Rad cleaning acording to Marci aka Thermochill

[Marci]

If anything, vinegar after-effects would (should) result in black deposits rather than white deposits...

[weihk]

If anything, vinegar after-effects would (should) result in black deposits rather than white deposits...

that explains why some people have black crap in the loop then...

[IanY]

I subscribe to the nothing-but-water high flow routine. I use nothing but water to clean rads (of all brands). As mentioned, I don't soak because there's no detergent in my loop. I hook rads to pumps with an in-line filter in between. I run them for several cycles. The combination of the high water velocity, short loop and the in-line filter takes care of all the "crap". Unfortunately, until now, I didn't think to use hot water, only lukewarm distilled water.

[pie_uk]

right so the out come of all this is...

to use Hot water from the tap. i.e no boiling kettles. just the hottest water that will come out of you're tap. then let it cool down, shake it, rinse it out then flush with de-ionized water.. correct?

[Delirious]

Isn't cleaning the radiator with vinager in the water cooling sticky?

I used vinegar, pour it in let it sit a few hours and flush with distilled, shakeing it the whole time. Did that about 4 times.

If anything, vinegar after-effects would (should) result in black deposits rather than white deposits...

What are the black deposits? Are they harmful?

[Kurz]

Black deposits is from the chemical reaction of the Vinegar actually eating away at metal.

[cool_dude]

If using vinegar is bad, how comes you've not said anything before?

People have been purchasing Thermochill rads because of their performance, yet no-one from Thermochill (that I've seen) has posted saying that cleaning with vinegar will damage your radiator.

Marci:
If anything, vinegar after-effects would (should) result in black deposits rather than white deposits...

Kurz:
Black deposits is from the chemical reaction of the Vinegar actually eating away at metal.

Yet if Kurz is telling the truth, you are still not telling people that it will damage the radiators using Vinegar....Why Not?


Cheers,
Cool_Dude

If I need to be corrected feel free, but this is just what im thinking right now....

[weihk]

If using vinegar is bad, how comes you've not said anything before?

People have been purchasing Thermochill rads because of their performance, yet no-one from Thermochill (that I've seen) has posted saying that cleaning with vinegar will damage your radiator.



Yet if Kurz is telling the truth, you are still not telling people that it will damage the radiators using Vinegar....Why Not?


Cheers,
Cool_Dude

If I need to be corrected feel free, but this is just what im thinking right now....

same as buying a car, you go buy a powerful car, and you know there is a risk of you crashing, and the place that sold you the car wont tell you ''drive like a nanny, or eles you will die''

everyone has to get over this ''why didnt the manufacture/shop tell me doing XXXXXXXX to it is bad?''

[cool_dude]

everyone has to get over this ''why didnt the manufacture/shop tell me doing XXXXXXXX to it is bad?''

Not really, Thermochill can clearly see that the majority of consumers clean their rad using the Vinegar method. Yet I haven't seen one post saying "do not clean it using vinegar, it will eat away the metal, hot water will clean the flux just fine" or something to that effect.

same as buying a car, you go buy a powerful car, and you know there is a risk of you crashing, and the place that sold you the car wont tell you ''drive like a nanny, or eles you will die''

I know they wont, because thats just common sense.

[welshtom]

I have to agree with cool_dude. I am suprised its taken this long for Marci to say vinegar is bad, when a lot of people have been openly using it!

[weihk]

not trying to cause a argument here.....well......hope nothing i've said had made people want to kill me....

erm.....sometimes, i think any rad makers who don't tell people what to use for cleaning a rad is simply because they don't want to, if any of us somehow manage to break a rad, they'll be happy....because you might go back and buy another one = more money for them.

the other thing i can think of, maybe its because they know the words going round in big forums saying using vinega will be give you uber clean rads, so they keep their mouth shut because they think no one will listen anyway, because some watercooling uber god from vinegacleaning.com/forum said so.

in Marci case, and IMHO, i think he just can't be arsed to say anything, maybe he has tried saying water is good enough many moons ago, but he got questioned so many times he just gave up, took a step back, and said 'yeah, if you say so...'

