Radiator repair

Roc- my biggest concern is whether I can get the solder melted and into the seam without melting the rest of it and having a mess. I figure if I do it with the radiator upright so the joint is level then hopefully whatever extra I melt won't try and run somewhere else. 

I'll plan on giving it a try in a couple weeks. 

NCtoy, we used 60/40 solid solder, but we had really good tinning compound (zinc chloride powder that we made into a paste) and bead blasted the tanks and other parts.  Good luck!

Rick

Where my trouble came from was after repairing the seam and testing it, I noticed I had a small leak at the water neck where tit attaches to the tank. Now that I was a pro at radiator repair (yeah right), I didn’t think it would be any big deal to reseal that seam. Next thing I knew the whole thing was off the tank. A little cleaning up and a few more tries and I finally got it all sealed up. It was a little frustrating because you would get one side sealed and start working on the other, only to melt the seal on the first side.  Eventually I remembered I had a very small torch head in my pile of stuff, which helped limit the area I was heating. 

Overall, it was more intimidating than hard, I wouldn’t be scared to do it again. If I can do it anybody can. I used a regular solid core lead free solder as I couldn’t find any with lead in it. I did order and use tinning flux, although I have no idea what the difference is between that and the kind they sell at Lowe’s. 

You can see the wet spots where the leak was:

Cleaned up:

The end of my first try. I wire wheeled the globs off, to clean it up. This try ended up leaking a little still, so I cleaned it up and redid it again. The second try came out much better looking, and is holding water. 

I didn’t get any pictures with the water neck off. It got sealed back up and is working. The inside came out pretty good looking where the solder went around the seam. The outside is a little globby looking but if you don’t look close you wouldn’t notice. Got to start somewhere I guess, the next time should look better,maybe even good looking.