Dislodging debris from inside a radiator

[DanNeely]

I ran my old loop long enough that the anti cavitation sponge in the reservoir started to come apart sending plastic flakes through my loop.

The only part I'm planning to resuse is the giant 560mm radiator; unfortunately it appears to have served as the primary collecting point for the debris. The reservoir and CPU block were mostly clear, but fragments came off the sponge when I handled it, and there were only a handful in the tubing running into the res, with the return being almost entirely clean.

I've done about 10-12 fill, cap, shake, dump cycles of the rad itself (used up an old 90% full gallon of distilled water). While I made solid progress, with my last dump having maybe 20-30% as many fragments (and much smaller on average) as the first one it's been really slow going.

Everything accumulated in the rad itself; so I don't think trying to flush them out with my old DDC pump is going to work and I don't want to connect my new D5 until all the junk is gone.

Before I either run through several additional gallons of distilled (or switch to tap water and hope I can fully dump/flush it out to avoid mineral residue) does anyone have additional ideas for what I can try.

 

[hititnquitit]

Try running a filter for a few days is all I can think of. The type of filter would depend on what you have on hand and how small the debris is.

 

[DanNeely]

Running a filter with what? All this crap ended up in my rad because my pump didn't have enough power to push it out (I assume it got jammed up in the cooling passages). What's left is mostly flakes ranging from about 1/8" (3mm) square down to the size of a pencil lead. Early on some of them were a few times that size, but my last 2 or 3 shake and dumps didn't bring anything else that big out.

 

[learners permit]

Take your garden hose to it and reverse the flow from what the cooling loop was. I use this method to back flush car heater cores with an 80% success rate. Don't be afraid to give it the business pressure wise as it's a loss either way. You'll know if it worked because of the muck that comes out when it's successful.

 

[DanNeely]

Take your garden hose to it and reverse the flow from what the cooling loop was. I use this method to back flush car heater cores with an 80% success rate. Don't be afraid to give it the business pressure wise as it's a loss either way. You'll know if it worked because of the muck that comes out when it's successful.

That wouldn't be a bad idea if I had one.

I'm leaning towards just going at it with tap water until nothing else comes out.

A half dozen fill and dumps with distilled afterward might not be enough to make a homeopath happy, but ought to get me to the point where if I was really concerned about residual crud I'd do better to find somewhere that would fill a glass bottle so that I'd only need to worry about plasticizers leaching out of my loop.

 

[DogsofJune]

You have a bathtub and or kitchen sink don't you? Is there no way to clean out the radiator there?

 

[DanNeely]

You have a bathtub and or kitchen sink don't you? Is there no way to clean out the radiator there?

Not particularly well.

I tried it, the initial blast of water in pushed some stuff out, but after about 30s nothing else came out. It did dislodge some big ones (port sized); so it'd probably have been most beneficial at the start. It didn't come close to finishing the job though.

Since that I've ran two more gallons through the way I was at the start and am still getting a few bits of junk with each pour: 4 in the last 3. I'm debating doing another full gallon of tap water vs calling it good enough, doing a few rinses with distilled and start putting everything together.