1993 Mitsubishi Montero 3.0 V6 Oil Coolant Line Replacement Question!
 

Hello, I am brand new to the forum and want to thank you guys in advance for the help. I have an oil leak coming from my oil cooler hoses, which from what I can see is connected to my oil filter housing. I am looking to purchase some new oil cooler hoses but all of the ones I have found on autozone, or rock auto seem to look a bit different from the ones that are currently installed. Do the aftermarket hoses look different? Or am I looking at the wrong lines all together.

As second question, should I just replace the whole oil cooler lines+hoses or should I just aim for the hoses. It is leaking pretty good from where it is connected near the oil filter housing.

Thank you again in advance!

If your oil cooler not leaking - there is no reason to replace it. Just focus on replacing the leaky hoses. It is likely that aftermarket hoses will have the same size fittings, but are of different length/geometry. Many aftermarket products are made to fit multiple vehicle models and sometimes to fit even different manufacturers. You can take off your current lines and take them to the store, so that you can lay them side by side with the new lines. Then decide if the differences are significant or not to make them easily usable.

One more thing to keep in mind: even within the same year model for Mitsubishi you may have different options for the oil cooler size/style. That requires different hoses. I had a personal experience with this. I had to replace leaky oil lines in the past and ordered my hoses from the local Mitsubishi dealer. They cross referenced the year/model and got me the parts. Once I got crawled under the vehicle to replace the oil lines, I realized that they were completely different than the ones I needed (the elbows were at different angle, the fittings were threaded instead of bango type). I looked at the package to see if I got wrong stuff, but the year/model info was matching. Took the lines back to the dealer and explained them that they did not fit. The parts guy who was familiar with this (not the first guy who ordered lines for me :) ) asked me for a VIN number and immediately recognized that my vehicle was made ether before or after (can't remember) of a mid-year design change and thus I needed a different style hoses. He got the set ordered and it was exactly what I needed.

There is also a third option. You can get what are called AN fittings and braided oil lines and make your own hoses. It is not as easy as direct replacement hose, but fun to make your own stuff. You may need to get the right fittings/adapters to connect to your cooler and to the oil filter housing, but this way you can make a flexible lines that will be exactly the right fit or routed in a way that is convenient for you. I've done this for the first time on my other rig with the transmission cooler lines (hard to get replacement for old lines) and I'm very glad I went this route.