Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 782 Threads: 26
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Location: On a hill in Wiltshire
You could use one of those flexible curtain wire plughole unblockers up the side water branch, before reverse flushing.
If you get a lot of debris, maybe take the head off and do the same down the water passages.
Every little helps, as they say.
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 1,534 Threads: 60
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One final word.
Whatever you do only loosen crud in the block when the radiator is off.
If you don't you risk the radiator acting as a "crud sieve", which is a very bad thing
Joined: Aug 2020 Posts: 42 Threads: 14
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Location: Hove
Car type: A7 Specials, 1927 & 1934
Hmmm...
Andrew, you raise a fair point, that has me doubting myself. The road test produced clouds of water vapour but wasn't boiling furiously if at all. The top of the tank got to 80 deg C in my static tests, whilst the bottom was maybe 10 deg C. Is that sort of temperature gradient ever OK? (car running at lively tickover for 6 mins, from ambient of -4 deg C)
I could test again, and see if it actually boils - I don't want to cause un-necessary damage to the engine. If it is normal operation for this car, it's going to be a touch embarrassing to drive....
John H - I did try running a garden hose up through the side branch, and water flowed merrily out of the top branch, suggesting that there was a clear route for water through the block... that said, I got the same connecting the hose to the rad, which suggests there's atleast one path through the rad.
If I hook up a rig like Charles' I can find out whether flow is OK through the engine, and clean it out a bit at the same time.
Charles - do engines overheat running on your external water tank? how quickly do they get up to temperature? (clearly the water is not being cooled by a rad, but there's a lot more of it, and the engine can't be working that hard....)
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 849 Threads: 123
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We once connected a bolt maker ( making induction coil heated titanium aircraft bolts - used somewhere on Concorde) - to the central heating system in the factory to get enough throughput of coolant! This was to test the practicality of making high volumes from a continuous wire feed, not making bolts singly. It did work and the production header had its own dedicated water Cooling system.
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 476 Threads: 63
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Location: West/North Devon England
Some Reliant Scimitar people use Coca-Cola to clean out their engines/rads. (They are 3 lit V6 engines) Apparently they seem to get good results and it is quite cheap. I don't know if adding rum would help.
Joined: Aug 2017 Posts: 83 Threads: 2
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I understand if one leaves a tooth in a glass of Coca-Cola overnight and the tooth will have diapered in the morning. Tooth fairy?
When building a nightclub the spec required the drainage to be Coca-Cola proof!
It appears that the human gut must have a resistance to the stuff, not sure if the Austin 7 guts share the same invulnerability.