Technical Annealing brass?

So, I'm wanting to refurbish an ebay heater that I found for my 46 Chevy pu. The tubes are somewhat deformed and one of them is cracked. My question is how can I reform them to be straight and solder up the Crack? I think I need to put the core in a pan of water so as to not loosen any solder joints while heating, but I'm not sure how to go about it

 

Not sure about yours, but the tubes on mine were the same OD as 1/2" plumbing copper. If yours are, I would just cut off the bad section and solder a new piece on with a standard coupler. Just wrap a wet rag around the base and no worries.

 

Wrap one around your head as well, it disrupts their tracking signal. Sorry, watching Total Recall at the moment.

 

That's what aluminum foil hats are for!

 

Been there, used a union along with chunk of copper tube, and sweated it together, easy and worked good. Put a little bit of a flare on the end to help keep the hose on too.

 

As for your original question....
dull red, with flame heat and air cool...or use your induction heater if you have one....I believe that tube is really copper.
immerse the whole core assembly in water, up past the solder joint on the core for the tube

If you have a flare block, for your flaring tool, you can straighten that out with it, with out annealing it

 

If the crack on the tube is very near the core, you could be screwed.

If its a away from the core, you should be able to just add a chunk of copper tubing the correct size and sweat that onto the stub of your existing core. Just be careful, that modern copper tubing is probably a lot thicker material then your heater core is, and the tube from the core that you are splicing onto has to be pretty clean.