Technical Cascade dishwasher soap radiator flush

So I put in a new crate motor in my 32. The old motor was hot tanked before being built, but the coolant when drained was super rusty. I flushed the radiator out with a garden hose and got a lot of cruddy brown water to come out. Anywho I was talking to a guy that runs a radiator shop and asked if there was a flush he recommended, he said put a few tables****s of cascade dish washer soap in and run the engine enough to heat the motor and drain. He said Cascade does not foam up. Anyone ever here of doing this?

 

I'm interested to hear as well.

 

In the medium and heavy duty truck repair world, we deal with engine oil cooler and injector cup problems in diesel engines.
If injector o-rings fail, or cups leak in the head, you can contaminate the three systems involved. Fuel, coolant, and oil. Coolant only crosses in when the engine isn't running, cooling off. We get oil in the fuel, fuel in the oil, fuel or oil in the coolant.
When the engine cooling system has the contamination, a simple test can be done with a s**** of brown cardboard. Fuel or oil soaks into the cardboard, and coolant sits on top.
When this occurs, we use Cascade in a decent dose to degrease and remove the fuel or oil from the cooling system.
This has no bearing on the corrosion in a cooling system.
When I got my engine block back from the machine shop, I took a coat hanger, a drill, and elbow grease, to reach inside the water ports in the deck of my SBC to try to remove scale. I then went to the carwash to jet out su****ions. When I got to the water ports at the 5 and 6 holes, I blew out a ton of old core sand and rust scale. You won't accomplish that with a running engine.
If you try, if you have a heater plumbed into the engine, you had better put a byp*** hose on the engine to keep the junk out of the heater core.

 

One more tidbit, in a diesel with an EGR cooler, you can test the coolant for EGR cooler exhaust leaks.....test strips, similar to checking for transmission cooler leaks. And the tiny bubbles....

 

As Patrick above mentioned, using Cascade in the cooling systems of heavy duty diesel trucks and equipment is an old skool repair practice for cleaning cooling systems contaminated with oil. It has never been a practice for cleaning rust and scale contaminated systems. And today, coolant spe******ts tell us it never was a very good practice and they recommend against it completely. I'll have to dig thru my files to see if I can find any technical info on it, but it has to do with the chemistry of the detergent reacting poorly with the coolant in the system when you refill it.

 

EGR Cooler failures are so rampant, it's almost epidemic levels. We see it with used oil ****ysis all the time, the Sodium and Pot***ium additives in the coolant end up getting into the crankcase fouling the engine oil. We'll see these indicators for a long time before the leak gets so bad that glycol will flag positive.

 

The better practice of oil contamination is to have the radiator cleaned by a radiator shop.
Rust scale is another category that I don't think can be correctly addressed with a product in a bottle.
I've been in the mechanic, parts, and service business since before I enlisted to be an Air Force 47251C tech in 1985, and still am at closing on 51 now. 26 years at one truck shop.

 

Cascade type detergent actually contains an abrasive. Though I've never used it for this purpose, I'd be careful to flush it very good for fear of wearing down moving parts at the water pump.

 

I can't imagine why you wouldn't get that radiator flushed out BEFORE hooking it up to a brand new motor. Why would you want to run that rusty **** through your new motor and then try and clean it out?

 

Sometimes the shop is dealing with repairs while the customer is breathing down their neck to get the truck out. This is common when you're not dealing with swinging a new engine in.

 

Thanks for the info guys. Anybody have an over the counter flush they have used with good results?

 

Do not know about radiators, my AC service guy told me to use one cup to three gallons hot water to clean AC condenser coils. Been using it for years no damage to aluminum coils.

 

I believe everyone is telling you " there are none". Pull the radiator, take it to the radiator shop and say " rod it out, please". The only way to clean it and know for sure. Then keep glycol antifreeze in it. Simple.

Ben

 

Ok smart ***!

 

If you can get your wife out of the house during a carb rebuild; put your cleaned parts (best you can) in the dishwasher with cascade and run a cycle. They come out much nicer and the heat/dry works well too. I've stuck a lot of aluminum parts in the dishwasher with good results...

 

No, not a miracle worker

No, can end up with residue smell and contaminants

 

It

Everything seems to have aluminum coolers these days. They don't cool as well and fail more often.

 

This is getting a little OT, but I'm told by ***mins and Mack and Komatsu that the #1 killer of EGR coolers is low coolant level, incorrect filling of cooling system. The old way of filling the system via the radiator cap aren't good enough, it leaves pockets of air in the system, and those pockets of air in the EGR cooler result in super heated areas of the cooler, that when coolant does get splashed onto the surfaces causes temperature shock severe enough to result in cracking of the cooler core. It also has a damaging effect on the coolant as well, so repeated exposure degrades the coolant prematurely resulting in a rise in acid, which then corrodes the system.

Apparently they have tooling to draw the coolant into the system, filling it from the bottom up, eliminating air pockets. Dealerships service departments are supposed to use that tooling. But when you consider all the small shops around the world performing cooling system repairs on trucks and heavy equipment, well, the tooling just isn't being used.

 

I hope she doesn't read the HAMB.

 

We keep a box in the shop for certain situations. I also just did the same thing as you, finished building a vehicle and then circulated brown crud from the engine block through the whole new radiator and cooling system. It was really pretty ugly. I did a BG Products flush, it helped a little but the crud would not release itself from the insides of everything. Then I ran it around with maybe 1/4 cup of cascade for about 200 miles and she cleaned right up. Did another flush to be sure the coolant was new and effective. Go for it.

 

Also, nitrites used in some coolants can become aggressive against aluminum. If you have an aluminum radiator or other cooling system parts, consider using a nitrite free coolant, they are common out there Such as this Peak Long Life, a 2nd generation OAT coolant (No, I do not work for or sell Peak antifreeze, I just am familiar with it)

https://peakauto.com/products/antifreeze-coolants/automotive/long-life-50-50/

 

He's not being a smart *** - he's telling you the RIGHT way to do this. But if you'd rather run all that nasty old rusty **** through your new motor, by all means, be my guest

 

I was asking for a product to flush a radiator ( I know there are products out there) Not about pulling the radiator.

 

I've ran the Cascade through several engines, never had a problem with it. Like levon said, run it a couple of hundred miles, drain and flush with clean water, if it's still dirty, do it again. Would have been better to clean it before you put it together, but sometimes you have to do what you can do.

 

I've heard of people using CLR with good results but haven't tried it myself.

 

I have no experience with it but I plan to try Evapo-rust Cooling System Cleaner at some point down to road.

 

Good grief I hope this is being done to the OUTSIDE of the condenser coil!

 

Try the evaporust. You can drive it with it in there it works good if everything is already together. I think it's better than the overcounter radiator flushes.

Sent from my SM-N910V using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Plain old white vinegar is pretty popular w/ the model A guys. Good Luck

 

I looked through my files and didn't find anything on this, so I reached out to one of my contacts who is one of the most knowledgeable people in the coolants business, has decades of experience and is currently running the coolant ****ysis business for a major global oil ****ysis lab.

Turns out I was wrong about using Cascade, according to my contact it is fine to use, as well as several other powdered electric dishwasher detergents, like Electrosol or Calgon. It was stressed to NOT use the liquid dish washing or laundry soaps, only use the powdered products. These were the instructions given to me (and again, this is only for oil and/or fuel contaminated systems, not for rust and scale removal):

1. Check and correct the source of the contamination.
2. Flush engine, radiator and heater with water till it runs clear.
3.Fill the cooling system with fresh water that meets the engine mfgr's specification and run till warm.
4. Add 1/4 cup of powdered dish soap (Electrosol, Cascade, Calgon), per 15 gallons of cooling system capacity into a bucket of warm water, stir until dissolved. Add to cooling system.
5. Run engine twenty minutes with the cleaning solution in the system.
6. Drain and flush the system with fresh water until the water runs clear.
7. Fill the system with water that meets the engine manufacturer's specification, and run engine until it is warm. Check for presence of oil.
8. If oil is still present, repeat steps 4 - 7.
9. If the coolant shows no indication of oil, proceed to the suggested scale removal procedure if deposits are a problem.
10. If scale deposits are not a problem, drain system and install new 50/50 formulated coolant.