Cleaning radiator & intercooler.

Sorry if this is the wrong place to put this topic, but I wasn;t sure exactly where it should go. Sorry.

Well, my rad & intercooler were both mega caked in mud. I've left them to soak for a couple of days in a parrafin bath and tomorrow I will be jet washing them off.

My question is, just how easy is it to damage the vanes on them?
If I end up blowing some particles of grit through, will I cause any damage?
Would it be ok to use a stiff(ish) brush on them?

In advance, cheers.

i wouldnt use a brush mate, did yer seal yer oil pipes up before yer soaked it in parafin???
just use a general hose, nothing to powerfull and youll find yer have to keep turning it round a few times.
as fer air con did yer fine between the rads was ****ty as fook?? its a mud trap between them. i fooked my air con off once i discovered this. better cooling, easier to clean and a **** load less weight.
another advantage is that is yer wanna fit leccy fans you be left with connectors for the aircon fans at the top of the rad and you will aready have a switch to use bieng in the form of you air con switch to operate your fans so no drilling extra switches into your dash.

aye dint use a pressure washer as yule fook yer rad/cooler/condensor.

yule end up with the cooling fins flattened and yer either gonna have to sit there and tweek them all back out into place or but noo uns

RAZ8550TDI said:

i wouldnt use a brush mate, did yer seal yer oil pipes up before yer soaked it in parafin???
just use a general hose, nothing to powerfull and youll find yer have to keep turning it round a few times.
as fer air con did yer fine between the rads was ****ty as fook?? its a mud trap between them. i fooked my air con off once i discovered this. better cooling, easier to clean and a **** load less weight.
another advantage is that is yer wanna fit leccy fans you be left with connectors for the aircon fans at the top of the rad and you will aready have a switch to use bieng in the form of you air con switch to operate your fans so no drilling extra switches into your dash.

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Whoops. Didn't seal the oil cooler pipes up. is that bad? If so, how bad?

No air con on mine, it's only an XS, not an ES like yours?

Already have the electric windows, although the bugger keeps falling off the runners on the drivers side.

slob said:

aye dint use a pressure washer as yule fook yer rad/cooler/condensor.

yule end up with the cooling fins flattened and yer either gonna have to sit there and tweek them all back out into place or but noo uns

Click to expand...

****.

I took the rad & intercooler off, soaked them in a parrafin bath for about 36 hours.

Then I removed them, giving the casings a gentle rub with a wire brush. The mud that was on there was very clay like, so had dried like concrete. Even 36 hours submerged in parrafin had hardly touched them.

Then I took them out, drained them off and took them to the petrol station.

Used a hot rinse first, which was low pressure, then the hot brush, (which was quite soft), then the lance at high pressure.

I started using this at a distance, but it hardly touched it, so I got closer and closer. I seem to have bent quite a lot of the fins on the (ali?) intercooler, but seemed to have blown most of the muck out.

With the rad, there is still quite a sizeable amount of mud left blocking up the very centre of the rad. Tomorrow I'm going to have a go at poking it all out with one of the wifes knitting needles, also using that to try and pull the fins back into place.


Which brings me to another question. This must be quite a commen issue with vehicles that go properly off road quite a bit. Now, it would seem daft to have a rad that is almost a serviceable item, something that needs replacing every year? Shirly there must be someone who makes them with a wider 'knit' so to speak, therefore making it easier to blow all the crap out from between the vanes?

Do any of you chaps know of such a firm, or will it require a custom built jobbie?

Cheers.

if yer have wider spaces between the cooling fins yule end up with less cooling. if yer dint let it build up in the first place and clean it out before it bakes on it will come orf reet easy.

you can buy a fin 'comb' to straighten out all yer bent fins

Cheers.

And were would one purchase said "Fin Comb"?

eh! eh! check ebay or perhaps demon tweeks or even a A/C specialist

slob said:

eh! eh! check ebay or perhaps demon tweeks or even a A/C specialist

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Many, many thanks. That will save several hours of tedium with the wifes knitting needle.

Disco Moneypit said:

Whoops. Didn't seal the oil cooler pipes up. is that bad? If so, how bad?

No air con on mine, it's only an XS, not an ES like yours?

Already have the electric windows, although the bugger keeps falling off the runners on the drivers side.

Click to expand...

i wish mine was an es mate