OH Vette

HeadHunter1

Years ago, my old man made something like this out of a piece of copper pipe. He soldered on a fitting that let it attach to the garden hose. Was pretty simple really one end got the garden hose fitting, the other a 90 degree bend and a small piece of straight pipe that he sqeezed in the vice to make it spray in a fan pattern.

A little flux, solder, and $5 worth of pipe and fittings and you could have one.

Bill Dearborn

The A/C condensor probably has more dirt lodged in its fins than the radiator since the air goes through it first. For those of us who do not have that tool it would be necessary to remove the radiator so we could get access to the back of the A/C condensor. The copper pipe solution mentioned above would work for water but not for the high pressure air you say is necessary to blow the dirt out.

Bill

Billdog350

Great info and write up! So far I'm still "chillin" at ~180 deg even in 90 deg weather on the highway so I'll keep this in mind if the AC or coolant start getting warmer!

ZeeOSix

I've seen many home made air blowers with a long copper tube coming off the blower handle (with the valve lever), and then a short 60 or 90 deg elbow bent at the end of the copper tube. Something like that would work to blow air through the back side of the A/C condenser while it's snaked down between the radiator and A/C condenser.

CJR2

This product looks promising in keeping debris from getting sucked into the radiator. Does anyone have any experiance with it?

http://www.pfyc.com/pc/VT1051/VTEXT/...or+Screen.html

C5XTASY

It appears it'll keep out the larger items but I suspect it won't do much for sand, grit, dry leaf particles, etc., which many say they see after cleaning the radiator. On the other hand, last fall, the front side of my radiator looked like the collection bag on a leaf sucker. I pulled out handful after handful when it was up on the oil change rack. I couldn't believe it. I may look into one.
Ed

RPOZ4Z

Well..............
I was wondering when this post was going to show up!

every summer a post exactly like this pops up on the forum!
and every year it's good info, because many people still don't know about this!

CJR2

Ed,

I had the same experiance.....I did an oil change a few weeks ago and found a bale of hay in the top of the radiator........grass and debris naturally gets sucked up into the radiator at the very top of the radiator housing.

I guess I'd rather have the $50 screen clogged than the radiator so I'm ordering one.



Carl

Prosecutor

I cleaned my AC condenser this evening. I purchased some very narrow attachments for the shopvac and reversed the hose (suggestion I got on the forum) so that it blew a focused stream of air. I probably swept up more than a pound of small gravel chips, woods chips, grass and other debris up from the garage floor. I couldn't get much from the radiator itself because of limited access.

I accessed the AC condenser from underneath the front of the car (drove up onto some bags of concrete) and through the top gap between the radiator and condenser.

Bill Dearborn

I pulled the radiator Tuesday so I could clean the A/C condensor. The hardest part of removing the radiator is getting the fan shroud out. Once the shroud is out the radiator just pops out. I also pull the radiator shroud that directs air into the condensor. Its just 7 screws and a couple of push pins to pull it out and when it is out of the way you have enough room to push the radiator forward to get the fan shroud out past the ABS equipment and the front wiring harness.

Most of the stuff in my A/C condensor is much smaller than the holes in that grate shown in the post above. I spent Tuesday wetting it down and using compressed air to blow the dirt out. However, I have speedy dry embedded in the fins and 100bs of air pressure will not blow the stuff out of them. The Ron Davis Racing radiator is at the shop to get cleaned inside and out. When I took it to the shop in the back of the Tahoe quite a bit of sand fell out of its fins.

Bill

nikolai

This sounds great...I will be doing it soon

Bill Dearborn

Talked to the guy at the radiator shop he said the fins were full of speedy dry and rubber from the track. He used a pick to get the speedy dry out and suggested I do the same with the A/C condensor so I spent two hours last night picking the stuff out of the fins. After going across each row and getting all of the visible stuff out I would blow through it with compressed air and the speedy dry from the back would move forward and I would have to go through all the rows again picking it out one fin at a time. Even spent another 30 minutes working on it today before dropping in the radiator. Next time some fool oils down two miles of track I am going to stay in the pits until all the other cars blow the speedy dry off the track. This has been a huge PITA. If this had been a stock radiator I would have been overheating Vs wondering why my high speed coolant temps were running 220 instead of the normal 200.

Replaced the old thermostatwith a new OEM one just in case the thermostat was causing coolant flow problems. The stock thermo opens at 186 degrees.

Bill

Carl M. Stapp Jr.

My 02 was getting too hot to run the airconditioner. I made a cleaning wand our of 1/2 inch aluminimum tubing and fashioned a 90 degree outlet at the end, connected the tube to a regular garden hose through a shut off valve at the handle of the tube. Bt taking off the radiator-consenser cover, I could pull the fan shroud back about an inch, enough to insert the probe down the back side of the radiator and flush the dirt and trash out. I used the same process between the radiator and condenser and I could not believe the amount of trash and dirt that washed out. This was material not visible on inspection but buried in the cooling fins. On a hot day in traffic with the air conditioner on the temperature dropped from 250 to 200-210 after the wash job. I had previously had the fans reset to come on at 185

Butters00Vet

Amazing right? I was shocked also with the amount of debris. I tell ya, this not just a way of keeping the car cooler but a must for preventative maintence. Imagine all the seals, radiator tubes, water pump and radiator itself was constantly subjected to temps that are 20-40 higher then what it's suppose to be on a daily basis. Is it possible that the coolant is actually cooking and clumping up because the temp is too high causing radiators to clog? Radiator tubes weakening because the coolant is running too hot for the tubes to handle? Seals breaking down causing leaks because of over expansion. Bearings on a water pump cause too much wear and tear from the extra heat?