Repairing an automotive radiator is rapidly becoming a lost art form. With the near extinction of the steel core radiator in the 1990s and the disposable nature of the aluminum core successor, repairing radiators simply is no longer the practical or viable solution. However, there are a number of tools available for those willing to fix a radiator instead of relegating it to the scrap yard.
Flushing out a radiator may never become obsolete and is one of the easiest do-it-yourself repairs out there. When a radiator becomes clogged with hard water sediments or deposits left behind when coolant breaks down, the radiator can no longer perform its assigned task. Connecting a flush tee to a heater hose and flushing out the cooling system with a flush kit is something every radiator can benefit from periodically.
When the fins on the radiator’s core get flattened over by water or road debris, they no longer allow air to pass over them and thus lose the ability to remove heat from the radiator tubes behind the fins. A radiator fin comb is designed to allow the user to literally comb down the face of the core, moving with the fins and straightening out any bent fins. If even one tenth of a radiator’s frontal core surface is blocked by bent fins, the radiator can lose a significant portion of its cooling ability. Once bent fins are noted, combing them out should at the top of the list of vehicle repairs.
The radiator core is held to the tanks by crimped tabs that extend from the tanks and wrap around the lip of the core to bond the two together. A crimp tool allows the user to bend those tabs back out of the way so the radiator tank can be removed. While this works well on steel core radiators, the odds of bending the crimped tabs back on an aluminum core are extremely low, as aluminum tends to crack under the strain of the tool.
Cleaning rods are used to ram down the tubes in the radiator core to remove any blockages in the tubes caused by hard deposits that cannot be removed by flushing. The radiator tanks must be removed in order to access the tubes. The rods can then be slid in and out of the tubes multiple times to knock the deposits out. This works best if the core was placed in a boil out tank for 12 or more hours prior to rodding it out.
