How to Replace Coolant Inlet Tube 2000-04 Ford Focus

Hey, friends. It's Lenny here, at 1A Auto. Today I'm working on a 2001 Ford Focus, and I'm going to show you how to do a coolant inlet tube. It's going to be a very easy job, and I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

Okay, so we're underneath the vehicle. We've got our hand protection and our eye protection, of course. Safety first. We're going to remove the lower hose from the radiator. You do that by grabbing some pliers or a hose clamp tool, whatever you have. Just squeeze it like this. it's spring steel. I bring it over towards the other end of the hose over here, out of the way. You can relieve tension.

Okay. You want to make sure you have a collection receptacle under here, so you can recycle your coolant. Don't let it pour into the ground. I like to just grab the hose, see if I can give it a little twist to break it free from the radiator. If you notice that yours doesn't want to break free for some... This one just did. But if it doesn't want to break free for some reason, you could try to come in from the front or whatever. Try to get in between the hose and the radiator with something, maybe a pick, if you're careful and you don't poke your hose, of course. Or you can use a small screwdriver. Put a little bit of penetrant in there. It'll go a long way. But this seems like it's working, so I'm just going to keep doing this. I'm going to tug on the radiator hose.

Just let that drain out. Once it's completely drained, we'll move ahead.

Okay, so now that we've got the coolant drained into our recycling receptacle down there, we're going to come up top. We're just going to remove this little clamp right here. I'm just going to hook it right onto there for now. Gets it out of the way. We have a clear view.

We can compare the part real quick, just visually. Looks about the same. Put it aside. You have a clamp here. Squeeze clamp, squeeze clamp, and then a couple pushpins. This is all going to be easily removed. Eight millimeter, just like that. Yours may have a squeeze clamp there. I don't know. Whatever kind of clamp it is, it's pretty easy to take off, I'm sure. I'm just going to grab it and pull it right off.

Take a peak at your hose, if you can. Make sure that it's not dry rotted and cracked. If it's cracked or swollen or anything like that, you just want to replace it. That one looks pretty good. We'll set it aside. We'll come right over here. I'm going to do these pushpins last. That way there, I can hold onto the hose and hopefully try to pull them off without wiggling it around too much.

Okay. If you need to mark them, you can mark them, but it's pretty easy to tell where everything goes.

To remove these, I'm just grabbing with my pliers gently, and give them a little twist. This is just breaking them free from the plastic. More than likely, these have been on there since 2001, so they're kind of happy where they are. You just got to tell them it's time. Make a move. Check our hose, obviously. Give it a squeeze. I don't see any big cracks with this one. Hose looks pretty great. Set that aside.

Okay. Now here we have a couple push clips. I'm just doing to see if I can find my pocket screwdriver. Left that over there. Grab this. If I can get this whole part. Just a little center punch, push clip. Basically, you push in the outer edge and then you push in the center and expands the outer part. Don't look like they really grab on there very well. Where to put them in might've had limited resource. There we are. Get that out of there. Now we've removed our coolant inlet tube.

Here we are, friends. A quick product comparison for you. Over here we have our coolant inlet tube for our 2001 Ford Focus. We just removed it. And over here we have our brand new quality 1A Auto part. As you can tell, they're both shaped the exact same. You've got the dual pipes, single over here. You've got the mounting area, same length. There really isn't too much more I can say about it. Exact same. With all that said, I don't see any reason why this wouldn't be a quality part to install into the vehicle, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. If you end up needing this or any other part, you can always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

So now it's time to get the the new inlet tube installed. We've got our new push clips. They are going to go right inside these holes right here. Very simply, just line it up, push in the outer area of it, just like that. And then just push in on the center area. If he can't do it by hand, you can do something like a pocket screwdriver. Hopefully, it should just want to go right in. That expands the two ears.

Now we're going to do the same to the other side. So we've got that in and grab our hose. We're just going to slide it right up to this nub right here. Tighten this down, eight millimeter. Okay. Just want to make sure it's pretty tight. These things work great, but will they make it super tight?, I can't say, so I like to just give it a little extra. Obviously, you don't want to crush the plastic or ruin your hose by tightening too much, so use your best judgment. I'll start with this one. Slide it right up to where it wants to be. We'll grab our clamp. Try to line it back up with where are we. Took it off. It was happy there for a long time. Do this one, just like that. There we are. Get this back on here. Take this. Just slide it right in there. Got a hose in there. Got a hose in there. Okay. That looks pretty great. Easy peasy.

