Hello again, HAMBland, I remember the first time I dealt with a leaky freeze plug (20 years ago? sigh...), and as I was getting ready to put in the expanding-rubber-e-z-fix-it I realized, "that's a kind of tough area to clean". The cooling passages in a chevy small block, I'm sure many of you have found, can get pretty loaded with little chips of iron and rusty sludge. Getting it out can be a real chore for the guy on a budget at home. Last November I pulled my cheap-ola 305 to put in good freeze plugs the right way, and I kept trying to imagine a better way that brushes and wire and hand-fashioned scrapers to get that stuff out. I rent, and I like my landlord. He's amused by the garage PACKED with parts and tools and enjoys my tales of trying to fix stuff. So another part of the challenge is to be able to clean this block and not ruin the driveway or turn the lawn foul. Riding the bus to work gives me lots of time for such mental tinkering (as well as writing emails and posts to the HAMB), and I thought maybe I could use a garden hose to flush it out. More accurately I wanted to SPRAY it out-- you know, hit it with some ungh!-- and that didn't seem possible without making a real mess. Until I found this beauty at the KING of all hardware stores: McGuckins Hardware in Boulder. I added an inline valve to it, and it is awesome! Nozzle: 4 bucks. Valve: 8 bucks (prices are approximate since my memory stinks). I tried to take some pictures of inside the block, before and after the "treatment"-- but the camera, unlike the water, does not shoot around corners. This worked really well with the engine on a stand, all the freeze plugs out, and those 1/4 npt plugs above the oil pan rail out, too. I am able to show you all the sediment that I got out of the motor, after only about 3 minutes of spraying on each side. And I didn't get soaked, and the tub caught most of the water coming out of the block. The inside of the block is mmm-hmmm clean! I think I won! That tub, by the way, is a mortar mixing tub from Home Depot, and costs a mere 7 bucks. They sell another one for about 15 bucks that's about twice the size. It is awesome for catching fluid when you empty a cooling system before you pull a motor, or a tranny. I recently cleaned up a greaseball of a motor on my engine stand in the garage (scrape, spray Oil Eater, stiff bristled brush), with minimal mess on my landlord's floor. AND it makes a helluva boom-box if you have three cats. Great, GO HAMB! acosta
The Jalopy Journal
