Bob Douglas wrote:
> The caustic "boiling" done by many radiator shops also removes
> paint, sludge, and rust. So am curious about the reasons for
> sending your tanks to a separate metal cleaning facility. Are
> radiator shops in your area dropping their caustic hot tanks due
> to safety/environmental/legislative risk, because the new
> chemical dips are just so much better, or other reasons?
That's a possibility, but I think the metal dipping facility just does a
better job on iron. I have never heard of a caustic hot tank available
at my local radiator shop. I just received back a series II, brass
radiator from them to clean & check and it still had the black paint on
it (but it was clean inside). Another example, my machine shop does not
use a caustic hot tank on engine blocks either, but instead uses a bath
safe for aluminum & iron. It doesn't remove the rust, but it does
removed the sludge inside the water passages. The greasy oil pans are
tanked there, but I then send them to the dippers too. The pans come
back very clean inside & out, ready to paint and install on a new
rebuilt engine. I just picked up a pickup truck full of Alpine parts
the other day from the dippers. The load included about 5 driveshafts
(still completely assembled) and they turned out very nice & clean. Now
to disassemble them, paint them and install new U-joints.
Jan
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