Tip of the Month
Hose Clamp Smarts
BY CAPT. BILL PIKE
H
ere’s a wild little suggestion: Th ink
about devoting a few hours during
the upcoming weekend to tighten-
ing and otherwise addressing all (or most) of
the hose clamps on board your boat. Sound
like a make-work project? A silly one?
Well, we say, “Not!”
Depending on a clamp’s location, engine/
transmission/propshaft vibration can slowly
but surely (or sometimes not so slowly but
just as surely) loosen it. Indeed, at this very
moment, clamps mounted on your engine
or engines are almost certainly loose if you
do much cruising at all—and heck, they
may be subtly leaking fuel, coolant, or oil
into the bilge. Moreover, the undersides of
clamps mounted on hoses tend to gathercondensate on their undersides and cor-
rode—and there’s really no way to get a
handle on this unless you either employ a
mirror or simply go ahead and loosen the
clamp, rotate it for observational purposes,
and then either replace it or tighten it back
up if it’s in good shape.
Now, two more suggestions. If you’re like
most boat owners, you have a variety of
clamps on board. Some are of higher qual-
ity, some lower, some require a 5/16-inch
nut driver for tightening/loosening, some a
7-millimeter. So hey, why not inject a little
uniformity into the confusion with one
size fi ts all? Th at way, in the future, you’ll
remember exactly which nut driver you need
to tighten every clamp. And you can forget
about having to backtrack to your toolbox.
And oh, the second suggestion? If
you need to replace a clamp or two this
weekend, why not go with the high-quality
(solid-band) type as opposed to low? Going
high will help you eventually achieve a state
of aff airs where fewer and fewer hose-clamp
checkups are called for. ULearn to identify cheap, left, and expensive (top).
A nutdriver is best for adjustments (bottom).