Well, we'll close up the lower hose, and then we'll fill up the cooling system, and we'll be able to move along.

We've got our lower hose. Take off this little cap. It just protects the inside of the radiator from any debris that may get in there during shipping or handling or anything like that. We've got our little squeeze clamp. I'm just going to grab my pliers. Flashlight. Here we go. Open it up a little bit. All I want to do is just squeeze the ears on that clamp, bring it in so it's up against the radiator again. Looks like it needs to move just a little bit. I'm just trying to line it up. Very nice.

Okay, so now it's time to fill the coolant. I like to use something like this. It's like a little vacuum. Essentially, I'm going to create vacuum inside the cooling system. Put this unit right here, and then I'm going to draw in brand new coolant with it, after I create vacuum.

So I'll show you how this works. Hook up your air hose. You have this end closed. We'll open this up now. Open this. Kind of build up pressure. Going to make its way all the way up into the green. You want it to be above the 25, and get it to the point where it's just kind of holding steady. All right. Well, it looks like we got pressure up above our 25 range there. You can tell the needle flowed down the vacuum. So it doesn't seem like it's increasing any more vacuum.

We're going to close this off. Close off the air. Now we'll just watch the needle. We'll give it a minute or so and see if it drops down any.

All right, get our air hose out of here. It's got the strainer end. Put it right in here. This is going to fill up the coolant jug, using the vacuum from the system itself that we just created. You want to pay attention to make sure that your coolant jug doesn't go empty. You don't want air getting up inside this. It'll ruin the whole reason why we just created vacuum on this in the first place.

So once the jug feels like it's starting to get a little low, just switch it out. All right, it's off of here. Okay. Right now the coolant's a little full. That's okay. I'm going to get our funnel buddy. I'm going to put a funnel on there with some more coolant in it, and I'm going to run this for a little while, and I'm going to let it burp out any air that might be inside the system. And hen once we do that, we'll get the coolant down to the level it's supposed to be at, and we should be all set.

Okay, so I'm just going to use this funnel set right here, available at 1aauto.com. Inside, there's pretty much every attachment that you're going to need or you could possibly need. You can do all sorts of different things with this. Almost like a Lego set, really.

So we'll just throw all this stuff over here. Okay, I can grab that. there. This piece right here, it's going to screw on here. First we need to find the insert, the inner adapter. We'll find one that looks like it fits in there good. That one's pretty close. It sits a little lower. Let me see if I can get one. Okay.

I'm going to go with the black one. I'm just going to put it in there. Get this started. It feels like it's starting on kind of tough. It might be cross-threaded. Just snug it up. Give the center piece a wiggle. Doesn't feel like it's moving around. We can go ahead and put this on there. We'll get all this stuff out of the way.

I'm just going to go ahead and put a little bit of coolant in here. We don't want to fill up the funnel. That, right there, should be more than enough. Basically, what's going to happen is when the engine heats up, it's going to warm up the coolant. The coolant's going to expand. It's going to come up. Okay?

If we get any air bubbles out of there, little bloop, they're going to come bubbling up, coolant's going to fill that hole, work its way down in there. Okay? So we'll leave that right about there. We're going to start this up and run it for a little bit. Make sure we get out all our air bubbles. Make sure that the temperature gauge doesn't fluctuate too much. It should pretty much stay pretty steady once it warms up. We should be all set.

I'm going to put the heat in the car, so the hot position. Put the blower motor on. Opposition, blower motor. You can set this to wherever you want. I wouldn't put it on defrost, because then it's going to kick on and off your AC.

I'm just going to turn this off real quick. So we've got our little plunger. Okay? The way this works is, it's going to go straight down in that hole right there. It's going to plug up any excess fluid that's in there. What I like to do, the coolant's going to be hot right now. It's going to be super hot. So you want to be careful not to scald yourself, right? Take a nice rag, whatever you might have, something that's going cushion you between the heat of the hose and your hands. Give those a little squeeze, and we'll just lift up on that. Here we are. Now we're just going to replace the cap. We should be good to go.

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