't already.

Having said that, I remember one time taking over a week to do something with the belt off, I simply could not put the same belt back on, as if it had shrunk during that time.

 

Nice, thanks all for the advice, it's up and running again, now the thermostat needs to be changed, needle goes between normal temperature to 2 gauges below while driving. Still getting a small amount of coolant haze while driving as well. So I have one more question since I haven't replaced a thermostat either...where is it exactly? Is it covered by a hose or a piece of metal? Any pictures? Thanks.

 

Glad to hear you got her running. But what makes you think the thermostat is bad?

The stat is on the engine, if you follow the top hose of the radiator to where it connects to the engine, its under the fitting held down by 2 bolts that the hose is connected to.

Might be time for a new radiator. With the age of these vans, its needed.

Are you smelling coolant once it gets hot?

Could be a leaking/corroded freeze plug. Or a minor leak in the radiator?

 

​​​​​​The haze is coming from around the engine/throttle body area somewhere now (doesn't have a blown head gasket) Unlike with the messed up hose I'm not getting huge amounts of smoke(it smells like coolant). I'm getting obd1 codes of 22 and 122 but I don't think those have anything to do with the problem? Could it be maybe just burnt coolant residue that was leftover? I have no clue how long the leak I just fixed was going on before I bought the vehicle 3 weeks ago. The previous owner said the vehicle was only used for when their was bad winters here in the last 10 years(only 101,000 original miles)