5.0 w/Serpentine Belt:Lower Radiator Hose Solution
By Todd Zuercher
For those of you who have swapped a 5.0 Mustang EFI engine into your Bronco and kept the reverse rotation water pump and serpentine belt drive, the quest for a suitable and sano lower radiator hose can be frustrating. For those who choose not to run the smog pump or smog pump eliminator pulley, NAPA hose p/n 7927 can be made to work.
For the first 3 years that I had my 5.0 conversion in my Bronco, I ran a 36" Cool-Flex hose, purchased from Summit Racing Products. This hose, secured with 2 Adel clamps to my frame, offered a fairly easy solution to the lower hose situation, but was not without its drawbacks. First, I found that whenever I needed to remove the hose at the radiator for routine radiator removal, the hose was very difficult to remove. I usually resorted to using a large screwdriver as a sort of prying tool in the flutes of the hose. The Cool-Flex hose is chrome plated copper. Obviously pinching and prying on the copper is not good, since the copper can be work hardened and eventually fail in the areas where it is pinched and/or flattened. Earl's Performance Products offers a hose similar to the Cool-Flex hose, but it is made of 300 series stainless. This is a better material for the hose but makes it more expensive. Secondly, the Cool-Flex style hoses are fairly expensive.
In my usual penny-pinching style, I knew there had to be an cheaper solution. First, I took a stock Bronco radiator hose and cut it into two pieces. I attached one end to the radiator and the other end to the water pump inlet. Between the ends of these two pieces I took some measurements, drew a sketch, and headed to my local exhaust shop. For a few bucks, I had a piece of 1.75" aluminized muffler tubing bent to my specs. I took this piece home, cut the ends to length, and test fit this piece between the rubber pieces. Perfect fit! Unfortunately, in usual exhaust shop style, the pipe had "muffler bends" in them, i.e. the bender had reduced the diameter of the pipe in order to make the bends. I knew this wasn't going to do for my truck!
Next, I had Keith Jones at ProtoFab bend up a piece of 0.120" wall, 1.75" tubing to match the exhaust shop special. For $20, I had it Jet-Hot coated for corrosion protection at a local facility(Tempe, AZ). This piece is shown in the photos. Two of the photos show the piece out of the truck with dimensions for anyone wanting to duplicate this piece. Notice in the top down view that the one end is bent about 10-15( away from vertical. The other two photos show it installed on the truck with the stock Bronco water pump hose pieces on each end.
I ran this piece for several months but ultimately decided it was too heavy for this application. I took this piece to a local header manufacturer(Belanger Headers, for all you Phoenicians) and had him duplicate it with another piece of aluminized muffler tubing. This time I had the pipe fabbed with a mandrel bender so the pipe diameter is constant throughout its length. Jerry Belanger charged $20 for this piece. The pipe fits well and is a sano solution for the common 5.0 EFI engine installation. If I had gone with the mandrel bent pipe from the outset, my total $ outlay for this setup would be approximately $30-$35-far less than the Cool-Flex solution.
TODD HAS BEEN AT IT AGAIN!
I've updated the pipe design since those pictures were posted. It now comes much closer to the water pump inlet, necessitating a much shorter section of rubber hose. See the pictures below:
