Boiling over

A

armchair67

Senior Member
Yes I realize this topic has been covered time and time again, but I've got a situation I thought I'd run by you folks. I've been driving my 31 Tudor daily, working out the kinks one by one. That list has been minor things that I knew about for the most part when I bought the car. This one is something that has come up unexpectedly about a week ago.

I bought the car from a gentleman who restored but about a dozen years ago but drove it very little. In the two months(give or take) that I have owned it, I've added 1500 miles to it. One thing I did a few weeks ago was to do a vinegar flush on the coking system since I didn't not know when it was last changed. I've sat in traffic on some super hot days and it never haver an issue. Not the case anymore. Now it gets hot enough to boil over after five minutes of driving. I've re flushed it four times, each time getting some rusty, murky looking deposits out with the vinegar. If I do the flush, and drive it , she stays cool for that fist drive. If I drive it a second time, the car does the book over routine. My thought is to just replace the radiator and be done with it, but I'm not so sure. I know this is making my engine compartment, fenders, and hood a real mess! Any advice ?
 
you probably created the problem by loosening up debris in the block. sometimes the best bet is to drain and refill rather than the other route if your NOT having problems. and then if you do have to go the other route dont pump it in the rad. think of the radiator as a big filter so any crap you loosened up will get caught up there. i would flush the block with a pipe exiting on the ground then either get your rad rodded or replaced..
 
Try back flushing the radiator first isolating it from the block. The rust may come loose that is now plugging it up.
In the future, when you treat the block, block off the top and bottom outlets from the radiator, and flush the block before you hook the hoses back up. when you flush the radiator do the same. Hope the backflushing does it. Next stop is the radiator shop IMHO.
Bob
 
I learned a trick from a fellow Model A owner.

Before he did the flushing he took a ladies nylon and installed in the upper radiator hose where the upper radiator hose connects to the water outlet. Make a sock out of it and stuff 4 or 5 inches into the upper radiator hose and wrap a section of nylon around the outside diameter of the hose and install the lower hose clamp. Keeps the loose crap from entering the upper radiator tank and plugging the tubes. I remove the hose clean the sock out and re-flush until there are no more accumalations, then remove the nylon and be on your way.
 
I think the radiator shop is going to be your next stop no matter how much more flushing you do. Who knows how many years worth of grease and crud are in those tubes? If you are lucky, a good radiator man can rod out that core and save it but most likely you'll need another core. I have fought this battle many times over the years and short-cut clean out jobs seldom work well enough to keep the engine cool in hot weather.
 
Radiator...Radiator...Radiator
As others have already stated with the vinegar flush you have knocked rust free and now it is clogged up. Back flush as suggested and if that doesn't get it then a radiator shop in in your future.
 
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160B said:
I learned a trick from a fellow Model A owner.

Before he did the flushing he took a ladies nylon and installed in the upper radiator hose where the upper radiator hose connects to the water outlet. Make a sock out of it and stuff 4 or 5 inches into the upper radiator hose and wrap a section of nylon around the outside diameter of the hose and install the lower hose clamp. Keeps the loose crap from entering the upper radiator tank and plugging the tubes. I remove the hose clean the sock out and re-flush until there are no more accumalations, then remove the nylon and be on your way.
Click to expand...

Tom W tried that and it didn't work out to good. Clogged up to quickly and disrupted the cooling flow plus it fell apart and went into his rad also not good
 
The moral of this story is IMO if it ain't broke don't fix it If broken ask
here first and then follow the steps Back flush then back flush again
until no crud a trip to radiator shop may be needed Sorry for your troubles
 
I used a drier sock, which may not be as strong as a nylon. I thought they looked like the same material, but they may not be. Anyway I had to use an inspection light to find the torn sock laying on top of the tubes, then pick it out with a bent wire. I had to use a sump pump to get good pressure and flow to really clean the loose rust from the block. I also turned my radiator upside down and used the sump pump to backflush it.

For overheating problems, always try to determine wheich came first, did the top tank fill up and go out the overflow and then the engine overheated due to lack of coolant, or did the coolant boil away due to late timing or some other cause.

I tied a gallon jug and hose to my overflow pipe and found that the coolant was pushed out first, thus causing the overheat.

