Radiator cleaning

[offrink]

Well did a second wash and mow today. Dot it nice and warm. I was surprised that the radiator cap was hot (not that part of the surprise) but the drain plug wasn’t even that warm. Maybe 100-110*. I’ve grab a wrench that was sitting in the sun that was significantly hotter! That was after 45 minutes of mowing. Drained and washed the system out well and let it sit and then took a torch to dry the plug hole. Used some blue loctite (removable) and let it sit while I topped off the grease in the tractor and mower. Refilled with some antifreeze slowly and no leaks so I filled her up and ran it for 30 minutes or so and was dry. Good day!

The overall amount of crud that came out was a little surprising. There was a good bit at first but every wash out there was more brown rusty water at first and then clean. All I know is it’s cooling system is way happier!

[Scrivet]

........ Took an easy out to it with an impact driver and two full battery charges and 20 minutes of “impacting”. Nothing even budged. .........

Must be a pretty wimpy impact driver. Anything with more torque than a three year old can muster would have broken most easy outs.

Now please do yourself a big favor and get rid of your easy outs before you do break one. There are many threads on here about them. My short version of the reasoning is; you twist off a rusty bolt trying to remove it, you drill a hole in that bolt, you insert an obviously smaller diameter piece of metal into that hole, you are going to have to apply more force than you already have to break it free, and you expect the smaller piece of metal to NOT break when the bigger one already has????????

[offrink]

I didn’t use a true “impact driver” like the ones used for lug nuts but more like an impact screw gun. I knew better than to use a impact drive with hundred plus ft lbs of torque. It does have enough torque to snap a 1/4” lag bolt in half. Also it’s the sharp hits of the impact driver that does the work.

Also the head didn’t break. It was to soft and deformed. Left handed drill bit would go 1/4” into the bolt in less than 5 seconds. I wasn’t worried about breaking it and if it did I could take a chisel and break out the rest. Again, it was glued with some thread sealant that I couldn’t identify.