argh, i dont know, its just one of those things that keep going round and round with no ends.

oh, with regards to the powerful car bit, everyone knows they will die from being a bellend on the road, but, you'll never see car makers stop making more and more powerful cars, and they will never tell you to drive like a nanny because they expect everyone to have commen sense, thats just one of those things where money comes into play, rich bellend crashed 200mph car, rich bellend somehow walk away from it, rich bellend goes buy another 200mph car. (see? someone buy a rad, use vinega, vinega thought eatting a chunk out of rad seems fun, that someone goes buy another rad, yet, rad make didn't say a word about vinega)

---------sorry in advance if i had offence anyone, sorry--------

[pie_uk]

the reason i used vinegar was because i read the sticky here, and it said use vinegar,.... so i did, only untill i read this thread do i realize that its not the best idea.

so i have used hot water and it looks to be fine now.

[Allsorts]

Well I see that the Sticky has been updated but it's still a bit misleading. I don't think that you should recommend soaking copper blocks or brass radiators in vinegar at all. As for radiators, why substitute vinegar (95% water) for isopropyl alcohol (organic solvent) if the flux is water soluble? I'd like to see how much 'gunk' alcohol removes after numerous flushes with warm water though. Perhaps you could change the cleaning recipe to just numerous flushes with warm/distilled water then possibly flush with alcohol (if it turns out this is necessary).

[Jimmer411]

Not really, Thermochill can clearly see that the majority of consumers clean their rad using the Vinegar method. Yet I haven't seen one post saying "do not clean it using vinegar, it will eat away the metal, hot water will clean the flux just fine" or something to that effect.


I know they wont, because thats just common sense.

You havent looked hard enough then. Ive seen on many occasions that others have discussed the corrosive properties of vinegar and copper. But that the amount of corrosion isnt something to the level of say, that liquid metal stuff on aluminum.

[Ic3man]

Excessive vcore is bad for cpu's yet 99.9% here will overclock regardless. Marci advised me to use vinegar, I took his advice and got loads of crap out of my thermochill and I thanked him for the advice, afterall who knows best? I would however like to think that if the rad is now damaged and leaks due to these instructions I would legally be able to obtain a replacement being that I was acting on advice from thermochill's technical director. I'm sure Marci was just trying to help folk tbh.

[cool_dude]

You havent looked hard enough then. Ive seen on many occasions that others have discussed the corrosive properties of vinegar and copper. But that the amount of corrosion isnt something to the level of say, that liquid metal stuff on aluminum.

I meant from Marci/Thermochill. After all they're the guys that know what they're talking about as they know how the radiators are made.

Yes I have seen discussion on the corrosive properties of vinegar on copper - but I (like the majority of people on here) will do either what the Sticky says, or what someone from Thermochill says.

The sticky suggests that cleaning using vinegar in your rad for various soaks is absolutley fine, therefore loads of people doing this. Yet Marci* is now saying that its fine to clean with hot water and vinegar leaves black deposits (which shows the vinegar is eating away the rad**)

*= This is not anything personal to you Marci, its towards Thermochill.
**= Based on the info given from Kurz.


:edit:

Excessive vcore is bad for cpu's yet 99.9% here will overclock regardless. Marci advised me to use vinegar, I took his advice and got loads of crap out of my thermochill and I thanked him for the advice, afterall who knows best? I would however like to think that if the rad is now damaged and leaks due to these instructions I would legally be able to obtain a replacement being that I was acting on advice from thermochill's technical director. I'm sure Marci was just trying to help folk tbh.

Yeh, so its probably Thermochill that didn't tell him and he was just saying that because he assumed it was the best thing to do, worked on other rads and was trying to help you out like you say. This is why im not blaming it on Marci.

[sanhacker]

Seems another point to consider here is that Thermochill switched to a water based flux in order to be RoHS compliant. This was only effective July 1 of last year.

