Tom Kendall wrote:

Gee, I dunno Paul.  I recall a once-very-secret incident when a
certain pioneering submarine (the Nautilus) developed a leak in
their main condenser.  Stopping in at San Francisco for a
"liberty port", all the swabbies were sent ashore with orders to
fan out and buy all they radiator stop leak they could lay hands
on, but not to do it all in one place or to raise suspicions.

Returning to the sub, they ran literally hundreds of gallons of
the stuff through the main seawater condenser (1 quart at a
time), weighed anchor, and proceeded to make the first submerged
transit of the North Pole running under the ice.  Pretty ballsy
I'd say.  Can't glide to a force landing.

So Finn, have you tried Barr's Stop-Leak?  Wreaks havoc on old
heater cores by fouling the surfaces, but if you've got a
relatively clean rad, it might just work wonders.  Another
mechanic's trick is to use a *small* amount of ground black
pepper.  It will find the leak and coagulate in it as it absorbs
coolant.  Warning:  I tried this with a leaking truck radiator
and put too much in.  Plugged the whole darned thing solid and
boiled over in ~20 miles.

What a coincidence. We did that with Perry's broken tension bolt
leak and we think it plugged the radiators.

Paul Lamar

It definitely plugged the rads, but I think it was because they were
at the bottom

of the system and the stuff settled there.

Since Finn is not trying to plug a rad leak, he could try it, but
remove the rads from the system first?

--
Perry Mick
Duckt N7XR
http://www.ductedfan.com

Sorta for the new guys,
It only takes a weekend to pull the motor apart, replace the orings, put it back
togethter and go flying.  For my peace of mind, I would pull it apart.  It just doesn't
seem like that big a deal.  I'm no expert since I have only built one engine, but if
you don't have to do all the cleaning it's really easy.  It's the cleaning of all the
pieces that make a rebuild lots of work - Finn's engine will be clean since it hasn't
had sump oil injected into the combustion chambers.

Ken Powell

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