Caravan Trans hose clamps

Just wondering if anyone recently has had their transmission cooling hose
clamps replaced. I brought my 1999 Caravan (3.0 L engine with 4 speed trans)
with 95,000 miles in to have the Clockspring replaced, and the dealership -
Roseville Chrysler Jeep (MI) - found another problem with my van - lots of
leaks of trans fluid from the cooling hoses. Well, after 6 hose clamps and a
$118 labor charge, I was not a very happy camper. Oh, they also replaced
some drive belts and an idle arm, but I do not have a problem with that $89
labor charge. Anyway, my question is... why does it take 6 hose clamps for
only two hoses. Maybe someone who has replaced the clamps or hoses can tell
me if the service rep at the dealer is telling me the truth on the use of 6
clamps, and the work required to charge $118 to replace them. What's also
bothering me is that the dealership never even cleaned up the area with all
the trans oil, so it is really hard to tell if oil is still leaking after
the repair.

Thanks,
Dan

 

hmmm Two hoses going to the trans and back to the radiator require 4
clamps, if it has a trans cooler you will have more clamps. If they didnt
see the leak when it was in the shop and you broke down on the road would
you have now been upset because they didnt catch it while it was there????
Just a thought.

Glenn Beasley
Chrysler Tech

 

I wonder why they had to replace the clamps. On my Chrysler vehicles,
they are the standard inexpensive "worm gear" type. I did have to
replace the hoses on my 1990 Dodge Spirit. Over the years, the clamps
had compressed the hoses to the point where they could no longer seal.
I tried to re-position the clamps but that didn't work. The hoses are
molded in shape, so they were only available at the dealer.

I also wonder whey six clamps were needed, unless you have a cooler as
Glenn says.

-KM

 

great dealership treatment !

 

and i bet they charged you for chemical fees and what exactly did they use
???and were

 

Ha Ha..... you got it .... I was charged a fee...... $19.80 - described as
" Shop Supplies/Hazardous waste"

Dan

 

NOPE... just a garden variety Caravan with just the OEM cooler for the
trans, nothing extra. Oh pardon me....I was not complaining about repairing
the problem, it was just the "packing of sand up my butt" that I did not
appreciate. And like I said, they did find something I did not know about -
that bad drive belt idle arm.

Dan

 

Well that was another thing I did not understand..... why they did not
replace the hoses. And NO, I just have the standard OEM Trans cooler and no
extra equipment. The hose clamps are also the standard worm gear type. Maybe
they just wiped off the old clamps, and never really did the work. Like I
said before, that whole area was still soaked with oil they never cleaned
up, and I have had some oil still leaking on to the floor.

Dan

 

In their defense, assuming the hoses and clamps are like those on the LH
car tranny cooler lines, and they probably are, they *DO* start leaking,
*AND* the factory clamps are difficult to tighten - the head to tighten
them by is relatively small, are in almost inaccessible places and
angles (without taking a bunch of unrelated crap apart), and the corners
of the hex shape are very rounded and are an odd (absolutely
non-standard) size.

When I tried to tighten the ones on one of my Concordes, no standard
size wrench, inch or metric, would work - any given size either slipped
around the head or would not go over the flats. Turns out I had to
sacrifice a 1/4" open end, and file it slightly larger with jeweler's
files for it to fit the head to be able to tighten the clamp. Believe
it or not, there was a window of 0.006" of an inch on the size of the
wrench opening covering the complete range of being to small to go over
the flats and turning around over the corners of the hex shape. IOW -
the shape of the head was much closer to being perfectly round than hex
shaped.

For the above reasons, I would not be surprised if some dealers have the
philosophy of replacing those clamps with some aftermarket ones rather
than wasting valuable time attempting to do the impossible with the OEM
clamps.

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

i would have replaced the hoses it would have been only about 22 dollars
just to make sure that the hoses were not breaking down and would fail going
down the eway

 

I have a 99 Grand Caravan with the 3.8 and same deal-mine were leaking
tranny fluid all over the floor. I bought new lines and used the old clamps.
That was several months ago, and still no leaks. The old hoses were very
spongy where they were leaking. FYI, I did use aftermarket hoses and did it
myself for 20 bucks.

Mike