Thermochill rad flux cleanup

[Navanod]

Like many, I "thought" I had cleaned up the rad well and good with hot water and lotsa flushing and crazy shaking.

All it took was for my trusty MCP655 48hrs, and I start to see snowing in the res (not all the white stuff are bubbles)


The tygon started to cloud and deposits can be seen at the bends. That bright spot on the res's "paddle" is also a thick deposit of flux!
Ignored it for quite sometime but finally couldn't take it anymore and decided to do some major cleanup!

After much hot water soaking and pulling a test tube brush through the tubings, all I did was to brush the deposits into a nice pattern (in whichever way the brush hairs happened to run through)

Taking the advice of Xilikon (thank!), I grabbed some 70% ethanol from the lab I worked at and repeated the soak + brushing.
Crystal clear tubings!!
The thing was, just shaking with ethanol didn't quite got rid of the flux, brushing was still needed.

All other parts in the loop (cept the res, O rings and pump) were cleaned the same way, followed by distilled water rinse.

That got me worried bout the rad and res, since I can't quite brush the insides.
Rad's soaking in ethanol for 48hrs now and I'm trying to get a small brush for the res. May try soda water on the res since I can't use alcohol on it.

Here's the last and best part: I also cleaned up the coolant
I was using PC ICE...should've ran the leak test (cum flux dirt test) with distilled instead, mistake there

Not willing to throw away a full bottle of PC ICE, I collected and brought the murky bottle to my lab.
Poured the liquid into centrifuge tubes and gave them 15 minutes at 5000rpm in the spinner.
Was tempted to use the 13 000rpm monster centrifuge but after looking at the results of the 5000rpm, was convinced that its good enough





Check out the amount of greenish yellowish goo at the tip of the 50ml tubes

Hope this will be a warning and of help to people with new (thermochill) rads, to do a thorough cleaning, or end up like me

[xVeinx]

You could always use a 22 micro filter or whatman paper . Sorry that happened!

Which institution do you work at, what type of lab?

[Navanod]

You could always use a 22 micro filter or whatman paper . Sorry that happened!

Which institution do you work at, what type of lab?

Filtration would be a royal pain with a syringe attachment since I do not want to use the lab's vacuum pumps
Reason being, that I work at a biomedical research lab...don't want some exotic bacteria or tumor cells growing in my PC ICE

edit: wait, just saw that its 22 micron LOL. I'm used to 0.3 micron filters (takes out those nasty bacteria), which will take forever to filter. Let me see if I can find any 22 micron paper, no harm giving that bottle one additional round of cleaning

Institute...? Would my boss read XS?

[xVeinx]

Institute...? Would my boss read XS?

I was just curious where you worked, wasn't sure if it was at a university or a biotech. That's all

[Navanod]

I was just curious where you worked, wasn't sure if it was at a university or a biotech. That's all

kinda OT, but its a University lab. Actually, its two University's lab since its a shared venture

I shall keep the names to myself for now...just in case

[fart_plume]

one way to swap your tubing out is get a long rod and fasten a cotton ball on the end wet it down and run it through the tube just like cleaning a rifle.

[RADCOM]

kinda OT, but its a University lab. Actually, its two University's lab since its a shared venture

I shall keep the names to myself for now...just in case

You mean that isn't you in the picture Seems your PC Ice is good enough to drink Now. Mighty fine cleaning

[sirheck]

Man you guys scare me.

I wonder if the running/flushing hot water actually loosens up
Some of the flux shistuff.

All i ever do is hold the in/outs of the radiator about 3 inches from
the fuacet and let the water flowthru while looking to see how it
looks coming out, and for only about a minute or two.

Then i slap it together.
I have never had any kinda of discoloration(except for some blue silicone looking junk) in my apogee cpu block which came from my CM hydra gpu cooler.

[Navanod]

You mean that isn't you in the picture Seems your PC Ice is good enough to drink Now. Mighty fine cleaning

No that isn't me!

http://images.google.com.sg/images?h...-8&sa=N&tab=wi

he's a Hong Kong star from the 1980's


LOL at my sig one more time!!

The PC ICE is clean but goodness knows what's dissolved in it now...can't clean out soluables using centrifugation

[Navanod]

one way to swap your tubing out is get a long rod and fasten a cotton ball on the end wet it down and run it through the tube just like cleaning a rifle.

Thanks, will try that out since one of the longer tubing is still not 100% clean (couldn't reach the middle portion with the brush)

Speaking of rifles...I wish I still had that 3 piece rod back from my old army days (all males here have to serve 2.5 yrs in the army from the age of 18 )

That'll make pulling through tubings real easy

[Big_Daddy]

heh, yeah, rifle/shotgun cleaning kits are real easy to get here in the states, $10 at any Walmart. Dunno bout over there. Best thing is, you can get 2 of them, and clean even the longest run of tubing.

[Navanod]

A day of flushing with multiple hot water, alcohol and running water cycles and still the darn thing is releasing flux particles (visible by shining a torch light into the water)
How much flux is in that darn radiator?! To think I had already removed so much by using it in my loop for all these time!

[Skauneboy]

I'm having the same problem. Before I assembled my loop I went overkill on the cleaning just to make sure no flux was left in the radiator. About one hour of flushing with hot water straight out of the tap, two soaks with 99% Isopropyl, 10+ shake sessions with hot distilled water, 2 soaks with distilled. To no avail I'm afraid. One month after assembly the tubing started to cloud and after six months it was completely white.

