replacing rear heater hoses?

this morning while shoveling the snow out of my driveway i had my astro idling and noticed some i was dripping some antifreeze. i crawled underneath (brrr...its cold here in ct today) and found the leak coming from one of the rubber rear aux heater hoses. i noticed one end has a hydraulic fitting and one end has a regular hose clamp. how hard are these to change (keeping in mind my garage is being hogged up by my 66 olds so ill be doing this in the snow covered driveway) can this hose be replace with a regular hose with clamps on both ends? autozone lists a cut to fit hose...but im not sure its the right one (the people at autozone are clueless). is this a dealer item only? can i temporarily bypass this aux heater? thanks for your advice...please email me @ blkmonday@aol.com

I have a 95 Astro taxi with rear heater and I had to repair both the rear heater hoses at the sdpot where the clamps hold the pipes onto the frame. These clamps are welded to the two pipes and come from the dealer as one unit. (cost $312 CDN). All I did was cut out those sections and replace with appropriately sized hoses and clamps and tie-wrapped to the frame. Works fine now.

ps I live in northern Manitoba and it is -24C today:)

just going through my old posts....i replaced my hoses with rubber heater hose like you said and to my suprise you were correct and my problem was fixed for about 5 bucks! (i had anti-freeze already) now its about 95 degrees out and i drive with a full load of band equiptment in my van daily in heavy i-95 traffic and ive had no problems to date (knock on wood) i only had to replace about 3 inches of each hose...just the part where the metal pipe has that rubber gap near the drivers side gas tank filler. very easy fix. thanks for your advice you saved me a few bucks i owe you a beer :smile: