I was about to leave on a trip from LA to San Fran this morning when I noticeed that I had a leak in my radiator. It's a pencil tip sized leak at the top of the rad (see picture below). Can I repair this with basic home plubming tools. (Propane torch, flux, solder)? WILL THIS WORK?? I know that this is not the CORRECT fix, but I plan on replacing the whole radiator before Paso... I just wanted to get it out of town this weekend.
if you do it like I do, then you'll make the leak worse, and chase it all over the radiator..... try jb weld for a temp fix. Clean the radiator very well first.
I was thinking that a torch might just make the crack bigger or that the solder would not stick to the metal. JB Weld was my next question. What's the opinion on JB as a fix?
I have had success doing this very repair using a large soldering iron AFTER cleaning the area VERY good and using lead solder with an acid flux. Most attempts with a torch were not very successful. Al
OK. I'm going with JB Weld and I'm hitting the road. If you see a Lincoln on the side of the road this weekend in CA... pull over and slap me a few times.
That location is usually pretty hard to fix even by a radiator shop. I had one on my walker at that location, where the top tank meets the core, and had it "fixed" by the local rad shop several times. I talked to Walker, they recommended completely pulling the top tank and resetting it, which they did, for only 50 bucks. Hope this helps. Rich
a good radiator shop would have pulled and reset the tank, since that's the only way to fix tank/header seam leaks....sounds like your local shop is a bit lacking?
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