Do a search for radiator cleaning and mess, and you should find my posting with pictures.
 
FWIW:

Even if one drains a Model A radiator & allows the water jacket to remain dry for a spell, inside rust can work loose. Like draining water pipes & turning water back on & seeing that the water is brown. Good idea to have a coolant filter at all times with vintage engines.

After flushing my radiator & engine with a different cleanser using **** & Span, (closer in PH to caustic soda recommended by Ford), I made a more permanent functional coolant filter that I think will last my lifetime which was put together as follows:

1. Go to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, or any major appliance store to buy an aluminum or stainless steel metal washing machine filter & get one that looks similar to a sock.

2. Next, at a car parts store, find either a 1-3/4" or 1-5/8", inside diameter (I.D.) radiator hose, (forgot which exact size I used from my 1947 Cub Tractor), & cut it about 2" long. It should fit neatly inside a Model A radiator hose.

3. Place the metal sock looking filter inside the smaller hose with the toe of the metal sock protruding about 1" & pointing towards the radiator cap.

4. Wrap the other open end of the metal sock filter around the out-side part of the smaller hose such that the open end of the metal sock now also points towards the radiator cap.

5. Insert the smaller hose with the metal filter into the larger Model A radiator hose from the radiator cap side of the Model A hose & finally install the Model A radiator hose.

6. If the smaller hose slips slightly forward with water pressure, the round metal lip on the large radiator metal inlet will prevent the smaller hose assembly from sliding further forward.

7. Provide a good coat of white lithium grease on both inside ends of the Model A hose ends so in a few years, the radiator hose will easily slide off.

8. Overheating in about 98% of cases is caused by a non-functional radiator.

Hope this helps.
 
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Here is a pic. of a radiator flush gun I used to sell, when I manufactured GUD (Ryco) products. I have not seen it mentioned here, but it flushes with mains pressure water and bursts of 100 psi compressed air to supplement the water.
I just flushed my wife's new(!!) Tudor and 1/8 inch pieces of rust flew out of the top neck. I stood the rad. against a white concrete block wall and flushed in bursts, with the gun in the bottom hose, until no more rust and grease particles hit the wall and ran down it, which was a good way to see what was coming out of the high-pressure stream - easier for a lazy person than installing a stocking filter over the filler neck to see when no more detritus was being blown out. I think the high-velocity stream would rip a stocking after it collected much debris anyway. I had to give about 30 bursts before clear water emerged.
The car now runs about 130 deg F so I will put in a thermostat to warm it.
I don't know how badly it was blocked since I reco'd the motor before running it.
Obviously, be careful to fully vent the rad. (leave the cap off) before putting 100 psi air and mains pressure water into the bottom hose.
Usually I put in a home-made rad. flush and run for several hours before using the gun, but this rad cleaned up well without the flush.
SAJ in NZ
 

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you can make your own from a Y black iron pipe fitting. Adapt fittings so that air goes in one side of Y, house-pressure water in the other. Connect single end to bottom of radiator, leave top open, and proceed like SAJ says. Y should be about 1 1/2 inch black iron pipe.

You will spend more time adapting the gizmo to your lower rad. neck than anything else. That is why we keep scraps of heater/rad hose of all sizes in the corner in a box.

Been doing this for yrs
 
C26PINELAKE. Ryco is an Australian and New Zealand brand. But I see Gates and Sidchrome feature flush guns if you Google. Sidchrome is Australian too, so it is interesting that most of the references are antipodean. There is an article by Popular Mechanics from 1949 on making one on Google too. It just goes to show how old fashioned I am, but I guess I had these Ryco guns made up in the 1960's. They worked well for the car radiators we had back then, and the old soluble oil plus vegetable fibre pellets in original Bars Leaks, 5-in-1 and other products that I made could goop up radiator tubes as well as the leaks, if you didn't reverse-flush them well first.
I had no idea these guns were not still freely available. They do a great job on Model A's and I have never burst a radiator with 100 psi, though a really blocked one could if you were not quick on the air valve. But the 20 psi I see advised now would not jet out oily grease from the tubes like I do. And if sufficiently blocked in the tubes that the air burst the bottom tank, that rad was due for a rodding-out anyway!
SAJ in NZ
 
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