Re: Soldering a tractor radiator (disaster story)

What Tim said. But the flux must be ACID. My local weld shop has some proprietary formula stuff that works great but good old HCl has merit.

Tim Wescott wrote:
William Noble wrote:
"Christopher Tidy" <cdt22NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:487FE777.1060509@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
spamTHISbrp@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

A radiator shop will probably 'dip' it for you, or maybe a machine
shop with a hot-tank.

A high melting temp solder can't be that hard to find- maybe some
'lead free' for one and 'lead' solder for the other?

We just don't give up here- but hey, you knew that when you
posted... ;)
I'll go and look at it again tomorrow. If it looks any better than I expect, I might have another go.

Chris

I think this is easier than you think it is

1. clean joint well. use files, sandpaper, wire brush, whatever you can to get it clean
2. clean an area about 1/2 inch around it also - get it really really clean. And on the tube too
3. tin the areas you just cleaned - use lots of flux, get a nice layer of solder on all the cleaned surfaces
4. make an L shape out of copper and heat it red hot, let it cool (anneals it), wrap it around the joint where the tube joins the radiator
5. remove it and tin it inside and out
6. put it back and pull it tight, heat and solder the L, at both edges
7. finsh off any open seams on the tube
8. drink warm beer and celibrate...


** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

Note: "clean" means "looks like virgin metal and has nothing oily at all on it". I have had minutes-old fingerprints fail to tin at times like this -- I do all my cleaning/soldering wearing disposable rubber gloves. If I can I use fine sandpaper to make absolutely sure that I've gotten through all the oxide and crud, and I tin _soon_.

.

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