Hi

 

i made the fatal mistake during the summer of putting radweld into the expansion bottle to solve a very minor leak. It did however create more problems than it solved.

 

i have replaced heater matrix which was gunked and not working at all. Now however my heaters blow warm but only Luke warm and I’m pondering whether to put a dishwasher tablet in to clean the remaining radweld out of the system and then flush and replace coolant.

 

has anyone ever done this and did it do the job of removing the remaining radweld?

 

thanks

I use dishwasher cream rather than a tablet to clean oil emulsion from the cooling system after repairing a blown head gasket, particularly on wet liner (French) engines which get really gunked up with brown sludge.

How does this go on getting rid of radweld? I know I have a limited flow through the pipes so any ideas if this will increase flow if I take it for a blast over say 70 miles?

Radweld is horrible gunge, I'm not guaranteeing anything because I'd never use it myself but dishwasher cream is an extremely strong non-foaming detergent which worked well for removing oil emulsion, took a few goes to get the system properly clean though.

Liquid Radweld you might have a chance of dissolving but the weapons grade dog turd radweld nothing will touch, I'm sure they must be banned from selling it now, I mean they have banned everything else that actually does what it is supposed to.

 

My all steel X/flow exploded, and I do really mean exploded, into a cloud of steam on the Goodwood circuit, the dog turd had reformed making a solid bung in the radiator expansion tank overflow pipe, this was 8mm bore hose open to atmosphere and I had to drill it out when I finally found what had cause the radiator header tank to split from end to end.

Going to give it a go I think. No harm before flushing anyway. Thanks for the input 👍

Before going too far I'd check that the system is full of coolant and/or no airlocks, then if possible I'd do flushing and back flushing before cleaning and draining followed by flushing, back-flushing and flushing.  Draining a system still leaves loads of residue coolant with muck/crud/contaminates especially on cold drains and with thermostat shut.

 

Clean cooling/heating system can be handy.

 

I can remember sprinkling dog-turd into the rad opening out of the sun on the side of the "mountain" in Anglesey with my hands so cold I couldn't aim the sprinklings into the neck so we had to find something to make a funnel to used the half tube that was left.  It worked fine but that was an old all metal rad on a 1970 system and car.  The Radweld doesn't seem as invasive as K-seal to me, can't say I've had trouble with either but my cars have been many decades older.