Last Saturday morning I was setting up all my detailing gear for the usual weekend clean of the TTRS. Just as I was ready to go, I turned on my Karcher pressure washer to give the car a pre-rinse before I started the snow foam process.

Suddenly I heard a loud hissing noise and the water started spraying everywhere! I looked around to see what was happening and noticed that the hose part of the Karcher Pressure Washer had a massive split in it.

I lost all pressure in the gun and it suddenly became useless!

Shit!

I had tried to tape up where the hose had split, but needless to say, it didn’t really work.

My weekend cleaning plans had been hampered ( of course I still washed the car by hand with the garden hose, but it wasn’t the same )

Once I had cleaned the car, I had to sit down and think about what I was going to do about my broken pressure washer.

I jumped on google to see what my options were and I was surprised that you could actually buy a lot of replacement parts for these Karcher Pressure washers. I Did spend some time looking at upgrading the pressure washer I have – A K3 ( albeit an old model ), but in the end, I decided that it would be too expensive, and it was worth trying to repair my current one.

The price of the new pressure washer I was looking at was about 5 times the price of replacing the hose, so it was definitely worth a go at repair first.

On Amazon, I was able to buy a Karcher Trigger Gun and 25ft Replacement Hose Kit

This kit is compatible with Kärcher electric models: K2 CCK, K2 CHK, K2 Compact, K2 Ergo, K2 Plus, K3, K3 Follow-Me, K4, K5, K2.150, K2.26 M Plus, K2.26M T50, K2.27 CCK, K2.29, K2.300, K2.360 CCK, K2.425, K3.450, K3.540, K3.690, K5.68MD Plus

How to Replace a Karcher Pressure Washer Hose

After doing a bit of reading online and watching some videos, I was happy to give this a go myself as it looked like a very straightforward swap out for the new hose. These Karcher systems come with a “Quick Connect” system which is pretty much plug and play with most Karcher Pressure washer systems.

This is how the Pressure Washer Replacement kit arrived  from Amazon – Not much to it, but it seemed to have all the bits that I needed to complete the job

 

Even if you have a different connection type, Karcher supply an adapter with the hose replacement kit, so it should be a straightforward fitting if you have one of the models I listed above.

This is what the quick connect system looks like :

Step One – The first step in putting the kit together is to connect the Karcher trigger gun to the hose that comes in the kit. This couldn’t be easier to do thanks to the quick connect system. The only thing you have to do is slot the connector from the hose end into the bottom of the trigger gun – when you hear a loud click you know that it is placed,

One nice thing I noticed about the replacement hose is that it looks to be “Anti-Kink”, which will hopefully prevent any damage in the future. I have a feeling that is why my old hose broke, so it would be nice if this new hose was resistant to that fault in the future.

Step Two – The second step of for replacing the hose on your Karcher Pressure washer is to connect the other end of the hose to the pressure washer itself. Depending on the connection type you have on your machine you may or may not have to use the special quick-connect adapter provided.

In my case, it was fairly straight forward.

The only trouble I ran into was the quick connect had seized and I had to use some WD-40 to lube it up a bit before I could disconnect.

This is what the quick connect looks like – to release it you need to press it downwards ( in the direction the arrows are pointing ).

and Voila!

Fixing your Karcher Pressure Washer Summary :

All in all, this job was a lot easier to complete than I had originally thought. This is down to Karcher’s fairly slick and easy quick-connect system.

The whole process took about 15 minutes, and it probably would have been shorter if it wasn’t for me having to mess around with the WD-40 on the quick connect adapter.

Fair play to Karcher for making such an easy to use product – lets hope that this hose lasts. To be fair, the original hose has lasted a few years already with a LOT of use.

For anyone trying to do this replacement themselves, here is a quick video I found online for making sure you are buying the correct product, and the replacement process.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out in the comments.

Recommended Reading – What is the best pressure washer for car detailing

Until next time,

Happy Detailing!

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About the Author – Darren O Hara

Darren is the founder of the DriveDetailed blog and is a keen detailing enthusiast living in the rainy south of Ireland. When he is not cleaning his car he is always researching ways he can improve his techniques and enjoys testing out out new products.

Darren currently drives an Audi TTRS and is a big fan of performance cars.

You can follow Darren on Instagram @darrenoharacork