$30 lesson in radiator repair

I've been using my NH TC45 extensively for site clearing. I've been trying to be careful about stuff getting to the grill while removing brush, fallen trees, etc. Few weeks back, I had a limb push in the grill and knock the headlights out of their bracket, bending it. Fixed that. Then, last weekend it started overheating. Put some coolant in but didn't see anything on the ground or leaks. Well, the next morning, there was a puddle underneath it. Took a closer look, pulled the battery and found that something had pushed the grill in a little and pushed the battery back into the radiator, splitting one of the tubes.



Checked online, pretty expensive part. Took a wire wheel to it and it cleaned up well. Nice and shiny, thought it was aluminum as I know newer radiators are. Had some aluminum brazing rod.

Patched it up but had several pinhole leaks. Every time I fixed one, the heat opened up a new one. After about 3 hrs of messing with it on Sunday, I put it aside. Took it to a radiator repair shop near me Monday AM, guy said "$20 to fix it and oh, BTW, it's brass, not aluminum." :shock:

He unsoldered the ends of the rotten tube and resoldered the core there, didn't even try to fix my mess. It took about 5 minutes. Then he spent another bit of time cussing and swearing as he looked for small enough plugs for testing. Then more swearing as he tested it and kept finding little leaks on the adjacent tubes where the fins ripped out.


He was all smiles when he was done, no more cussing and swearing. I gave him $30 as it was obviously more trouble than he thought it would be. He even painted it black so it's not so obvious that it was repaired. Watching him work, I kept thinking "I could have done that". But it was well worth the money to get me back in business that day.

Not wanting a repeat, I fabbed up a couple of guards for the front. I'll post pix later as I don't seem to have them on my phone.

I?ve patched holes like that a lot of times with jb
weld. My 4020 has a patch 4 inches wide and a foot
long of jb weld it?s been that way for 7 or 8 years
now

Here are a couple of pix of the guards. First one is the inner one protecting the radiator:


Here is the tubular support I fabbed up for the outer guard:


Notice the cracked hood from a previous incident.
Here it is with the grill guard in place:


It's doing it's job as the outer guard was tight when I removed it to take these pix. I'll need to shave some off the posts to make it a looser fit.

That looks really good should keep Limbs from
going through the radiator again

At work we have a place people can bring brush and yard
clippings. We pile it and burn it about once a month. There is
one guy and until I laid it out that he is not to run the backhoe
anymore (after he rolled about a 24? log on the hood and
busted the windshield) would come back to the shop every
time with a stick ran in the ac condenser. I use a 2 part epoxy
or jb weld and can usually get it to hold. Guy that comes and
does all of our heavy equipment repairs said it would never
work. The patch I have in it now has been holding for over 2
years

I am not promoting this patch job try it at your own risk...I have used it one time about 5 years ago its still holding up.

Cut the tube out at the split on both sides open the tube up on both sides clean well sand blast works best work on one end of the tube at a time. Mix epoxy I use Peramtex Cold Weld (same JB works much better than JB) fill hole good then crimp shut and fold over the tube and pinch it good.

This was on a brand new aluminum radiator on a Toyota that threw a rod out the side of the engine and knocked a hole in the rad tubes. I had scrapped the rad brought a new one and set the damaged one aside. I ran across another Toyota just like it Cheap it needed a radiator I repaired the damaged one its been good to go for 5 years....

I could see were a old copper rad would keep coming up with endless leaks and may just be a fight from start to Finnish... It worked well on a good aluminum rad ... Most of the time a rad shop will block off the damaged tube you are not going to miss one tube..