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Back flushing a oil cooler

J

joel8080

Contributing Member
A while back there was an thread on back washing an oil cooler ( Al's Method ) Question I understand hooking up the hose to the outlet & opening the threaded hole, what do you do with the inlet side of the cooler as it seems the pressure would be to great to escape from the threaded hole and the would push some of the zinc back into the raw water pump.

Joel
 
It may be safe to say that you've lost a few of us on this one.... or at least me for the moment!
Are you talking about a P/S fluid cooler?

Typically, an oil cooler found on OMC's, would be the P/S fluid cooler.
What can restrict these, would be broken impeller pieces that have made their way to the inlet side of the cooler.

Is this what your concern is?

What Zinc are you refering to?

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The oil cooler I'm talking about is the 9" one that has a water inlet & outlet and oil inlet & outlet on a 350XL crusader engine, it sits in front of the engine. I've been reading old treads & it seems like a good idea as it's pretty hard to get to.

Joel
 
backflushing will only work if the zinc particles are minimal. if you've never done it, it may be best to flush them with an acid solution...a few threads on that approach, too.

when we backflush the coolers, we remove the zinc plug and leave the inlet hose connected. You won't push the zinc 'chips' back into the pump as the cooler on the other side has the same restrictions.

You can always remove the coolers and disassemble the U crossover at the bottom.
 
I recall reading some time ago of a process whereby you take off the cooler and then pump, using a bilge pump in a 5 gallon pail, some type of calcium dissolving media, but not acid. You pump this stuff thru the cooler overnite or so.

If you can sweat plumbing fittings and have Mapp gas, take off the bottom casting and clean out the tubes, The problem clogs will be obvious once the cap is off.
 
I Just back flushed the oil cooler, here's what I found 2 fins from an impeller, some small pc's of zinc and you wont believe it one of those fuzzy rubber bands that girls wear in there hair don't know how that got there. There was a big difference the way the water flowed after using high pressure for 10 minutes, I then took off the raw water pump and found the impeller in perfect condition.

Joel
 
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