Soaking that engine block overnight in the hot caustic tank used to do the job but EPA shut down those tanks many years ago in all the places I know of. Then there’s the burn out ovens, and bead blasting afterwards that a lot of shops are using now a days, but that doesn't always get a clogged water jacket clean and that’s an added expense when rebuilding a driver, not a race engine. So what options are open to the homebuilder? Well there is always a case of gunk engine degreaser and the pressure washer. Works pretty good᠁..but that cold water really doesn’t cut it and even at 3,000psi it just skips over the really caked on cold crud. The stuff that’s left in a water jacket after a half century of use is a compilation of rust, lime and concentrated glycol from years of boiling the green stuff. http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/161644119 Heard lot of guys say to use Muriatic acid, but any acid is nasty stuff to be messing with especially in your back yard with a pressure washer. So᠁.I’ve physically dug out as much as I can with screwdrivers, coat hangers and special ¼” scoop I made and tomorrow I’m loading the block on a skid in the back of the truck and filling the water jacket with Purple Power then driving down to the local car wash where I can get some high pressure hot soapy water. dg
I can attest to this being a problem. The last 4 rebuilds I have done, the machine shop (two different shops) left so much crud in the water jacket that the rear drain was clogged either partially or completely. Even after I made special mention of this prior to the work being done. I am sure yours will come out fine since you are doing it yourself. Nothing like feeding thick safety wire into the drain hole after the freeze plugs are installed and working to a successful outcome!
55 gallon drum Water 3 cans of lye 1/2 box of Tide laundry detergent Firewood
Dunk the block and head in the barrel, fill with water, add lye and detergent, fire it up. After about 4-6 hours, pull the parts out and hose them down with the pressure washer. DO NOT put pistons or anything else aluminum in this stuff- - - -you won't see them again! Jerry
"It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and eliminate all doubt!" - Abraham Lincoln Cringe and wail in fear, Eloi- - - - -we Morlocks are on the hunt! There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. - Ernest Hemingway Love your enemies and drive 'em nuts!
Had an uncle that brought some JD engine parts over one time the looked like they had just come from the foundry. How'd you get them looking that good I axed, Lye he says. But.......Lye is just about as bad as acids are, just at the other end of the scale. My question always is, how does one dispose of these caustic substances once you're done with them????
Same way you deal with an endangered species- - - -shoot, shovel, shut up! A power posthole digger and 100 acres works very well for lots of things, including gun bluing salts and used-up caustic cleaning solutions. Jerry
"It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and eliminate all doubt!" - Abraham Lincoln Cringe and wail in fear, Eloi- - - - -we Morlocks are on the hunt! There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. - Ernest Hemingway Love your enemies and drive 'em nuts!
"Same way you deal with an endangered species- - - -shoot, shovel, shut up!"
" . . . no penalty may be imposed if, by a preponderance of the evidence that the act was in self-defense. The law also eliminates criminal penalties for accidentally killing listed species during farming and ranching activities."
I can't let that one slip by guys, to close to my basic beliefs. Call me an treehugger, environmentalist, animal rites advocate or what ever....I like to drink the water that I'm pumping out of my well rather than buy $1 a bottle mountain stream from the Jewel. And, I like for the deer, beaver, coons, squirrel, birds, pets, neighbors kids and who ever needs to walk my land, to be able to walk it with out fear of being shot or shoveled over or poisoned. In my 73 years I've seen the wild areas and wild life around northern Illinois destroyed by the invasion and over population of non caring human species. This 40 year old commercial says it all, and nobody seemed to get the idea:
Denny, I hope you did not read my post wrong. I am in complete agreement with you.
If it is not good enough that laws are being broken, it comes down to a belief that we not only have dominion over the earth/nature, we more importantly have a role of stewardship.
Several years ago my brother and I ran a gun refinishing business. We attended a very large machine gun shoot as venders. Mainly did military firearms and Lots of them quickly due to BATF rules and the fact guys didn't like to leave machine guns laying around. We had to clean firearms very quickly and I do mean clean as parkerizing will not stick to oily, dirty firearms. We used heated Sodium Hydroxide from a company called Brownells. When done after several 12 hour days we disposed of that solution. But before we did we'd mixed it with mild acid solution call vinegars to adjust the ph. This neaturalized the solution so it didn't kill the bunnies, yeah like they were going to make it on a machine gun range. Poured it through a cheese cloth filter to remove greasy solids. Think about it guys, how does industry get rid of chemicals used to clean, pickle, etc. metals?
