1941 Buick Water Jacket Rust/Overheating

[Guest Earl]

Well, I decided to knock the frost plugs out of the engine block a week ago and see what could be done about cleaning the engine block out some. Wow, what a mess in there! This car has always been in service and I was expecting some stuff in there, I found a great deal more than I was expecting. The car tends to run hot, but I've never had it boil over or get much past 190. But in the summer I put a 160 degree thermostat in it and so it shouldn't run much hotter than that. The radiator has good flow and actually looks like it's been cleaned out sometime recently. I've had the car for 3 years and I didn't do it though. Anyway, I know the one picture is pretty bad but I'll post both of them and after I get the thing back together report on if that helps out with the cooling. I did take the radiator to get it boiled out and he said that he really felt it didn't need it. I couldn't feel any "cold" spot on it by feeling it and a thermometer gave pretty consistant temperature readings when the car was running. I put two gallons of evaporust in there after I sprayed out as much stuff that I could get out of it with a garden hose and pressure washer and left it set for about 24 hours. That stuff seems to have helped a lot and I was able to get a bunch more rust and crud out of there afterwords. I'm going to have a crack in the manifold repaired and will post some pictures of that on a different thread. Anyway, if you think I should do anything else while I've got those freeze plugs out feel free to get after me! I'm always glad to learn things.

[Guest Grant Magrath]

Looks like you've been pretty thorough Earl. I remember using an extendible magnet to pick up lots of rusty crud from our frost plug holes, but you shouldn't need to do that now.

Cheers

Grant

[FLYER15015]

Earl,

When you put her back together, consider doing "my" CLR (calcium-lime-rust) flush.

You can search for the thread here, and I did it per my local radiator shop's recommendation.

Just my $ .02

Mike in Colorado

[Grandpa]

Earl,

See the attached pictures as a suggestion. Please post your progress on the block water jacket cleaning.

Grandpa

[Guest Earl]

You know, I did the CLR thing before I took it all apart and the pictures I took of the water jacket were what was left in there after the CLR loosened up quite a bit of junk. I did not take the water pump off, but after seeing the pictures of your engine with the water pump off, I will do that and see what else I can get loose in there. I'll post some more pictures as soon as I can get to all of that. I didn't have a chance to do any more with it this weekend. I must have gotten at least as much junk out of there as you did Granpa, but it's all over the garage floor!

[Guest Earl]

Well, this is what it looks like in there now. I scrubbed around in there as much as I could. I took a brass nossle for the end of a garden hose and clamped a small piece of tubing that I could get in between the cylinders and washed it all out as best I could. It's not perfect, but I wasn't expecting it to be with this method. I really got a lot of junk out of there and hopefully this will settle the thing down so it won't run hotter than the thermostat I have in it. As hard as those frost plugs were to get out I don't know how anyone would expect them to move before the side of the engine block did! My rear exhaust manifold is cracked on this thing and I'm getting that repaired, so as soon as that's finished and I get the thing back together I'll find out if it runs any cooler.

t

[Dynaflash8]

Don't forget the cylinder head. My 41 Roadmaster ran hot, and I put in a new radiator....it still ran hot. I decided to do a valve job and found the cylinder head all clogged up. After the machine shop boiled it or whatever they do and refinished the valves, it ran a cool as a cucumber.