Hey guys, been lurking all winter. My old girl, my 36 has been running green coolant for twenty five years, it's time to give it the big clean. It tends to heat up faster than it used to, trouble is, there aren't many rad shops that work on rads, most just re and re stuff now. Got any suggestions for flushes that work? Gonna try it myself.
Pull the radiator. Turn it upside down and run water through it backwards as fast as you can. You will be amazed at all the crap that will come out of it.
Cascade dishwasher soap. Won’t harm copper, brass, or aluminum radiators. Put it in, run a while drain and flush, if not clean enough, repeat. My block had a bunch of rust scale in it, ran the Cascade through it a couple of heating cycles, flushed until it ran clear, no more scale.
Hey why don’t you drop on down to the coast? I think the shop in Port Moody still work on radiators...
How bad is it ? Just old ? Brown and murky ? if it’s just age your concerned about drain it , fill it add a flush run it and drain and fill one last time . If it’s brown and murky . Pull the hoses off , garden hose down all the inlets and outlets engine and rad . Put it back together with a flush and drive it , drain and fill everyday after a good drive until it’s clear. I had a 460 years ago that looked like thanksgiving gravy in the rad , did what I outlined above but also poped the frost plugs out that I could get to and hit the engine internal with a pressure washer. Couple flushes and a drain and fill every morning when I got into work and by the end of the week it was Chrystal clear .
If you are driving it now you might take a shot at flushing the crud out of the outside of the core with either a garden hose or spray wand car wash. If you don't run a screen in front of the radiator you might have a world class collection of BC bugs in that radiator.
Look up a product made by Fleetgard Filters called Restore Plus. It’s a heavy duty acid based cleaner made for removing heavy rust and scale. They make two different types, Restore and Restore Plus. Regular Restore is made for cleaning oil from cooling systems. Fleetgard is owned by Cummins Engine and is available from Cummins dealers. We use both products at work with excellent results.
Lots of the Model A guys use vinegar, run to get hot and then flush (do NOT do on a concrete driveway). Paul in CT
I removed the thermostat in a FE. Poured a jug of clr in the radiator and let it run for about 15 minutes. Then opened up the drain and flushed with a hose. Looked like brand new cast iron on the inside of the block Radiator looked better as well
Well if you look thru old Model A books they tell you how to run caustic soda to clean the cooling system....You wouldn't want to run this thru anything that is aluminum but fine for steel and brass...
THIS! If you can get what the commercial AC guys use for cleaning the fins on the outside condensers. Melts stuff right out. Ben
One brand is Koil Klean Be careful with a pressure washer , good way to bend fins . Garden hose with a spray nozzle is generally plenty.
No, it's still green, no sign of murk, but it's been running twenty five years, I can see it's got settlement on the core. Long as I'm moving, it's excellent, but slow down, the temp rises faster than it used to. I'm sure the silica in the coolant has settled out.
Back in the day, we removed both hoses, and had a water hose/air hose (with operating valve, like an air gun) My one pictured uses a tire inflator, with a big tapered rubber sealing plug at the end .. The rubber end/plug, was put in the bottom of the radiator, (or reverse to water flow) and the water turned on, when the water came out the other outlet, short bursts of compressed air was used to move the gunk until the water ran clean..
Both aluminum corrosion and steel corrosion can be cleaned off their respective metals with acids. If you have an aluminum engine and radiator a vinegar solution should work. But if you have an aluminum engine and radiator then there also shouldn't be enough volume of corroded material to ever plug up the radiator. I don't know enough about the chemistry involved to say if or how one can go about chemically cleaning a rusty iron block on a system that has aluminum present.
If you can see crud on the top of the core when looking through the radiator cap, the only way to get rid of it is reverse flow flush. Which works better if the radiator is upside down. This can be done after all the chemical bathes with the engine running to loosen up stuff.
This is what I would exactly do as Anthony suggested..... cheap and easy. I completely understand the lack of rad shops... they are a dying business... same as electric motor shops and water pump rebuilders.
I find even that is often too much for old brass fins. I mix up the chemicals in a cheap potato pump and use that. Most will undo the nozzle to create a very fine stream that'll get deep into the core with ease. Let the chemicals do the work then rinse with clean water from the same pump, or the watering can.
I like the Royal Purple product, it's called Royal Flush. There's a couple others I've tried from Canadian Tire with good results. They require you to dump your coolant, refill with this stuff and water, get it warm, then let it sit, dump it, flush it with water, then refill with coolant. I've had success getting scale off of copper-brass and aluminum radiators with these and they're easy to use and work great. My 62 Bel Air had brown coolant for years, from the moment the rad came back from the shop it was always that way. Then I found it was heating up quick after sitting for several years. I did the flush and spent a lot of time flushing it with the garden hose to get the brown out and clear water coming out. Refilled with new coolant and water wetter and it's like new again!
Might need to keep in mind rad cap may be 16psi and need to take it easy with garden hose connected to public water. Even with all ports open, pushing water thru one end at 80psi could damage.
That's a new one. What do you think flushing water through in an open system is going to damage? You should be flowing water through, not forcing it in. Regardless, if you're flushing the system with the garden hose, it's best to do it with both the upper and lower rad hose off and the thermostat out, so that you can flush out the block and the radiator separately.
That's what I used. I made an adapter from a PVC union and a few other random parts to fill with water and blast with air. Worked great! No more overheating.
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