I disassembled the loop to try and clean it up. All parts of the loop had a white, powderish film which didn't dissolve with Isopropyl or hot water so I decided to see what vinegar could do. I put a piece of the tubing in a warm vinegar solution and indeed it reacted with the white stuff and cleaned the tubing pretty well. I cleaned the radiator using the same procedure as the first time but also added a vinegar flush since it did such a good job on the tubing. The result? Clouding after one week, completely white after a month

Six months later on I have once again disassembled to make place for some new parts and the white stuff now has company with rust coloured stuff I've used nothing but distilled + one drop of PT Nuke btw and the liquid itself looks fairly clean. The inside of the radiator however, does not. The ends of the tubes have a white film and the end tank is covered by something I can only describe as rust. When I read about people just cleaning their PA's with a few rinses of hot distilled without any problems I can't believe we have the same radiator.

[Navanod]

Good grief...could this be the main reason for clouding? hahaha

[eternal_fantasy]

Just speaking from experience, I actually believe that it wasn't the flux inside the TC rad that was breaking up and entering your coolant, but actually the biocide/corrosion inhibitor additives precipitation out as it reacts with your tubing.

To give you an example:

I had ordered 2 TC PA120.3, and both went through 30 minutes of hot water running through them. Nothing exotic.
One loop, cooling my 2 VGAs, after running exclusively with Innovatek protect IP, for 3 months, the tubing was clear as it was the first day, with VERY slight yellowing, only visible when compared with new, unused tubing. The tubing used was Innovatek 10/8mm.

The other loop, cooling only the CPU, was a different story. Because I wanted to place the radiator near the window, I had to buy extra tubing as the window was about 3 meter from my PC, and I only had a little of the Innovatek tubing left. so from the Res-Pump-CPU block I used the Innovatek tubing, but the rest was some cheap Alphacool PVC ones. In the same 3 month period, the Alphacool tubing was coated with the white precipitate, and bits of it was floating inside the reservoir, whilest the Innovatek tubing part was clear and spotless. After I had attained some more of the Innov tubing, no more white gunk was seen ever since.

So maybe it wasn't the leftover flux after all. My first rad, a black ICE, ran fine with tygon tubing and all, no white gunk whatsoever, but after a month I was told I needed to add some corrosion inhibitor-biocide, I did, and after a few days the tubing became cloudy...

I really do think the corrosion inhibitors/biocides are coming out of solution, or are reacting with the tubing, forming the precipitate. And once the thickness start to build up, it gets flushed into your reservoir. You can try just pure distilled water, no nuke, no additives, and see if you still get the clouding, or how bad it was compared with additives.

I of course can be wrong, or if you think I don't know anything and are dead set in your view, please ignore this post. However, you may looking in the wrong place for your issue, and are chasing ghost. Good luck, and hope this helps!

[Navanod]

erm...if I'm only flushing the rad, without tubings?

What you've described may be plasticizer clouding...

[eternal_fantasy]

erm...if I'm only flushing the rad, without tubings?

What you've described may be plasticizer clouding...

Don't understand your first sentence...

And no, otherwise it wouldn't have gotten into the reservoir.

[menace2society]

I'm glad I didn't buy That Rad.

For all of the performance gains, it seems like a Royal PITA. I'll gladly sacrifice a little performance for some peace of mind

[Zaskar]

Good grief...could this be the main reason for clouding? hahaha

Id bet on it.

After reading what most people (even the stickied ones) suggest and do, its just simply not enough.

You can Not get these rads perfectly clean from adding water and shaking alone.

BTW eternal_fantasy, the rust you see, is it on the outside? If so that IS rust, TC rads have a steel casing and with that CRAPPY quality matte non sealing paint, it lets water soak RIGHT THROUGH it and contact the steel, meaning any water spilled on the rad casing itself will cause some surface rust to come up through the paint. Its a radiator that you cant get wet on the outside... Awesome design, Definitely worth not having to spend 5-8 bucks more for stainless sheet metal...

[IanY]

Why can't Thermochill bloody sell clean radiators? I would gladly pay $20 more per radiator to avoid this whole hassle of flux and flushing.

[IanY]

Thanks, will try that out since one of the longer tubing is still not 100% clean (couldn't reach the middle portion with the brush)

Speaking of rifles...I wish I still had that 3 piece rod back from my old army days (all males here have to serve 2.5 yrs in the army from the age of 18 )

That'll make pulling through tubings real easy

I still have the exact same good old three-piece rod, which I brought with me half way around the world. Remember flannelite... its amazing for cleaning tubes.. my brother shipped me some..

You can also use a piece of rattan.. a cane comes to mind.

[Skauneboy]

BTW eternal_fantasy, the rust you see, is it on the outside?

I guess that was my post you were referring to. No, it's on the inside.

[Zeus]

Why can't Thermochill bloody sell clean radiators? I would gladly pay $20 more per radiator to avoid this whole hassle of flux and flushing.

I bet they don't know how to clean them properly themselves.

[IanY]

So, it rusts on the inside and outside

[IanY]

I bet they don't know how to clean them properly themselves.

Hahahahaha