From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Procedure for cleaning and repairing blocked radiators.
| Identifier | ExFiles\Box 24\5\ Scan203 | |
| Date | 26th August 1929 | |
| - 2 - 1/- For a complete blockage the radiator should be dismantled from the chassis, turned upside down and filled with a 5% solution of caustic soda. This solution should be filled in hot, and the radiator allowed to stand in its inverted position for four hours. At the end of that time the radiator cap should be loosened and the solution allowed to escape. The radiator should then be thoroughly swilled with cold tap water by filling the radiator in the first place to the top again still in the inverted position and allowing same to discharge from the bottom after an interval of 10 minutes. The time the radiator takes to discharge should be noted, this should not exceed 1 1/4 minutes. The radiator should then be half filled with cold tap water and turned over and over for half a dozen turns in order to thoroughly sluice out all the corners. At the end of this sluicing the radiator should again be fit for surface. 2/- If after attempting cleaning with the soda the radiator still remains partially blocked, we would then recommend the use of an air blast with an air pressure of approximately 60 lbs. A nozzle on the end of a piece of flexible metallic pipe should be passed along the radiator tubes blowing vigorously on the stopped up spaces while inverted and the radiator should be held in the flushed inverted position. It should then again be tried with cold tap water, and if not clear it will mean that the two top rows will have to be removed and replaced by new tubes. Or compressed air bottle may be used for the supply failing which a wire brush as a substitute. that it should be allowed to dry. The foregoing covers completely procedure at a Depot or at our Works. Where it is impossible to finally clear a radiator at the Depot a new one must be fitted for which purpose one or two radiators will have to be available and the faulty one returned to the Works for the replacement of the tubes. would from To give a concrete idea of the position as it now stands, from actual tests out of 15 radiators so far tried out for cleaning by the caustic soda process in only one instance have we failed to completely clear the system, and in this instance the air blast might have cleared the job up, although the idea was not then available, so that we consider Depots have a simple and almost a 100% scheme of cleaning blocked radiators. In regard to customers, we would modify our | ||