A few years back I bought a '32 Fordor hiboy sedan that was recently built and it appeared to have a brand new Walker C-AC491 Cobra radiator with A/C Condenser in it. I drove the car for a few years before I decided to take it apart to redo everything I didn't like and put an interior in it and fenders on it. I never had a problem with the radiator or any leaks when I was driving it. I put a new Cooling Components electric fan on it so I had to remove the existing screw clips and in doing that I nicked the core tubes and had to have that fixed. I took it to Bobby, at my local radiator repair shop; who's been in business 26 years, for him to solder the two leaks up. No big deal. He did that and when he went to test it the top tank was leaking through numerous pin holes like a sieve. He said he was pretty surprised because Walkers are made with fairly heavy gauge copper/brass metal and the radiator looked like it was still brand new inside and out. He said he usually only sees tanks rot out like that on old cars that have been sitting in a field for 40 years. He asked if I had used a radiator cleaner in it and I told him all I had done was drain it about 2 years ago when I took it apart and it has been sitting in my shop dry since then. He did say he did have something similar happen. When he started his business he had picked up a bunch of old radiators and rebuilt them and then stored them up on the mezzanine of his shop to sell if someone needed a radiator quick. He said that over the years when he went to sell them that every one of them the tanks had rotted out! H Has anyone ever had this problem? On my Walker the bottom tank and the core is still like new but the top tank is rotting from the inside out. You can tap on the leaky spots and feel it's not solid metal. I can only guess that Walker got a bad batch of copper/brass material that they used on this tank. Has anyone ever had this problem before, especially with a Walker? Any of you guys that are in the radiator business that have seen this? I keep a few extra '32 radiators on my mezzanine in the shop so I had another new Walker to use but I'm wondering if I should be doing something to preserve them. Bobby suggested that I might slosh some antifreeze around in them and then seal them up but I would hate to have to do that. I had him test the new Walker and it was fine, and another used U.S. Radiator I had. It had a few leaks in the core but was otherwise in good shape. Bobby can build another top tank from scratch for my leaky Walker but I'd rather have an original Walker tank to use on it. Does anyone out there have a crash or otherwise damaged Walker out there with a good top tank on it they would want to part with? I know that Johnson's Hot Rod Shop has bought Walkers tooling and equipment but isn't building anything as of yet. Bobby had told me when Walker was still around he had tried to buy tanks from them but they wouldn't sell him just the tanks. Here's the Fordor.
I’ve never experienced this but this good article is an eye opener. https://www.budmatthews.com/blog/plumbing-service/copper-pipes-can-corrode/
I had a Walker in a sea can for a few years and when I went to use it, no problem, I've been using it ever since. Plus I did use it a few years before I moved it and stored it.
Shortly after buying the Model A, I found the top tank a tiny leak. Investigating further revealed two pinholes, so off to the radiator shop we go. Luckily, all else was good and has been ever since (about yrs.)!
Had my walker for over years without any problems until i made a hole in it myself. Had it repaired and now i am back on the road.
I did find out that the local Shops can’t solder a Walker. They use a low temp solder and when the goob at the radiator shop heated it up it all ran out. I ended up sending it back to Walker to get resoldered, $225 later…..not sure if it was the guy soldering or the radiator. Either way it was costly.
Very strange, no idea. I do figure, though, that there are not many hot-rodders on the HAMB with a "mezzanine".
I have three cars with Walker Radiators the oldest is exactly forty years old. My 3W was hit by a van in '99 and the top attachment for the support rods was knocked off the tank. I cleaned the top of the tank and support bracket added flux and soldered it back on. I've always used a 50/50 mix of antifreeze and distilled water in all my cars and never had a problem with any of the Walker's.
I used a '32 Walker Cobra when I built my old Sedan Delivery. I ran it for 12 years with no problems ...and @Hamtown Al ran it for a couple more years. It's in Calif now, and as far as I know, the radiator is still running strong. The battery was also 12 years old and still working fine...but I think Al lost his nerve...and replaced it.
I have a 3 year old CAR radiator in my '37 seeping in about the same area. Still under warranty' they said they will take care of it.
I have a Walker rad in my SBC powered '40 coupe.....the tank joints cracked after a few years of use......I talked to Vernon Walker directly, around 1998, and he refurbished it free of charge. It has been free of issues ever since. Hard to beat that for customer service.
For some reason (my wife) I built the shop too small, so I built a mezzanine over the back half of it (14' deep by 28" wide) and now that thing is full too! I even have a stock rolling '32 chassis up there plus 9" rear end housings and transmissions. Sometimes I wonder how much weight it will hold when I work under it! My wife seems to think that when I built the house with the lower level all garage (2000 sq. ft.) that would be enough! Not! I wish they were still in business so I could send it back to have them look at it and repair it. My local radiator guy Bobby can build a new top tank for it for $300 to $400 but it wouldn't look as nice as an original Walker tank. Maybe I'll get lucky and find one but I still have a three '32 Ford radiators for my other projects. The third one with the air conditioning condenser is the leaker.
Well, I'm not a metallurgist, but I do know there is something called "Red Rot" that attacks brass alloy. Red Rot is a breakdown of the brass alloy that leaches out the zinc, causing pin holes. You state that your lower tank is ok, but the top tank was affected. Perhaps because the bottom tank was always filled with water/anti freeze it prevented the rot from forming. Another thing to consider is electrical. I use zinc anodes in my radiator because I kept loosing the zinc thermostat housing on my '32 to pinholes. Maybe you have an electric leak that attacked the zinc in the brass. Too far fetched?
I've been reading up on the subject a lot and the "red rot" makes sense. I think they got a bad batch of metal for that top tank. There were no leaks when I was driving it and the radiator was drained because I took it off the car and emptied it completely. The electrical issue shouldn't be an issue because it was off the car that at time. In my reading it turns out that copper/brass radiators are much more susceptible to corrosion than aluminum radiators because of three different metals used in their construction, bimetallic corrosion between copper, some brass alloys and soldering alloys on radiators. Galvanic corrosion requires dissimilar metals, and a brazed aluminum radiator is all aluminum where as a copper-brass radiator contains copper, brass, and a lead/tin solder. This solder makes a copper-brass radiator more susceptible to galvanic corrosion than aluminum. In my radiator, this corrosion may have been accelerated because when the original builder filled it with impure tap water instead of distilled water and then used a weak anti-freeze solution. Maybe once it was exposed to the air when I took it off the car, maybe it just kept corroding once it got started and was exposed to oxygen. Here's some of my reading material on this. https://www.dwdbrass.com/blog/aluminum-vs-copper-brass-radiator-corrosion-susceptibility/ https://www.boydcorp.com/resources/fluid-control-technologies/preventing-corrosion.html https://penray.com/resources/cooling-system-tech-facts/metal-corrosion/
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