Bluish

In the past 2 years I've had two radiator hose failures:
@150K hose between rear water outlet and fast idle thermo valve failed
@183K the 5/16" hose on the thermostat housing failed

Rather than wait for each and every hose to fail as I march on toward 250,000 miles, I'm thinking of replacing some of the hoses pro-actively.

Any high milage 1st generation 3.2TL owners with original equipment water hoses care to offer their experience with actual coolant hose failures?

Go90go

Ugh, "pro-active". God I hate that word... Anyhow, I had the upper radiator hose burst on me with the 3.2 once, but that was due to a more serious problem of the HG being blown. A quick replacement from Kragen and I was back on the road until I broke a wrist pin from overheating and spinning a bearing (radiator itself blew a few weeks later) @ 236,480. I'm already at 240K+ now, and the 3.5 is holding up fine with about 70K of babying (original owner) on the clock, and 4K of thrashing (me). I'm still using the hose purchased from Kragen for the 3.2, too. All my vacuum lines had to be re-run after the swap, but I was glad to do it because some of the original lines were starting to get brittle.

All rubber hoses, etc. should be replaced after all these years. Rubber dries out so it should be a no brainer. I blew a tiny 2" hose behind the block in my 88 Accord after a 175KM/h cruise to work over the Bay Bridge not because it had high miles (88,000 original), but because the car was 17 years old. Fixed it in the Albertson's parking lot with one of the stock intake hoses, hehe.

~Cheers~