YM2000 running hot

[Daryl Greene]

A day-old member here so be gentle... Just last week I was looking into a 'flush' that could adequately clean out the passages in the radiator effectively. Thinking back, I remembered that vinegar, being a mild acid, may serve as a excellent means of removing buildup from within the plethora of channels in the radiator. I 'googled' radiator & vinegar and came up with quite a variety of hits. Some touted great results whereas others claimed to have leaking radiators after treating with vinegar. Frankly, I cannot see that vinegar could eat away at a brass radiator to the point it would leak unless it was already near the point of failure prior to treatment (leakage would be expected regardless of the cleaning medium used it if the condition was already that poor). Vinegar is the solution recommended to clean the internals of coffee pots. Scale on shower heads dissolves right before your very eyes when treated with vinegar... so why not radiators?

If am curious if anyone here has first-hand experience with the vinegar method? Granted, a commercially-available radiator cleaner should do the job in which it was designed for... but what about the home remedy of vinegar?

Caveat - I am too new here to have searched the topic of raditor cleaning and vinegar so I apologize if this has already been discussed within this forum. Further, I have no intentions of highjacking this conversation; instead, I was hoping to piggy-back on Brake Weight's dilemma to solve my question.

 

[Ginormous]

Daryl -- Regarding the people who had a leak after cleaning; the people you mentioned interpreted this to mean that flushing caused the leak. In way they were right since it wasn't leaking before and was leaking after. What really happened is that the dirt (or whatever) inside the radiator was plugging the leak. When they cleaned it out, the leak was no longer plugged. Same thing happened to me.

 

[Johnp33]

The best flush I have ever seen is Arm and Hammer washing Soda. What I do is drain the coolant. Then with a pail of hot water a little more than what you removed from the COLD engine, mix the soda with a paint mixer, let it sit for 1 minute, and pore into a different container, and then fill the system every last drop it will hold OVERFULL, when the coolant blows out it will clean the top of the rad or the surge tank.
If there is even a hint of oil residue in the system add a little Dawn dishwasher soap.
Start it and at idle, fill some more if possible, Work the unit, drain, refill, and keep doing it until it comes out with no colour and no scale. When draining it will not hurt anything except the heat. If you do it on a cement pad it is amazing the scale that is cleaned out.
I have used a lot of products working for engine and truck dealerships, none of them worked as well as this and it is cheap. If you want to spend a lot of money Cummins make a product called restore that works, not as good but more expensive.