easy to tighten. The bottom HP hose is more difficult, but do-able. I put 2 wrenches together to get to that one. My leak actually was from the fluid supply flange pipe o-ring on the pump body and shrunk over the years and was seeping. Took a while to track it down as it was all wet down there. The only way it worked for me was to clean all the oil off and make sure it was dry, then run the engine and crank the wheel a bunch of times so it has lots of fluid flow to see where it's leaking, but you can't do that with your piping disconnected.