View Single Post
Old 11-06-2015, 07:13 PM   #2
DavidM
Valued Technical Contributor
 
DavidM's Avatar
 
City: Litchfield, Ct
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 6,785
You do have a mess on your hands. That after cooler looks different from ones on modern Cummins and Yanmar engines. Those have the water inside the tubes and the air outside. Yours looks opposite. That is probably why the shell is cast iron rather than aluminum like the others.

Clean up the core by soaking in Barnacle Buster, Rydlime, etc. to remove the scale. Make sure that the tubes are open before doing this. If any are closed up with scale, rod them out so that the acid can get through. But most of the scale is probably on the outside of the tubes where the raw water flows.

Clean the shell up by water blasting and then soaking in BB, etc . When both shell and core are squeaky clean then see if the core will slide back in. it needs to slip in easily with little pounding.

You won't know if you have damaged the core until you have put it back together WITH NEW GASKETS and lots of water proof grease on the end and sides to let it slide in easily and limit future corrosion. Then you have to pressure test it to know if it leaks. You can borrow a radiator test kit from your auto parts store. Pressure the water side up and look for leaks into the air side.

I can't really comment about soldering the tubes. The tubes should be rolled into the tube sheet which seals it, not with solder.

The proof is in the pressure testing, in any case.

David
DavidM is online now   Reply With Quote