Plain dry Tide as a cooling system cleaner?

[Stinky Peterson]

Kestas you are absolutly correct.

CC - I wouldn't use HCL to clean my system. There are plenty of safer solutions as you know. I suppose you could use a 5-10% solution but like you said it will remove protective coating. This would be a good way to find leaks you didn't know you had.

 

[lelakwoman]

some of you guys seem to really know your stuff, i'm a water quality chemical engineer, and i have to clean and keep clean a lot of different types of equipment. i work for a utility company. i have to protect boilers, steamers, cooling towers, and everything in between.

Here is a little bit of industry insight:
high heat zones will accumulate more scale...FAC...Flow Accelerated Corrosion...means the tube bends will normally fail before the tubes themselves, and the hottest part of the radiator will have the most scale.

scale should be removed before oil and dirt...scale is normally cleaned with an acidic solution (severely dependant on equipment material), and then the more caustic nature of the detergents will neutralize with acid cleaning step. this should always be followed by 2-3 DI water flushes.

the reason caustic chemicals feel slippery...the chemical is displacing the fat in your body. that's why caustic burns are worse than acid burns. caustic burns burn the human body very deeply and take a very long time to heal.

i'm not an auto mechanic but i think most radiators are aluminum or some type of high heat resistant poly material. Aluminum means it's succeptible to chloride attack. chloride attack is very small pin holes in the surface experiencing the attack...like AC compressors. over time those pits will grow and then there will be a very damagin failure.

just my two cents for now, gotta go.

 

[Kestas]

Lelakwoman, welcome to the board. Though anybody can participate in discussion, you'll find we have a more educated and more knowledgable pool of people than you'll find in most other automotive sites. We cut through the myths rather quickly.

 

[Shannow]

quote:

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Originally posted by lelakwoman:
Here is a little bit of industry insight:
high heat zones will accumulate more scale...FAC...Flow Accelerated Corrosion...means the tube bends will normally fail before the tubes themselves, and the hottest part of the radiator will have the most scale.

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What techniques are you using for FAC reduction ?

The only evidence that we have at work for FAC is carbon steel thermocouiple pockets...one will be chewed away from FAC, and one in exactly the same position on an adjacent feed-water heater will look brand new...all are getting replaced with F11.

But we are looking at going to oxygenated feedwater treatment in the near future to stop it.

Oh, and

 

[Mickey_M]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stinky Peterson:
I have also seen Drano used to clean a system. The person had to remove the lower radiator hose to get out the large pieces of scale and rust that came out. I can't say I would recommend either one as both are very aggressive.

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Drano (actually a generic made up by someone and put in a unique can with an AMC part number on it) was used by AMC in the mid-60s.

This was used not as a full-system flush but as a radiator cleaner. You disconnected the upper and lower radiator hoses, capped the bottom, poured the cleaner in, and filled the radiator with water.

After an hour or so you flushed the mess out.

The big difficulty was avoiding getting any of it on the various aluminum parts, including the grille, that it would eat alive.

AMC had moved over to "Dowgard", a full coolant system fill, that supposedly provided a very long life. It was an ethylene glycol/distilled water mix with a blue color.

As GM found later with DexCool, people let the system get low, topped it off with water from a pond or tap water, added other coolants, and so on.

When they did the result was whitish deposit with the consistency of granite that completely plugged the radiator. Sending the radiators out was very expensive, so AMC decided to try a cheaper solution (pun intended).

It worked about 40% of the time. Many radiators still had to be sent out for cleaning or replaced.

BTW, I've used TriSodium Phosphate to flush systems. It purges the system of a lot of crud, doesn't leave a residue, doesn't suds or foam, and is not too hard on the various metals, rubbers, and plastics if you keep the concentration low and fully flush the system afterwards with clear water.