An’interesting’ discovery

[steve.pritchard146]

Our x100 XKR convertible finally reached top of the queue today for replacement rear hood hoses after one split late last year.
I purchased some over the winter, but what with an engine rebuild on my defender, a new clutch in daughter #3’s Mazda, lots of electrical gremlins in my x358 it’s kind of slid - anyway today was the day!

As anyone who’s carried out the task knows, It’s not a difficult job to change the 4 rear hoses- it is however a bit tedious having to remove the rear seats, side trims, speakers, dismantle the boot trims, remove the roof pump.

Anyway…the reason behind my post was the discovery of the reason for failure.

I had originally replaced the two front hoses a few years ago after they failed in the latch area in what seems to be a well documented manner where the plastic coated pipe split at the union. The fail though on the rear hoses was in a flat run across the rear ‘parcel shelf’/hood stowage under the trim panel.I didn’t think much of it as I’d always known they were likely to need replacing sometime soon and I’d got probably another 3 years since changing the fronts.

I’d noticed as I had removed the hoses that they were taped together at intervals (two hoses to each ram)I’d cut the tapes off as I changed the hoses one at a time to avoid reconnecting them incorrectly, it was only on inspection of the first hose that I noticed at the leaking spilt that it had occurred under one of the taped sections and that the plastic coating was all decayed and falling away - but only where the tape had been I then realised on closer examination that the hose showed the same plastic decay under each area that had been taped- this was the same on all 4 hoses, although only one had failed.

So it look like the glue used on the tape is actually some sort of plastic attacking solvent that caused the final demise of the hose.These are of course original hoses with so I probably can’t complain too much- but I thought I’d share.

I’ve included a few pics that show (very badly) the area under a few taped bits- the rest of the untaped hoses were fine.

Just thought I’d share….

[Lucky]

Bloomin' 'eck. That's slightly worrying. Thanks for sharing.

[mike020150]

As you say, very interesting. Thanks for the info. Mike.

[steve.pritchard146]

This picture probably provides a slightly better view and context - you can see white banding where the glue from the tape has attacked the hose, obvious in some places, les obvious in others, but without fail everywhere there is tape the plastic out case of the pipe has been attacked and was either cracked or missing

[andypryce]

No doubt that’s something else waiting to fail on mine. Got to sort the gearbox and ABS first though….

[Astromorg]

I knew there was another reason why I bought a coupe apart from just good looks