Before RoHS, they used some other flux which likely required vinegar to clean.

Sooo, if you are in the EU, you are likely getting water based flux. It depends on the age of the inventory at your reseller. Thermochill can no longer ship non RoHS goods in the EU, but I believe they can still ship them to the rest of the world. I seriously doubt they have any non RoHS inventory this late in the game.

[situman]

Its simple really. Hook up ur pump rad blocks and filter. Filter right AFTER the radiator and let it run overnight. The heat from the pump will heat up the water pretty damn well and the flow of the water will be much quicker and faster than any shaking over a long period of time. I mean can you really shake like mad for hours? Just leave ur loops run overnight with the filter and u should be good.

[NGPlease]

Slightly off topic but does any one know if Swiftech or Black Ice uses water soluble flux in there radiators as well? Seeing as Thermochill uses it, it would be much better if it became a standard so cleaning isn't such a pain.

[Kurz]

**= Based on the info given from Kurz.[/I]

Actually... Marci posted this. I basically supported him...
However I am trying to find the effects of an acid on copper.

And I found a somewhat creditable link backing this up.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasc.../chem03505.htm

http://www.chem.umn.edu/outreach/Car...VinCopper.html

[pumbertot]

yep was just following stick advice. in future its hot water from the tap followed by ditilled for me. I thought de-inonised was bad also?

[Kurz]

deionized water is unnatural water, basically water likes to have some ions in its solution. So it'll strip the ions from anything it comes in contact to which makes deionized water a bit corrosive. So please don't use deionized water, Distilled is just fine.

[Bun-Bun]

What about boiling distilled water and then running it through your loop with a filter after the rad? Do that for awhile and then you accomplish your cleaning and leak testing in one step... I dunno just a thought. Maybe soak/rinse with vinegar first before doing this.

[Marci]

People are doing what they will always do... reading and digesting selectively what they WANT to read and digest.

LONG (years) ago I stated Thermochill rads shouldn't need flushing with anything but water, but if folks ain't happy with that then to follow recommended methods elsewhere on the net as we haven't done any investigations ourselves on the issue, as have never had the need to.

Vinegar is FINE to use for cleaning your rad, as long as you don't leave it in there for days on end. A few hours then a rinse is absolutely fine. However, that doesn't change the fact that it's unnecessary and hotwater will do the job. Vinegar on it's own WILL NOT cause any longterm damage to the rad. It will cause oxidisation of the surface, which when mixed with elements from solder and flux may result in a black tarnish... once done with the vinegar you should be flushing with distilled anyways to remove this oxidisation, and thus remove the "dirty" layer... this is the whole point of cleaning - to strip a fractionally thin surface layer away thus leaving a clean layer beneath... and because vinegar is actually doing this you're all complaining??

Also bear in mind, I only discovered we'd shifted to water-based flux last week...

Even now, after I've stated that folks only need to use hot water to flush OUR rads with, folks are STILL debating "what can do it better"... "should I use hot water AND vinegar?"... so what the hell difference does it make what I say?? You guys'll do what you always do and take it one step further, so what was the point of me saying it in the first place?

You ask what you should do, folks tell you, y'all do whatever you wanna do regardless... just as long as there's a manufacturer there to blame at the end of it all, who cares?? The mentalities displayed here are the reasons why very few other manufacturers are present to offer their input on forums such as this. The only reason I'm here is because I was a member here LONG before ThermoChill and my involvement in such ever existed, and planned to remain so as why should I sacrifice a personal interest and hobby for work??

There are many products out there DESIGNED for flushing and cleaning radiators. These are the right tools for the job. However, these will add further contaminants to your loop. So, you can't use the stuff DESIGNED to do the job - which is the stuff the entire radiator industry would say to use and which is the only stuff anyone can really RECOMMEND to do the job, so anything else is OPINION or recommendation. If you want to do it right take your pick. I won't be advising further on the issue.


DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO.

[Maviryk]

My solution for cloudy tubing is to use Tygon 3400, it is garanteed to not cloud. :-)