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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Radiator Yay or Nej

My radiator from my sprite mk1 is full of rust and crud and I've tried to clean it out but theres still quite a bit of rattle inside, I also noticed that it had a small solder repair done to the insert. I thought that I should mount it and put some radiator cleaner in the water and run it through with the engine running. But now I'm wonder if it's worth it or if i you should such it up and buy a new rad?

Alex
Alexander Sorby Wigstrom

Buy a new one - any "bits" will find their way into the block and sods law says will block something important, and it will leak from the soldered repair (sods law again).
d brenchley

I expected as much. I thought I wouldn't have to spend any more money but things seem to pile up. Although it's white it's a black hole.

Thanks
Alex
Alexander Sorby Wigstrom

Alex, do you not have any local radiator specialists that could re-core yours?
Dave O'Neill 2

Or first just let them put it in the tank to de scale.
This gets out all old deposits.

You can try it your self.
Just put it down flat on the floor (front side down) and fill it with some lower strength hydrochloric acid.
Let it sit for a day and flush it out.
The flushing water will be black the first times so just repeat until the rattling stops and the flush water is clean.

Nothing wrong with a good old solder repair.
Onno K

Alex,

I recently replaced the radiator on my Frog having failed to effectively repair a weep from the top seam.
About £140 for a new one from Sussex Classic Cars.

Old radiator (25+ years or so) didn't rattle and I'd flushed it many times in the past.

With new radiator car runs about 20 degrees cooler!
Simon
SA Wood

Simon, out of interest did you find that the top nuts were not UNF. I bought one from the same source earlier this year and ended up ripping them out and replacing with normal nuts as the floating ones were, I assume, metric as the bolts would not fit and I did not want to have a mix of different threads.

Trev
Trevor Mason

Trev,

Yes I did have some bother with the top captives. I ended up removing and running a 1/4UNF tap through them.
I had forgotten about that and thought it odd at the time

Simon
SA Wood

This thread was discussed between 25/11/2014 and 26/11/2014

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