radiator cleaning

[Circaflex]

Hey guys so I want to do a deeper clean than just a flush with distilled on my swiftech mcr-320xp radiators, is vinegar and water still a good method? or should I use water and rubbing alcohol and shake the radiator then flush with distilled?

[jim0ne]

I still do the vinegar and water method.

[Circaflex]

Hey jim0ne, thanks for the information. I saw that method on a few forums, I decided against that route because of concerns with the copper/solder being eaten away if left too long.

What I did, and some may say major overkill but it was a large learning process for me.

I drained the system and then used tap water to flush out most of the loop.
Once I flushed with about 5 gallons I moved to a distilled flush with again about 5 gallons, I did not recirculate this water.
I then purchased a home water filter and hooked up a loop with more distilled water and let this run with the filter for 24 hours. This helped a lot, there was a ton of crud caught by the filter and I even could see my red dye in the filter.

I then flushed with more distilled water without recirculating any of the water.
I then found Swiftechs FAQ which mentioned using PineSol and Distilled water. I did this and let it run for 6 hours or so and it got the rest of my dye out of the radiators.
I followed this by flushing with more distilled, then ran a clean loop of distilled and the filter, then flushed it two more times for good measure.


I hope it is clean enough, I had some visible dye in the threads for the barbs, but wiped most away and figured it shouldn't affect much. Next go around ill give the vinegar method a shot if I find this was not sufficient when I finish the loop tomorrow.

[tool_462]

I always just use hot water and vinegar, 1:1 roughly for the first few rinses then let it soak filled up for a bit (10-15 min) then rinse with hot water. Seems to work pretty good for me, never had buildup anywhere in a block or anything, even back in the day when blocks were much more restrictive (pin designs).

[Rinaun]

Vinegar is the suggested method for cleaning copper radiators. The hotter the vinegar, the more it "burns" away the copper. I've used room temp and never had any serious issues, but I also don't let it sit too long inside the radiators and I flush with distilled water several times afterwards.