Baking works best after a good chemical clean. All the left-over crud just crumbles right off. Check with local speed shops/engine builders. Very hard to get the inside water passages clean otherwise.
1947 GMC Truck 5 window, Long Bed 2008 Corvette Roadster 2008 Harley Davidson FXDL 2011 F150 Ecoboost 4X4 2015 Subaru Outback AWD "only the strong survive"
Muriatic (hydrochloric) acid is not effective as a degreaser, and should not be used to clean metal because it causes rapid rusting.
Lye (sodium hydroxide) is nontoxic. It is even used in food products. Just because something is caustic doesn't make it toxic.
Sodium hydroxide is an environmentally-friendly alternative to solvents for degreasing and methylene chloride (aircraft remover) for paint stripping.
The environmental/disposal issue encountered when using sodium hydroxide is caused by presence of the crud being removed in the waste liquid, not by the presence of sodium hydroxide.
One could dispose of the waste by first neutralizing the sodium hydroxide with hydrochloric acid. Sodium hydroxide + hydrochloric acid = table salt + water. The neutral liquid could then be evaporated to produce solid waste that could be disposed of in your regular trash.
Does anybody eat olives, or hominy? Both are processed in lye! Jerry
"It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and eliminate all doubt!" - Abraham Lincoln Cringe and wail in fear, Eloi- - - - -we Morlocks are on the hunt! There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. - Ernest Hemingway Love your enemies and drive 'em nuts!
What I don't get is, I want to pay a competent machine shop to do a competent job on the machine work. When they tell you outright that part of that includes a thorough cleaning of the entire block, I do not understand why there is a crapload of crud to the point where the rear drain is totally blocked after they have installed the freeze plugs. I do not want to deal with chemicals. That is why I pay upwards of 2 grand to have someone else deal with it. Took me an hour last time (the 4th total) this happened to rig safety wire to get it unplugged. (you KNOW I didn't get it all) I think it's a mindset on my part.. as a business owner, I give everything plus 100% of everything I advertise. We are dinosaurs, I know, but wasn't that a better time?
Other wise they're a hard as a rock and bitter as all get out. Back when I was a dumb kid in the service, there were olive groves where I was stationed. I had the bright idea that I was gonna just stop along side the road and pick me a bag full because I love green olives. I soon found out they have to be processed and Jerry's right, the lye is one type of cure that softens them so they are edible.
Does anybody eat olives, or hominy? Both are processed in lye! Jerry
Ever wonder how they skin Mandarin oranges? No, they don't use little Chinese people with gentle fingers. Momentary soak in lye solution. (After the soak they may use little Chinese people to finish the job. I don' know.) Carl
1952 5-window - return to "as built" condition | 1950 3100 with a 235 and a T-5 transmission
What I wonder about is how the squirrels get the Hickory nuts out of those shells. I've spent hours just trying to get enough Hickory meat to fill a thimble.
Got the engine cleaned up and clean water flowing from the jacket with the pressure washer stuffed in every hole I can find. Can't find any more crud in the bottom fishing around with iron tools either. Got suckered into using the wand at the car wash, thought it was supposed to be hot water...it wasn't and I blew ten bucks worth of quarters on about 10 minutes of pressure. Should have just stayed at home with my can of gunk and 3,000lb sprayer.
Tried Purple Power Bruce....dint touch the grease. Neither did the "Engine Degreaser" at the car wash. Good old Gunk engine cleaner, kerosene and a good stiff brush still works the best.
Need to find some good long brushes to get back in the oil galleys. I'm thinkin' a trip to Gander Mountain for gun cleaning brushes or better yet, McMaster Carr? Nope, just thought of all those Harbor Freight brush sets that I got a box full of. Just have to figure out some kind of holder for the twisted wire and how to get the wires out when they fall apart.
I use rifle brushes and pieces of steel round stock drilled and tapped to screw them into. Most gun cleaning rods just aren't strong enough unless you buy the really expensive ones.
