Best way to flush an oil cooler?

Best way to flush an oil cooler?

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Tango13

Original Poster:

8,398 posts

175 months

Tuesday 26th May 2015
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I'm reassembling my bike having had the engine rebuilt after an uncontained rod failure, the blown engine was scrap but I'm reusing all of the ancilleries.

I've squirted a load of carb cleaner into one side of the oil cooler and let it drip out the other. I didn't see any flakes of aluminium on the paper towel that it dripped onto but as we all know assumption is the mother of all fk-ups so I'm not assuming it's completely clean.

Any better ideas on how to flush any particles that may be lurking or should I play extra safe, get the credit card out and buy a bigger/shinier new oil cooler?

Steve_D

13,737 posts

257 months

Tuesday 26th May 2015
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You already know the answer you are just having difficulty accepting it....buy a new one it is not worth the risk.

Steve

227bhp

10,203 posts

127 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
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Fill it with a water soluble engine degreaser and swill it out with that two or three times, then run a hose pipe through it both ways for a long time. Blow it through with compressed air and let it drain/dry out. Before fitting run some clean engine oil through it.
Or just buy a new one....

anonymous-user

53 months

Wednesday 27th May 2015
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I've always just left them in the parts washer for about 30mins!

But DIY stylee, then plenty of de-greaser, a good squirt with a hose, maybe even stick it in the dishwasher, and then a good blow out with an airline etc.


In someways it also depends where the cooler sits in the system, if it is upstream of the filter, then you've not got to be as scrupulous in your cleaning!

fatjon

2,144 posts

212 months

Thursday 28th May 2015
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Rebuilt an impreza engine a couple of years ago after big end failure. I very thoroughly cleaned out the cooler numerous times and nearly reused it but I dropped it while refitting it another load of powdered bearing scrap fell out of it. Honestly don't risk it, you will never get it all out and it doesn't take much to reduce your engine to a pile of scrap.

Tango13

Original Poster:

8,398 posts

175 months

Thursday 28th May 2015
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Cheers Gents, I thought I was being a bit paranoid about potential damage but obviously not.

£150 for a new bigger better shinier oil cooler or a rebuild...

phone Earls Sport? New oil cooler please.

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 29th May 2015
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guzzler4 said:
Max_Torque said:
I've always just left them in the parts washer for about 30mins!

But DIY stylee, then plenty of de-greaser, a good squirt with a hose, maybe even stick it in the dishwasher, and then a good blow out with an airline etc.


In someways it also depends where the cooler sits in the system, if it is upstream of the filter, then you've not got to be as scrupulous in your cleaning!
The above poster would be happy if you wrecked the engine
I witnessed the same poster swearing and being very agressive towards another poster, there are some bad eggs posting here

Glad you decided to buy a new cooler, you never had any other choice
Get out of bed on the wrong side did we?

(After 20 years of "works teams" motorsport experience, i've probably blown up more engines than you have had hot dinners sonny, and with the exception of a very very few cases, coolers were always cleaned and re-used if undamaged. OK, we often had access to ultrasonic cleaners / commercial parts washers, but generally the cooler is oil pre-filter anyway, and i bet you, the engine rebuil was in a dirty/dusty garage so it's full of c**p even before you fit a cooler that might have some metal particles in it)

If the OP has the money, and it makes then happy, then by all means they should buy a new cooler! (i wouldn't)


Edited by anonymous-user on Friday 29th May 18:23

stevesingo

4,848 posts

221 months

Saturday 30th May 2015
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Stalking someone around the forum and ambushing their posts may also be seen as the behaviour of a bad egg.

If you have a problem with someone, use the report button and stop cluttering up threads with that chip on your shoulder.

Pumaracing

2,089 posts

206 months

Saturday 30th May 2015
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The problem with trying to clean out any sort of radiator where there are two large side panels and numerous small flow paths across the core is you can't develop any pressure across a blockage to shift debris. The flow will just go round it along other cross channels.

Putting such an item in a parts washer or dish washer type affair is about the most ludicrous suggestion it's possible to conceive. The most that can ever do is get the outside clean. Nothing of consequence is going to squirt through the end holes.

The only sensible way to try and clean the inside is to make up two bungs to block the inlet and outlet holes. Block one, half fill the cooler with fluid, paraffin or diesel perhaps, block the other, hold the cooler horizontal and shake violently from side to side. That together with a few whacks against a wooden surface "might" stand a chance of shifting anything inside that's not too firmly wedged.

