Cleaning the oil cooler...

[DaytonaBill]

I know that washing the tube in mineral spirits or degreaser will get the tube clean, but will the residue soak into the coating made by the SCA's, on the walls of the coolant tubes ???

How should I clean the tube and not contaminate my cavitation prevention system???

I'm planing on doing the swap this weekend, finally...

Then looking for a left fender, four doors and a long bed, comes next...

And after that, Fat Max and the stereo from hell is next...

What say you? That is, about the oil cooler tube???

 

[riotwarrior]

I dunno...soak it in CLR I suppose..

 

[jaluhn83]

Use some sort of degreaser / solvent, then just rinse it out well. Hot water and simple green works pretty well. I made a part cleaner out of a plastic tub with a floating 1500W water heater element and filled with about 50/50 water/simple green and it worked well.

Wouldn't worry too much about the scas - rinse the oil cooler out well and put new coolant with proper scas in and you should be fine. Cavitation isn't something that happens remotely quickly and I don't see any way a small amount of solvent will cause problems even if there's any left. If you're really concerned flush the cooling system a few times with fresh water first then fill with your new coolant/scas.

When you rebuild an engine I'm sure there's small traces of cleaning solvent left in it and there's not really any special precautions needed there.....

 

[dgr]

Your oil cooler isn't going to cavitate. Cavitation requires an impulse from the cylinder wall that creates a microbubble that collapses in a tiny little sonic boom and puts a microscopic pit in the outside of the cylinder wall. That isn't going to happen in the oil cooler. So clean it out, rinse it well and install it. Monitor your CCAs and that's about it.

OT alert. My friend soaked a table saw blade in simple green. Came out the next day and there was a hole through the blade. Crazy but true. If I recall, it was a Freud dado set.

 

[jaluhn83]

I think he was worried about the solvent in the oil cooler contaminating the rest of the system. but you've got a good point too - assuming is bad.

I find that blade story very interesting.... I suspect some underlying weird condition in the metallurgy of the blade. It appears that simple green will attack aluminum over time, and I found some mention of hydrogen embitterment causing eventually cracking in steels, but that much damage that fast seems decidedly odd.

 

[Agnem]

Purple Power works good.

 

[icanfixall]

Why are you thinking the cooler is scaled up. Running a wire bottle brush thru the tubes will clean it nicely. Use some crl on the brush too. Or muratic acid for a pool but be careful with that. Gloves and full face shield is a must..

 

[DaytonaBill]

Thanks guys, I was just a little concerned that the solvent residue would get absorbed into the coating the SCA's left on the walls of the coolant tubes of the oil cooler... I'm not thinking that the tubes that carry coolant is scaled up, I already know that every square inch of surface that comes in contact with SCA's get this whiteish look to it... It's how the SCA's work...

I was just concerned that this coating might absorb solvents into it and then when I put new antifreeze with SCA's in it, it would gum up into sludge or something worse... Know what I mean???

 

[bigoilburner20]

rinse clean rinse clean with solevent then rinse about 4 or 5 times with degreaser or simple is really good stuff too me