I was on the freeway in the middle of Austin TX when my WP went out. Glad it's just 2 bolts. I limped it into an O'Reillys parking lot. Fixed it in the rain. Glad they lent me a belt tensioner tool. WP and belt went when WP locked up. Fun time for a few seconds till I figured out what happened.

 

Haha

. Almost as fun as having the Cummins suck air from the fuel tank reservoir while on the Garden State Cash cow in rush hour traffic, far left lane at 75mph. Crossing 4 full lanes of bumper to bumper traffic while coasting , no power steering, and everyone on the highway blowing their horns, giving you the finger as you cut them all off.

Nope

No idea what you went through

 

Today, the mess continued.

First thing was to flush out the radiator. It had very minor amount of "chunk" in a couple tube ends, and I could have let it roll, but not me. NoooooooooooooooooooooO ! not me ! Duh.

I only use straight GREEN antifreeze, so there's almost no "chunk" in there anytime I flush it out. AF was near perfectly green after a couple years, but new isn't that expensive, so new goes in when done. Yes it's just straight AF and no water mix, because the radiator fluid stays way cleaner by not adding any water, distilled or not. Don't ask about the AF situation, as Mark may come to my rescue and put all you ******* in your place. lol

So I put the radiator upside down on a set of saw horses. Plugged up the rad so the two rad hose ends faced up. Got 4 gallons of very hot water, mixed in a pint of oxalic acid, and poured it in. 15 minutes later, I dumped the water out, and did it a second time with a little stronger mix (more acid). A few chunks of chunk came out, then I flushed the radiator out with a PH UP neutralizer from the pool place. Sort of like a baking soda (soda ash) which neutralizes the acid. Flushed it out with clean water until it was sparkling, which actually didn't take long. Washed all the fins out, re-aligned with my pik some of the fins in the radiator that were pushed sideways from bumping the fan, then washed the entire finned surface out. Compressed air, and set up the fan to let it dry. Painted it with some paint, and now it sits until it's reassembled.

Put the fan back on, belt in place, new tensioner from Napa, FAN hub pulley back on, dab of blue locktite and torqued to 7ft lbs (84 inch lbs) and all that's left is to install the new alternator that doesn't sound like a winey butch goiley when I'm drving.

Hoses and radiator and fan shroud goes in after the alternator, and I can start it up.



Drying the radiator

Stuff back in place

painted rad


And this is TURBO. Yes, that's her name. She's the Napa cat who seems to love me more than my own wife does, as she climbed up my shirt, and laid across my neck while I was
standing at the counter at Napa. I guess black cats like me, considering I have two at home. Silly cat gave me purring noises in my ear for more than 5 minutes, which is way more than the wife has done in the last 35... lol



Turbo kitty on my back

 

Haven't done this is years. When I was in high school in Florida we ran straight water in my '67 Ford "Falcon Club Wagon." I ran TSP in the cooling system to clean out the calcium. It will clean the heater core too.

 

Did it work well? It would be mild enough not to hurt anything. We used to use Spic and Span powder at the vw shop I worked at. Worked amazing after a head gasket job to get rid of oil residue.

 

Yes it did. With the hard water in our area I think I drove it for at least a week. I just kept looking and the radiator when it was cold.

 

Oil residue? Carb cleaner and brakleen.

 

We keep getting mice in the house so we need a kitty cat. Got 4 traps and an electronic repeller thingy but still catch one now and then. I have the full strength AF in mine as well. But my heater doesn't put out enough heat so I need to do the chunkout procedure. I sent the wife to ACE to get some TSP but she brought back something which was TSP brand name and not TSP. I'll have to try the spic and span the next warm day. Assuming we don't run out of diesel and make all our trucks obsolete.

Edwin

 

I bit the bullet and bought a 1 wire 200-amp alt. from Pa Performance. I put this on my 90 w250 snowplow truck and so far, I'm very happy with it ... other than price lol. I went thru several vr's over the years and finally went to the transpo unit and that worked pretty good but this year it started suddenly spiking the charge voltage to 18 volts randomly and rather than replacing it I went the one wire route. With the vr and the transpo unit when lifting the plow or changing the angle of the plow you would see a definite drop in voltage on the gauge that I'm not seeing with this new alt, granted it is a 200 amp compared to 136 amp stocker and I have only tested it for a few minuets. i will report back after we have the next snow event where I can run it for 6 to 8 hours and see what we see.

 

we used it to flush the cooling system after a leaky head gasket.

 

when I was in Alaska I had a few friends who also ran straight green antifreeze and they all had the same problem. the heater did not get as hot as it used to.the problem is that straight AF does not conduct heat away from the block and head as well as straight water or 50/50 water/AF. they thought the motor was running cooler because the temp gauge was a little cooler but they were cooking the motor. the temp sender was not getting a true signal from the straight AF. you will not do any real damage until you pull a really heavy load up hill on a 100 degree day. that`s why no AF manufacturer recomends running straight AF.

 

Well, at least my radiator core will be sparkling clean !

😃

 

I run 100% AF in several of my summer only 1st gen drivers.
I do not tow really heavy with them as I have a dedicated 12V Dodge set up for heavy towing
The cleaner radiator and motor is more important to me than the small % of better cooling I might get.
5 speed Dodge Cummins trucks run cool anyway. I haven't had one overheat on me in almost 30 years of driving them daily.
I have also checked the freezing point of 100% AF down to -20F for myself.

Have you ever seen what water does to iron when left in contact for years?...

 

You folks already know my opinion on this, but I just wanted to say a bit cooler is a lot better than rusted out. I agree with Oliver Fo’ sho’. …Mark

 

I drove an 81 Mack that had a rust inhibitor spin on doodad from the factory. You can also add a filter. Don't forget using a sacrifiicial anode.