The trouble is, when the cooler is fitted to the engine with hot oil going through it it heats up, expands and stuff that didn't shift when it was cold might now decide to.

anonymous-user

53 months

Saturday 30th May 2015
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Pumaracing said:
The problem with trying to clean out any sort of radiator where there are two large side panels and numerous small flow paths across the core is you can't develop any pressure across a blockage to shift debris. The flow will just go round it along other cross channels.

Putting such an item in a parts washer or dish washer type affair is about the most ludicrous suggestion it's possible to conceive. The most that can ever do is get the outside clean. Nothing of consequence is going to squirt through the end holes.

The only sensible way to try and clean the inside is to make up two bungs to block the inlet and outlet holes. Block one, half fill the cooler with fluid, paraffin or diesel perhaps, block the other, hold the cooler horizontal and shake violently from side to side. That together with a few whacks against a wooden surface "might" stand a chance of shifting anything inside that's not too firmly wedged.

The trouble is, when the cooler is fitted to the engine with hot oil going through it it heats up, expands and stuff that didn't shift when it was cold might now decide to.
So how are you going to clean the block, head, oil pipes etc from the engine that blew up? all the same problems with small channels, tight bends etc!

In reality, a parts washer with a decent pumped feed means you can blow through degreaser, and if you do that counter flow you'll clear out the vast majority of the stuff. Then use an air line on a compressor to shift the real stubbon bits, then into a hot "dish washer" style device for a final external clean. In real bad cases we used an ultrasonic bath first, which is enormously more penetrative than practically anything else. if your cooler is so blocked as to require an airline to unblock then it's the least of your worries as the engine which all the debris came from must be absolutely foobared.


You can never "clean" anything totally. All you can do is remove the majority of "dirt". The trick being to remove enough of the large enough bits not to cause a problem. And as i have said 3 times now, if your cooler is downstream of the filter, you have a nice clean oil feed after that anyway (which is why we have a filter in the system).

In a lot of motorsport regimes, tight time schedules often mean a new engine is chucked in the hole, coupled up, run for 5mins at light load, then gets an oil change and new filter and is sent out to race again!



Mr2Mike

20,143 posts

254 months

Sunday 31st May 2015
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guzzler4 said:
I remember you once posting that a car with a contact breaker ignition system would run for several hours without a condenser wired across the points, this has been proven to be well off the mark, you repeatedly handed out abuse to a poster that informed you that you were wrong

There are some bad eggs in this forum and I am shocked that the moderators do nothing about the situation
Where did he post this? Max_Torque has more experience than most on this forum when it comes to automotive electronics, so you'd better be absolutely sure you know what you are talking about if you want to challenge his knowledge.

227bhp

10,203 posts

127 months

Sunday 31st May 2015
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Max_Torque said:
So how are you going to clean the block, head, oil pipes etc from the engine that blew up? all the same problems with small channels, tight bends etc!

In reality, a parts washer with a decent pumped feed means you can blow through degreaser, and if you do that counter flow you'll clear out the vast majority of the stuff. Then use an air line on a compressor to shift the real stubbon bits, then into a hot "dish washer" style device for a final external clean. In real bad cases we used an ultrasonic bath first, which is enormously more penetrative than practically anything else. if your cooler is so blocked as to require an airline to unblock then it's the least of your worries as the engine which all the debris came from must be absolutely foobared.


You can never "clean" anything totally. All you can do is remove the majority of "dirt". The trick being to remove enough of the large enough bits not to cause a problem. And as i have said 3 times now, if your cooler is downstream of the filter, you have a nice clean oil feed after that anyway (which is why we have a filter in the system).

In a lot of motorsport regimes, tight time schedules often mean a new engine is chucked in the hole, coupled up, run for 5mins at light load, then gets an oil change and new filter and is sent out to race again!
You can get into all the oilways of an engine to clean them out and check them, you can't get into an oilcooler to do this.
You can clean some things totally, the oilways engine blocks and heads you can.
What you do with an engine under the duress of a race is quite different to what a good engine builder will do with it in his workshop.

Tango13

Original Poster:

8,398 posts

175 months

Sunday 19th July 2015
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Just to update the thread. New curved oil cooler fitted and just needing the final plumbing in.




Curved because a curved oil cooler is worth 10% on the dyno over a straight one. FACT!! wink