To soften the grease before you use the pressure washer, mix up a strong solution of Trisodium Phosphate and water, and brush it on liberally, then wait a few minutes before pressure washing. It's the powder that's used to clean grease stains off concrete shop floors and it's MUCH less expensive than commercial engine degreasers. Jerry
"It is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and eliminate all doubt!" - Abraham Lincoln Cringe and wail in fear, Eloi- - - - -we Morlocks are on the hunt! There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. - Ernest Hemingway Love your enemies and drive 'em nuts!
At this point I think all that is probably left is at the bottom of the water jacket, so to keep the chemicals to the minimum I would plug the lower holes and put the chosen chemical in the block and let it work for awhile, drain, rinse and then hit it with the pressure washer. If you have some of that crud in the picture left put some of it in a container and see what happens with a couple different chemicals. I have had good luck with muriatic but it is dangerous stuff. I like the lye idea and may experiment some with that. We used to use lye to get the butterfat out of milking equipment years ago, I had forgot about that. I replied to Sput because that is some really useful information.
Good thinkin' BIZ, that is, trying solvents on that crud I pulled out. I can fish around in the jacket and can't feel any thing any more. I've used phosphoric acid for stripping rusty parts. Behr concrete cleaner used to contain Phosphoric Acid but they changed the formula and took out the acid. I was having a hard time finding anything with a high concentration of Phosphoric in it till I ran across some Sterosol Milkstone remover at a farm store. 75% solution. That would clear out the rust once the greasy stuff was clear. http://www.pbase.com/dennygraham/image/161664566 dg
I have to admit I pretty much gave up on the last one I did, my thoughts were that I got a lot of it, most of the heat is higher in the cylinder, and even with the bottom of the water jacket plugged up there was no apparent damage to the block.
I am not certain about this, but I think that leaving that hardened crud in the bottom of the water jacket leads to the classic crack in the water jacket scenario. I had a 216 develop that crack in the middle of the summer when my original type brass bellows t-stat decided to stick in the closed position on the highway, causing the temp gauge to peg. Upon tearing the engine down, I discovered that the horizontal crack and the top of the crud inside of the water jacket where at the same level. Coincidence? Carl
1952 5-window - return to "as built" condition | 1950 3100 with a 235 and a T-5 transmission
If you notice, not many of the third generation Chevy sixes have problems with cracked blocks or cracked heads. Those first and second generation Stovebolts were cast from gray iron and were thick and was not a totally homogeneous material. It's true that the cracks usually show up in the thinnest read weakest, section of the block from a freeze, that just makes sense from a structural stand point. The cracking that is quite common in the cylinder heads are most often stress cracks in areas of the combustion chamber where the most stress concentration is present. I worked as a parts man in the early 60's during the transition from the 2nd generation to the 3rd generation sixes. The new blocks with cast from a much more highly refined iron than the earlier blocks were. Any one that has worked with both engines knows how much lighter the later blocks are. Ford had been using the process for some years in their V8's before GM adopted it. If my memory serves me right the technology was compacted graphite cast iron which is lighter and stronger than gray cast iron, making the alloy a more attractive alternative to the latter in the production of cylinder blocks. dg
Have you ever been able to feed your Stovebolt E-Free gas to prove your theory? I think I would try and mount a small temporary fuel tank and give it a test. I'd bet that you are correct in your assumption.
I think you might be addressing the other thread where the discussion was about a hesitation or stumble when you hit the throttle. I don't think it's just the alcohol in the gas that's causing the problems. I believe it's in the formulation as a whole. I built and flew a biplane when I lived at an airport, and we had 100LL and leaded auto fuel at the pumps. Some of the planes had been been certified to use leaded auto gas. I tried a couple of tank fulls in my 216 and it made no noticeable difference. That for a while caused me to think that it wasn't the fuel but some other mechanical problem with the carburetors. But the leaded auto fuel that was approved for some planes was also coming out of the same refinery as the E-10 and subject to similar refining chemistry. The aircraft have a mixture adjustment on the throttle and they are adjusted much to the same effect that I get when I apply a small amount of choke to the truck carb. So again, the new cars computer adjusts the mixture, the mixture is adjusted by the pilot on an aircraft engine and the old truck carburetors have to be re-jetted.
