I don't know who the sadist is who designed those hose clamps, but I'd like to punch him/her in the nose!

It took me about 2 hrs to remove the air pump and check valve because I couldn't find a simple way to remove the stock hose clamps. I ended up snipping them off with a wire cutters. It's not enough that they locate the check valve, air pump and the S-shaped lower crankcase breather hose at the back of the engine, but to make things even more difficult, they have to attach them with those god-awful hose clamps.

Is it too much to ask for a hose clamp that can be loosened with a turn of a screwdriver? Stupid f@#!'ing German engineers.

Thanks for letting me vent, I feel much better now.

 

No worries, I used bolt cutters

I really do hate them with a passion

 

I think everyone hates these lol. I posted a similar rant a while back when i changed the coolant expansion tank on my 97

 

They make a tool for that. I use a pair of mini vice grip and lock them on. And then replace it 8mm type clamps afterwards

 

You mean the one-use clamps? Or the three-pronged compression clamps? I love the squeeze clamps because they're easy enough to open with big pliers but don't appear capable of failing. I hate the one-use clamps though. Biggest pain in the *** of anything on the car.

 

Yep, the one-use clamps are what I was referring to. The one holding the air pump was too thick for me to cut with my little wire cutters, so I had to pry it toward the pump and slip it off.

By gawd, I'm going back to Lowe's for a larger set of bolt cutters.

Interesting experience, though. I'll post some pics of how completely plugged up my cc breather system was in the thread I started on that.

 

sometimes a flat head or like a metal tooth pick to grab it and pull it up

 

I use a flathead screwdriver and it's not that bad...

 

Care to elaborate? Are you saying you use the flathead to pry the clamp toward the piece being removed?

If someone has a good technique not requiring bolt cutters, I'm sure it would be helpful to a lot of newbies encountering these for the first time.

 

If you have the room, a dremel with a cutoff wheel makes short work of any clamp. There's plenty of ways to get them off, I have a pair of cutting pliers designed for cutting piano wire that are very helpful because they're really small but can cut through any clamp no problem. If it's the same design as a CV boot clamp you can pry it apart with a flathead screwdriver fairly easily, you just stick it in the space where the clamp overlaps and pry the sections apart.