Once again my octopus hose has sprung a leak, interestingly the same place where I fixed it last time. I'm going to attempt tightening the clamps in order to limp my car home. However, that may not work because the hose ends where the clamps are at are weakened, damaged, and flared. I had to leave it at my girlfriend's mother's house yesterday. Upon looking at my parts invoices, the current hose is a ÜRO hose, which is trash and I would prefer to replace completely.

Second, I need to make a replacement heat-shield for the cat and O2 sensor because that is definitely cooking the hose. I assume I could use aluminum sheets, wrap them in exhaust heat resistant wrap, and bolt it to the location of the original heat shield? The original leak didn't happen at the normal connector like it usually does, but instead the hose itself burst at the T. Which is why, in a pinch, I replaced that with a brass T. The problem I had then is that the hose at the T is thicker than the rest of the hose and is weakened.

Looking at the prices of the Octopus hose, I find it hard to justify paying the $350 SNG wants or the $280 for an Ebay "OEM" hose if it will fail in short time. The ÜRO hose lasted about 3 years before it failed, and the brass T fix lasted about a year. Looking at a picture of the hose, I am wondering to myself if I would be better off making one out of a combination of brass Ts and clamps and about 3 feet of heater hose? Could I make something more durable like that? See the image attached for the proposed new hose. What do you guys think?

I haven't removed the hose yet and I would like to have all the parts on hand before doing so since this is a roadside repair in front of my mother in law's house. Thus, I would like to get some things sorted before I attempt this:

• Does anyone know the internal diameter of the octopus hose? Are all connections the same internal diameter or not? From the looks of it, I think not. The hose end that plugs into the coolant reservoir looks like it might have a bigger internal diameter than that of either Norma connector end and the other two free ends.
• Can the 3-way connector that's under the coolant reservoir, the one that goes from the octopus to one of the valley hoses (I believe the Norma that in the picture has a question about what to do with it), be replaced with a brass T, thus eliminating the need for the Norma connector?
• What type of clamp should I use? Should I stick with worm drive or should I get the constant tension clamps, which are harder to find locally?

Please see image for the proposed design of the new octopus hose. I've also included a video of my leak.

 

Amazon has them for sale.
For Jaguar XK8 ( 1997-2005 ) 4.0L 4.2L Cooling Hose Eurospare MJA6728AC New

$156.25

 

Clicking that link results in a page that says "Currently unavailable".

Is the Eurospare part good quality? I would be willing to pay the $156 if it's a good quality part, but if it's the same quality as the ÜRO, I would rather make my own octopus hose.

 

https://www.autohausaz.com/pn/639_20...xoCThkQAvD_BwE

https://www.partsgeek.com/cg857f4-ja...xoCqB0QAvD_BwE

 

Ok, thank you for the links.

Is the Eurospare octopus hose of good quality? Were they really the OE supplier for our cars?

 

I used the Eurospare hose when I replaced all my hoses. The quality looked pretty decent, better than the other Uro hoses I was forced to use.

 

Sympathise - it's painful.

The OEM octopus I bought last year as a spare cost me £134 from the dealership. The price on Heritage is now £207.20. Jaguar has really jacked up the price of spares over the last year or two, and SNG is doing no favours as their price translates to £275.33 which is a hell of a lot of shipping

To be fair, it's a really small market so the unit costs are going to be relatively high, but I'll definitely be looking at at an alternative once I've used up the spare...

Both of the Normas can be disposed of as they're only there to make life easier on the assembly line. This one:


is where the plastic tee connects anyway so another brass tee can go there.

 

Lovely thanks. I'll see tomorrow if tightening the existing clamps worm drive clamps is enough to hold pressure so that I can limp the car to my house and have a little more time to deal with this. Buying the hose online will take at least a week before it arrives in Puerto Rico. And all local parts shops are closed on the weekend anyways, so I can't check to see if it's available locally until Monday.

I would prefer to deal with this from the comfort of my own garage with all of my tools at my disposal instead of on the side of the street.

