Hi All,

Well I've had the car for 18 months and coming into summer decided to have the cooling system flushed as a precaution due to the fact that I don't know when it was done last.
My mechanic pointed out the potential problems of upsetting sleeping dogs, however after doing a specific gravity test of the coolant and exclaiming 'holey c**p, that isn't good' and my observance of the green changing colour a little, it was decided to flush the system but without chemicals.

Needless to say a couple of days later I noticed the coolant reservoir requiring daily top ups and then the puddles of green under the front of the car after being left for a while.

Sure enough the flush flushed the remaining molecules out which were holding the rust to the bits of the radiator which weren't leaking.

So now I'm off the road whilst the radiator is being re cored I made the mistake of looking at the space in front of the engine with the bonnet off.

New coolant hoses all around, fitted a reco water pump and have cleaned off 30 years of accumulated road dirt from the front of the engine and cooling fan.

I could almost eat my dinner off of it, as we all know it gets hot enough in there to do it!!

On the upside, the front cross member has zero rust in it. I was a little surprised.

As a bonus I also recovered the little plastic cup / lip which we all had on the front of the air inlet trumpet at some stage. It must have dropped down way back when and no one bothered to recover it. My gain!!

Due to the fact that I don't have the space, nor the time currently to do this job, my mechanic is doing the majority of the work, so it won't be a cheap exercise, but at least I shouldn't have any cooling troubles for the foreseeable future.

Cheers and happy motoring,

Nigel

 

Worthwhile doing the whole box of dice while you are in there, best thing I did was overhaul/replace the complete cooling system. Temp gauge sits rock solid where I like it.
Real peace of mind with 6k worth of engine rebuild sharing the space.

 

Well done.

Agree with Clarke, do it once, do it right, do it ALL, and repeat in 30 years.

 

Thanks Gents,
Yep, saw it the same way.
All the hard work is done, and to do the 'little' things will cost a lot more in time and money if not attended to whilst I'm at it.
Cheers,
Now I'm happy to see a real Aussie Summer??!
Nigel

 

Your thread title is fitting Nigel.

You can never apply the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy to aging cooling systems. Nearly always they are broke, just hanging together with crud. And as you found, disturb the crud and it all gets angry.

Just working up the courage to provoke mine!!

 

Hi Tony,

I did take a while to address this service item for all of the documented reasons.

To make it a bit easier though, it is pertinent to also consider that the cooling system is also the means of stopping the different metals (Iron Block and Aluminium Cylinder Head) from eating each other and adding to the general rusting properties of metal.

Really old coolant / antifreeze / rust inhibitor loses all of these properties and in most cases becomes more corrosive by its' very altered nature - read break down of said properties.

What was in my cooling system was actually doing more harm than good, so to keep delaying the inevitable was just making an average situation worse.

Cheers,

Nigel

 

Had a thought.

Whilst that radiator is out, I suggest replacing the front sway bar mount bushes, or "D" rubbers as we Ozzie call them.

To do them later almost rewuires the radiator to be removed for access, duh.

I would get the OE from JagDaim, in your localle.

 

Dont really think its damned if you do , at least now you and the car are near home base and everything is being done in a controlled way. Murphy says this would have all let go sometime down the track , at the point in the trip that you where furtherest from home and would create maximum inconvenience.

At our car club Christmas run a guy was showing me his new to him gray early series XJ and saying what a bargain it was. I remember thinking you will pay eventually old son, there is no escape :-) I found out later that he got home at 9pm on a tilt tray, as his coolant had quietly emptied itself onto the lawn.

 

On a tangent:


In a past project, I bought a 32 Ford B four banger for my project of the time. Complete and said to have been removed from a running and working truck.


Too ugly and 'stock' for my Hot Rod project. So, I tore it down. All looked fairly decent except the sump!!


About an inch of oil soaked sand in the bottom!!! Never saw that before!!! Oh, well, scrape and swab it out.


Oh, h... cracks in the tin. OK, I can fix that. Braze them up. Like a hound chasing a rabbit ! More and more as I applied the brass. I ended up with a brass bottomed sump!!! Kinda slick in an odd sort of way???


Carl