Caravan Trans hose clamps

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

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 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.