Coolant through radiator question?

Take it to a radiator shop and have them clean it out. From your description it's all gunked up.


Edited by DougS - 19 Sep 2016 at 7:24pm

 How ambitious do you you want to get on this yourself and how bad off is the radiator anyway?  

That's right Steve. Cleaned a truck rad. one time to get out the oil when cooler went bad. Thought I had flushed the soap out, but some was left in there. Ran it for a couple weeks not leaking and checked the water level. That rad. hadn't been so clean since new. If you use muriatic acid you need to do your final clean with baking soda and water. Be ready for a boil over as the soda kills the acid. I guess if you have some pin holes in the core you could always put in some stop leak and start all over again. 

Also there are spots that have been repaired on the radiator and didn't know if any of that stuff would eat the solder out leaving back at square one before it was repaired.

OK so was doing a few crude tests to try and rule out what I can. This morning I started it up and let it run for about 5 minutes I was watching the coolant come out of the thermostat housing through the radiator cap hole. It seemed to have a somewhat decent flow right after starting while cold but after a few minutes of running once the temperature got around 120 degrees or so it almost looked like the floor started slowing down a little bit. Then I shut it off waited a few minutes and place my hand all over the radiator to see if there was any cool spots and warm spots. The radiator seems to be a uniform temperature all across the fence with only the very top and bottom part of the tank being warmer than the rest so that leads me to believe that the radiator must be flowing the coolant through it fast enough for the rate the water pump is pumping. Was told by the previous owner that he just put a new water pump on it before giving it to me and that did not solve the overheating problem. Next I plan to pull the thermostat housing off to see if in fact there is a thermostat in there or not because as soon as it started it was flooring coolant through the housing from the engine block. My other thought was with all the junk in the block from the bars leak being added maybe the thermostat is stuck partially open allowing it to pump coolant immediately upon starting but not fast enough fluid to maintain a cool temperature. I took a short video of the coolant flowing out of the thermostat housing into the radiator to see if anybody could take a look at it and see if they thought that was a normal flow rate the engine was running about half throttle during the video I would guess. I will upload the video and post a link to it as soon as it is done. And as always thank you in advance for any and all opinions or help as I am very new to the Tractor world but I'm excited to learn all I can.

When I just did sleeves in my d15 I found tons of stuff packed behind #4 cylinder just do to the design of the water flow I guess. Not that it solves your overheating issue but you could have a bunch of stuff laying in behind #4 as well. On the D15 it has a block drain on the left hand side between #2 and #3. after I put mine together I wanted to flush out anything I couldn't get so I removed the shutoff valve and fished a RV water heater cleaning tip in the hole as it has a nice little 90 on it. It dislodged a bunch of trash as well. Just a FYI you may try that to get everything out so that your hard work in cleaning the radiator doesn't just get plugged up again.

I'm curious. You said you have good flow when the engine is cold, but little flow when the engine is warm. That seems bass-ackward to me.

Tcmtech wrote: Just out of curiosity, have you confirmed your ignition timing is set correctly? Reason I ask is my brother was using my backhoe the other day and it starting running real hot and had no power when loaded up yet sounded fairly normal when unloaded or idling.   Turned out the little fiber tab on the points arm broke off and retarded the timing about 30 degrees.   Also when overheating how hot are you talking?  Boiling over or the gauge says it's hot?

The gauge gets to the red and I it down. Then you can hear it boiling in the radiator and block.

Well there is no thermostat in the housing at all. So makes me wonder if he got a used waterpump somewhere and it's just not working the way it should?

I tightened the belt to be sure it wasn't slipping and I can pour water right through the block so that's not plugged but I did get some chunks put of it. Going to flush it just to be sure.

My main suspects now are pump or radiator is restricting the flow as it seems it should be pumping more then it is.

No thermostat can cause overheating. Been discussed on the forum several times. When I worked at a dealship a C came in with an overheating issues. The old mechanic there asked me what I thought it could be and I gave him my opinion then he told me he'd bet the was no thermostat in it. He was right and a new thermostat fixed the overheating issue.

I'll have to try that. It's just called non foaming dry soap?

About the thermostat..... about 3 years ago he gave me some boxes of bolts and various hardware he cleaned from his shop when moving and in one of the them was a new allis chalmers thermostat still in the box. Well needless to say I moved it around up until we moved in June and am pretty sure I tossed it out thinking when will I ever have a mid forties AC tractor. Lol this exactly why I tell my famoly I hold onto stuff cause you never know when your gonna need it. Guess I'll have to order one up with the gasket set....

Also another question I have is what to look for on a bad water pump? If the impeller looks good, bearing feel smooth and tight and no cracks could I consider it in good repair or is there other factors I'm not thinking about?

Finally if anyone would care to take a little picture of the amount of flow coming from their water pump through the cap to compare it would be appreciated.

I can attest to what Big Red mentioned about the muck that was packed in around the sleeves. When I did the engine in my B, after I got the sleeves out, I couldn't believe how much muck was packed around those cylinder sleeves! With a putty knife, I dug out muck to make a pretty large pile in a spackle bucket! I didn't know if that engine ran hot before I purchased the Tractor cause it didn't run for a long time and sitting outside with a rotted off muffler had all the cylinders filled with water. I also had my Radiator man rod out the Radiator, and that was full of muck also. I know the little AC Tractors don't normally run hot unless there is a problem somewhere in the cooling system. My little B can run in the hottest of weather and never get into the Green area on the temp gauge. Even if I roll the shutters closed, it only goes up a tick...
Steve@B&B

Once the sleeves are removed can they be just reinserted or is there any orings or seals that's need to be replaced? Going to be doing a head gasket and was hoping I'd be able to just poke around in the holes there to loosen up anything in there.

back in the day....lots of guys with warmed-over flathead Ford engines removed the thermostats to try to increase coolant flow and prevent boilovers. But doing so turned out to be counterproductive. The coolant water turned over TOO fast -- did not have enough time in the block to gather up the latent heat or enough time in the radiator to shed it.

Tearing the engine apart seems to be a bit extreme until you've had the radiator cleaned and checked out. IMO