Once Nicholas had figured out that the one of the two coolant hoses in the Traverse had sheared off it’s connector fitting, it was pretty clear that the Traverse was down for the count and would need a replacement coolant hose “octopus” which is this three-hose monstrosity that connects to the firewall, the engine block, and I’ve no idea what else.

The YouTube videos made it look fairly simple other than accessing the bit of the hose connected at the firewall between the engine and the cabin and many curses were heaped upon the squeeze hose clamps for the firewall connection by the YouTube mechanics and it was very apparent as to why.

Those things are a royal pain in the arse to squeeze and then have enough leverage to move the clamp out of the way of the connection point. It’s bad enough that those clamps have deformed the rubber hose by being clamped for years but the lack of leverage and any amount of space to work with makes them an absolute pain in the arse.

It doesn’t help that the only way to reach back there is to literally lay on top of the engine block so you have even less leverage!

I can only imagine how completely absurd I must have looked to my neighbours had they looked toward the garage and saw my panoramic ass hanging out of the engine bay with my feet in the air. They also would have learnt choice insults in several languages aimed toward the evil location of that firewall connector and what I thought of the people who designed the Traverse who clearly hate people mending their own vehicle!

It became fairly clear that my hands were too big to fit back there but fortunately Nick knew what he was doing and was eventually able to free the clamp and the hose which included more than a few curses as an added bonus.

The next day, he was off to Toyota training in Winston-Salem and it was just a matter of waiting for the replacement part to arrive which it did in a timely fashion.

The next few days were spent cleaning the intake manifold and the air box and getting the area ready for the new hose and that’s when I’d figured I’d be a clever bunny and try to install the new hose myself (though this time we were going to clamp the hose at the firewall with a screw hose clamp rather than reuse the squeeze clamps that we both hated so much.

That way I could surprise him with the job being sorted and just needing his blessing that I’d not forgotten anything before risking turning the key.

That plan was a really solid one and I was rather proud of it.

What I was decided less proud about was discovering that I’d actually ordered the wrong bloody coolant hose and there was no way that much shorter hose was going to reach the front of the engine block connection no matter what I would try to do.

The return to AutoZone and the subsequent hosing where they decided to keep the $5 “rush fee” even though their terms of service say absolutely nothing about that is described here.

In a nutshell, the return was pretty painless in spite of a clear language barrier and the employees not knowing their own policies and the guy I rang up at their customer service line agreed with me and promised he’d refund the $5.

Whether it was an empty promise or their process failing at some point, I never saw that refund actually post to the card. The representative was polite enough and that’s plus not wanting to spend another 40 or so minutes on the phone proving my case yet again is why I didn’t bother calling again.

It kind of left a bad taste in my mouth but not anywhere near as bad as being an idiot and ordering the wrong part in the first place so now we’re going to have to wait the weekend before the Traverse will hopefully be mended… 🙁