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Went back to see if I could clean out the block some more. Pretty successful. I ended up going “fishing” with a magnet on a dowel rod to pull a lot of debris front he back of the block that wasn’t flushing out. Between that and blowing air and water from various directions (top hose, water inlet, heater valve and block drain cock) I was able get things moving around enough for the magnet to grab it.

I just kept at it until I couldn’t get any more.

Re-installed the trim on the front of my heater. Now, just waiting on the new core before fully reassembling it.

Looks real nice Don!

With all the crud I’ve gotten out of my block when flushing it and having a clean radiator, I’m thinking of installing an in-line coolant filter in the top radiator tube. Any thoughts on this? I’m thinking of this one.

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sdk-acc-gano-8

I’m also thinking about just running water only for a bit until it looks like thing are running pretty clean. That would just keep me from going through so much antifreeze as I’l have to drain a bit each time I clean the filter out.

Let me know if you have any experience with this or your thoughts.

Thanks,

Water has no corrosion inhibitors or anything that helps the water pump stay lubricated. Cast iron and straight water = rusty water.

If your car is overheating on 50/50 coolant, you have other issues that need to be resolved.

Staright water boils at 212 at sea level, 50/50 coolant boils at ~225. Since the 37 radiators are unpressurised, you want the highest boiling you can get.

...and God forbid you forget about the straight water being in there when winter freeze hits.

I've been running a gano filter for a few years now, and it works great. Highly recommend.

For continued cleaning, you might consider running evaporust in lieu of coolant for a few months. It will dissolve any other iron oxide you have in. Change it out once it's black.

If you don't want to run anti-freeze, one option is to mix in cutting oil. In my experience, I lose less than half a gallon when checking my gano filter, and often you can re-use drained coolant, if you drain it into a clean container.

Thanks, guys. I do plan to run antifreeze. I was just thinking short term while I continue to get the system cleaned out well. I’ll look into evaporust

Evaporust makes a specific radiator product now. Not sure how it differs from their normal product.

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Yep, I saw that. It’s called Thermocure. That’s what I’m going to try.

Question for the group….I was putting my water pump on just enough to get a measurement for the heater tube bracket I’m fabricating while waiting for other parts to arrive. When doing that I noticed something…

When I first removed the pump, I noticed that one bolt was about 1/4 inch longer than the others. Due to that, I made note of which hole it came out of. However, I now notice that this bolt seems to be 1/4 inch too long for any of the holes and cannot be tightened such that the head makes contact with the pump.

The longer bolt came out of the bottom right hole when standing in front of the car and looking at the pump. This is also the hole that goes into the water jacket. However, the depth of the hole is the same as the others.

So, my question is this….can anyone confirm that all four bolts should be the same length? It seems to me that has to be the case, but I would like to confirm and make sure there isn’t some other issue.

Here is my new heater tube bracket….waiting for paint to dry isn’t much fun.