JB Welding barbs... necessary?
 

I'm thinking of going the ghetto route, buying a heatercore at autozone, sawing off the in/outlet, and hooking it up that way. I've heard to attach hose barbs with JB Weld in the in/outlet. How necessary is this? Could I just put the tubes over the in/outlets (providing that they are able to fit) and use hose clamps? It's not the cost, rather that I wonder what the benefit is other than providing a mate for tubing that might not fit the in/outlet. Is that it?

I used JB Weld on my modified heatercore. It came w/ 5/8" fittings, but I put 1/2" hose barbs on it.
http://kevin.procooling.com/Heatercore/pic1.JPG
That's how it started. To be honest, i've seen leaks in H2O cooling, and it is something that I DO NOT want to deal with. JBWelding fittings on seemed the best way to go. I somehow needed to have it work w/ 1/2" hose. First i got some "sealant tape." It isn't sticky... it just wraps and then expands to form a seal. Here's a pic of that:
http://kevin.procooling.com/Heatercore/pic6.JPG
I could tell that that there was a quality seal. However, they were loose so I knew JB Welding to be a surefire way of having them stick ;). When it dried, it looked like this.
http://kevin.procooling.com/Heatercore/pic8.JPG
I was a bit sloppy w/ the JB Weld juts to make 100% sure that this heatercore wouldn't leak over my dead body. So now i have the final product and i'm not sure if I see the advantage to your way. What did you mean by using hose clamps? Are you talking bout hose reducers?
-Kevin

Top notch work.

What I meant by hose clamps are the things that are in your car's cooling system, like on the radiator hoses? You can buy the ones that close tight with a screw.

Is the tape you used the same thing as teflon tape, used for attaching showerheads / plumbing fixtures?

Thx bro. Hose clamps won't really work for what you're doing cuz the hose will still have a bigger ID than what you are putting it on. Even if you tighten it, the hose will have a bit of an opening. You can use larger hose for the heatercore and get a reducer for the hose (an adaptor basically). However, that is just one more thing you have to add on your line of hose. It is easiest to take the approach I did. It isn't teflon tape. It is some other stuff I found at Home Depot that looked like it would do that job ;). Teflon tape would probably work too. Hell, you don't need tape if you're gonna JB weld it. That was just a precaution I took.
-Kevin

Heh, yeah I think the hose barb would work the best. Thanks - by the way, thanks for posting the pictures on how you did it, it helps give me an idea of how it should look when I'm done.

No problem man. Check the root directory of the pictures. There's like 10 pictures all on how I did it. http://kevin.procooling.com . Look around there for heatercore. Click on it and you'll see more.
-Kev

Hey, did I see that you also got a JMC 120mm fan, the super quiet one from CaseETC? If so, how's that thing working out? Is it really that quiet?