4 Car Cooling System Parts Upgrades to Make Yesterday

You know what gets a lot of attention? Blacked out wheels, engine displacement, torque, and tinted window treatments.

You know what doesn’t get a lot of attention? Your car’s cooling system - specifically the car cooling system parts that are doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

And no, we don’t mean the HVAC system that keeps you comfortable in the cabin when the temperature outside is on the rise. We’re talking about the engine cooling system, you know, the one that keeps your engine from overheating and literally failing.

The temperature in the combustion chambers of a car’s engine can reach very high temperatures, hitting nearly 5,000 degrees. Aluminum alloys can melt at 1,200, and iron and steel just about 2,000 at about 2,100. Whatever your engine is, it’s made mostly of steel and aluminum. You do the math.

A cooling system failure can literally cripple an engine, leading to warped cylinder heads, blown head gaskets, or worse - all of which inevitably lead to labor-intensive (and costly) repairs.

However, there are meaningful cooling system upgrades you may be able to make right now to replace potentially failure-prone car cooling system parts in your vehicle - including some of the following.

Coolant Hose Fittings
You probably know you need to replace your hoses before the rubber hoses start to get old and brittle or leak, but the hose fitting? Isn’t that supposed to be more of a “permanent” component of the cooling system?

Well, yes, but no. Unfortunately, many OEM hose fittings and Y pipes are made from plastic and prone to cracking and thus, leaking. If one of these hose fittings fails, it can result in rapid loss of coolant and total failure of the cooling system.

We offer a variety of hose fittings made from stainless steel and 6061-T651 aluminum for a range of different vehicles (including VW, Audi, Ford and GM) that are much more reliable than the OEM plastic parts. Being made from higher quality materials, they are resistant to cracking and leaks that can cripple your car’s cooling system.

Auxiliary Water Pump Brackets
Certain Audi, and VW vehicles use a rubber donut to support the auxiliary water pump and hoses. The pump and hoses, which help to circulate coolant, are very expensive. Unfortunately, the cheap rubber donut (OEM P/N 035-959-209E, 035959209E) that supports them neither exhibits high quality nor is reliable.

The OEM part is effectively useless and is prone to vibration, shifting, bouncing, or breaking. If it fails, your auxiliary water pump and hoses will be under undue stress and at high risk of failure.

Our billet aluminum auxiliary water pump bracket requires no modification for installation into compatible vehicles (see the link for a list) and is a direct bolt-on part.

Spend a dime today to stabilize your aux water pump by replacing a useless OEM part with this machined billet-aluminum replacement and save yourself a dollar in the future.

Heater Core Coolant Tees
Many GM SUVs and pick ups come from the factory with cheap, plastic coolant tee fittings and couplers to the heater core. These plastic tees and couplers are prone to cracking and breaking, which results in rapid coolant loss which can be devastating to the engine.

If the heater core tee or coupler experiences a catastrophic failure (which does happen), you have about a minute to pull over and kill the engine before you do serious damage. If you’re towing or climbing a steep grade, even less time. You might have just scored a very expensive, very large paperweight.

This all-too-common problem is entirely preventable with the installation of a quality heater core coolant tees and couplers and we took it upon ourselves to deliver one.

We recreated the crack-prone GM plastic heater core connections in fully-barbed, precision CNC machined solid 6061-T651 aluminum, TIG welded by our licensed A&P mechanics in our Atlanta machining center. They are pressure checked for performance to check the weld’s integrity.

Make these replacements now to save yourself the trouble later. Some vehicles may require two; for a full list of GM vehicles with which these billet GM heater core coolant tees and couplers are compatible, please see the previous link. Call us to verify the part number before you order.

Oil Cooler Tubes
Certain VW and Audi vehicles are finished at the factory with plastic oil cooler tubes. These plastic OEM tubes are prone to stress from exposure to heat and may crack as a result, losing coolant.

We’ve created a new Audi and VW oil cooler tube from a billet of aircraft-grade 6061-T651 aluminum complete with Viton O-rings for superior durability.

Replacing these oil cooler tubes is very labor-intensive but can be worth the upgrade to safeguard your engine against failure resulting from the breakdown of the seemingly innocuous plastic OEM part.

If your Audi or VW contains a 4.2L V8 engine with the following part, P/N 077-117-411A (077117411A), our part will serve as a direct replacement.

Questions About Compatibility? Contact Us s for More Information
Interested in making cooling system upgrades with any of these car cooling system parts, but not sure about compatibility? Get in touch with us, let us know about your vehicle and we’ll connect you with the part you need to make the replacement.

You can also consult the page links throughout this article for detailed DIY articles on how to make replacements.