Spooky stuff.

Since I've gotten my jeep running, I had only peeked into the radiator to find a brownish coolant that I supposed to be old antifreeze since it had a oily smell and feel. Well this weekend I started in on replacing the thermostat and hoses when I got a surprise. My thermostat housing was about corroded into, and it looked like a corral reef growing on the thermostat. The heater feeder was totally closed off with what appeared to be caked sawdust. I had a bad feeling about what I was seeing. I blew the radiator out since I had all the hoses off, it didn't take long to clean, then the block took a few minutes to rinse clean with a pretty good flow of water, but the heater hoses had the most junk in them with a brown almost oil like fluid in them. I back flushed everything and have decided to go ahead and replace the water pump, and obviously a new thermostat housing. The motor had gotten warm on me a couple of times, but not lately. I suppose this is all due to setting up for so long. Something I won't overlook again.

It's a wonder it held up this far. Thermostat housing. Circled is the heater feeder that was totally plugged.


Corrosion buildup.


Once I started digging out the plugged heater feeder, I was wondering at what I was looking at. Like saw dust.


Felt like I was snorkeling around a corral reef!

 

I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.

 

R)R)R)

 

This is mostly from some sort of "stop leak" that was poured in by the PO.

 

I'm a registered nurse and I would recommend your engine have a course of antibiotics (stat)

 

AND A SHOT OF PENICILLIN!! looks worse than things i've seen over-seas...

 

That looks like what I ate for lunch.








You mentioned in the other thread that you were gonna have the radiator checked, and I can tell you from past experience that there's a good possibility it will have to be replaced, just from looking at what you've got there. Starting out, it wont overheat much on you. Mine just barely ran past where the gauge normally stayed at. However, if you get it out on the highway much at around 55-65 mph, it will get to where it just starts getting hotter and hotter, and will cool down if you're just putting along. I couldn't figure my problem out, and replaced everything, and flushed everything. I flushed the radiator about 4 or 5 times in the process of replacing one thing at a time, and it looked like it was flowing good. It finally built up enough pressure that it split the tank on the radiator, which answered my question of whether I needed a new one or not. Took it to the radiator shop to have it fixed, and they said it was 95% blocked, and not worth fixing.

 

If you're writing off the rad as scrap, why not dump the rad into the most vicious cleaning agent you can find, if it disintegrates, you've lost nothing.
My Grandfather (RIP) was a foreman at a vitrous enameling plant.
Anything metal he wanted cleaned off went in the hydrofloric acid vat, that stuff disolves GLASS!
I'm sure it would rip that gunge out of a rad.

 

The radiator seemed to clean out pretty good with the water hose, but I won't know til I have it checked. I can see a ping in the cooling coils that I suspect is where the weak spot is. I think your more than likely correct in that once I get it checked out, I'll most likely either going to have to have some work done to it, or replace it.

I'd rather it blow at the radiator shop than knee deep in mud on the back forty. As far as any other radiator repairs, I figure I'll leave it to the pros. We've got a pretty good shop here in town that offers a good service for a fair price.

 

I'd have it flushed at a rad shop and tested just to be safe. May need a re core.

 

If you've got a radiator shop locally that will repair or recore radiators, you are fortunate. They are a vanishing breed.

Most radiator shops today just sell radiators.

 

WoW!

 

Maybe an enema at the same time?

 

What do you suppose the water passages in the block look like?

And from the looks of the lines running to your heater, that will need going through/or replacing also.:hurrican:

 

I know what you mean. There for the longest, and around the time the incident I mentioned took place, we had two here in town. They can retank, clean, repair, and can even move the the necks on the radiator, like when we swap in Chevy engines. A buddy of mine bought one of them out though, and now that's all he does is sell radiators, other than cleaning then.

 

I know that Modine moved all their production of automobile radiators out of the country, to Mexico I think. This new business model dropped th price of replacement radiators a lot - it's as if they were trying to drive the recore/repair shops out of the business. That combined with stringent enviro and safety regs... there's only one shop in the Boston metro area now that I know of: Carroll's. They aren't cheap, and the place looks like they are preparing to abandon the property (maybe not, but they certainly aren't putting any money into the business).

 

We've got a local one here, Currington Radiator in the big city of Corsicana, Tx. Free testing and $60 to remove the top, clean the tubes and re-sauder the top back on with a paint job to boot. Sounds reasonable to me considering I can talk to the folks in person.

I'm dropping it off Monday morning.

The stuff that was covering the thermostat is dried up now, I have more of a brown stain on the inside of the water jacket from what i can see. I'm just going to flush the hell out of it with the water hose when I reassemble with the radiator and water pump. Not sure if I'll use a flush agent or not.

 

When you say sawdust it makes me wonder who owned the Jeep before. I work for a power company, and we use sawdust for a couple of reasons, one to plug up leaks in hydro dams with the head gates closed, and another in steam plants to plug condenser leaks. Maybe the PO was a steam plant operator. R)

 

yeah, the radiator shops are a dying breed. Best one here in my town (we have 2) wants to close down, he's ready to sell. The land he's on is worth more than the business. A lot of the local repair guys are losing ground to the dealerships with the "$200 down and a steady job" offers from Kia and other POS cars- why spend $1000 fixing something, when you can trade it in and get a new car for $200?

They're going the way of buggy whips.

 

Some of the newer kinds of antifreeze turn brown and gunky when they get too hot. Best to stick with the tried and true green kind.