Noticed that my throttle body heater is seeping and the short hoses are in poor condition so I'm going to do the bypass. Are there benefits from running a line from the barb on the engine back to the coolant bottle or can the bypass be simplified by removing/blocking off the engine barb and the barb on the coolant bottle?

 

The only purpose of the line from the intake to the TBH and then to the reservoir is to serve the TBH. You can simply block it off any way and anywhere you like. I plugged the lines the connect to the TBH with short bolts of the necessary size and secured them with the hose clamps. No need to overthink it.

 

Whoops. I now see you already removed the lines. Just put short lengths of hose on the barbs at the intake and the reservoir and plug them as I described above.

 

Actually mine is not apart just yet; trying to make a plan of attack!

The image is a screen capture from this video:

 

Then the most simple thing is to just pull the two lines from the TBH and plug 'em! Again, no need to overthink it.

A respected member of this forum advocates running a line from the nipple on the intake manifold to the nipple on the coolant res. He wrote that it can help with cooling. I gotta tell ya brutha, if your cooling system is that close to the edge y'all got a whole lot more to worry about.

 

run a piece of copper or steel and to bypass and maintain flow its better than having coolant just sitting there with no flow imo

 

Why do you say this? What's the science here? What's the rationale?

 

I went from manifold to expansion tank and noticed improved flow through that hose but it makes no real difference to cooling as far as I can tell. But it is less hose and fewer connections to worry about, that would be my biggest benefit.

 

From what I can see on the diagram, in the stock configuration you get return flow from the radiator at the top of the coolant bottle and return flow from the engine at the bottom of the coolant bottle. Whether or not there is any benefit seems like an exercise in fluid mechanics and I'm just a keyboard jockey!

 

All we are talking about here are the lines labeled 6 and 7 in the diagram. From the intake manifold to the TBH, and from the TBH to the small nipple on the bottom of the reservoir. That's it, that's all.