 

Lovely thanks. I'll see tomorrow if tightening the existing clamps worm drive clamps is enough to hold pressure so that I can limp the car to my house and have a little more time to deal with this. Buying the hose online will take at least a week before it arrives in Puerto Rico. And all local parts shops are closed on the weekend anyways, so I can't check to see if it's available locally until Monday.

I would prefer to deal with this from the comfort of my own garage with all of my tools at my disposal instead of on the side of the street.

Now, with that bit of information, I have a revised schematic for the proposed DIY octopus. Does anyone know if the hose has a one-way valve?





This all goes out the window if I am able to limp the car home and anyone can confirm that the Eurospare is a good quality hose and not likely to fail as quickly as the ÜRO hoses.

 

I can't speak for the Uro octopus hose. But I removed the 20+ year old OEM hose and replaced it with the Eurospare version. The Eurospare hose looked to be the same overall quality as the original and it fit perfectly. The same can't be said of all the other hoses I replaced, which were mostly Uro, just because nobody else makes them and Jag discontinued them years ago. The Uro hoses tended to be the correct shape, more or less, and the correct length. But consistently they tended to have an ID just a liiiiiiiitle bit smaller than the orignals, causing some snug fits. Nothing that would prevent installation, just that they weren't manufactured quite to the same specs. The hose material felt reasonably good, although they could be better. I normally avoid Uro parts whenever possible, but in some cases that's not possible.

 

It is a one way value and I think? it is necessary for the auxiliary water pump for the HVAC to circulate correctly (sucks coolant from 7, pumps it to 8. Here’s the 97 coolant flow. Later the bleed line from the radiator to the coolant tank was removed. The path is convoluted but a much smaller circuit runs when the thermostat is closed so the engine and HVAC warm up faster.

 

Rube Goldberg would be proud of the Jag's cooling system!

 

Yeah, my experience with URO is similar but in the opposite direction. The hoses were a tad larger in I.D. than the original hose and would weep unless choked to death with a clamp. In case of the Octopus, although the dimensions were the same, I thought the hose seemed more fragile than the original hose. Time has proven me right in that regard.

 

I want to update this thread to notify that the issue has now been resolved. I bought the Eurospare hose from an Ebay seller for $130. I hope it is a good enough hose. I also custom made a couple of heat shields for the catalytic converters in the effort to protect the hoses from the heat coming off of them.

What I used is heat shield material from the transmission/exhaust tunnel of a wrecked Toyota Rav-4. I bought that for $20 from the junkyard. I first made a rough mock-up using cardboard. This heat-shield is made of a fiber insulating material sandwiched in between two aluminum sheets. Unfortunately the result is not pretty because bending the material and getting it to fit into its new home was not too easy. And cutting it to size required that I then attempt to manually crimp the edges. The first heat-shield, the one on the passenger side (US) looks a little mangled as I had to modify it after the initial test-fit. I did a much better job with the one on the driver's side (below the coolant bottle).

I am noticing lower temperatures from my RealGauge out of all of this. I'm thinking those heat-shields are doing their job properly.

One thing to note is that while removing the old octopus hose I slipped causing me to break the smaller breather pipe of the transmission, the one that goes from the main body of the transmission on the top, originating just beneath the bracket of the O2 sensors harness connectors to the torque converter just behind the supercharger elbow. I can't seem to find the part number for that. I mended it with heat a small short section of vacuum hose and heat-shrink wrap.

I would like to replace it with the correct part. Does anyone know the part number for that or where I can source it? It is the ZF-6HP26. The heat-shrink fix is working at the moment.



Passenger side heat shield.

Driver’s side heat shield buried in there.

 

I wondered why the eBay hose 'disappeared' from my watch-list.(I thought about buying it for stock, when one of my cars needs it)

 

Ehh, sorry about that, but I was in a pinch and really needed it. If ever you're in Puerto Rico, I'll treat you to a Piña Colada to make up for that.

 

I don't need it (YET) but it seemed a good deal for a little less money for the same new part offered by other retail sellers. Glad you got it and hope it fixes your leak.

I do keep spare parts for my cars, especially 'failure-prone' things like belts and hoses.