overflow tank

[Roger Lance]

Doing small odds and ends during the long Buffalo NY winter. I am trying to clean the overflow tank of 40 years of gunk. Any ideas on the best way to clean out the inside? Thanks for the help.

[sunbeam74]

You might want to try the Castrol Purple degreaser. I can’t remember the offical name. Let it sit in the tank for a while. Don’t get it on your hands and don’t use it on aluminum or a painted surface (that you don’t want to repaint!)

Steve

[Bud & Donna Elliott]

Castrol Super Clean. I believe you can buy it by the gallon at K-Mart. I used it to clean out a fuel tank. I filled it about half full and shook it up twice a day for about a week and then flushed many times with clean water. Worked great.

[Tom and Joanne Ehrhart]

Castrol Purple cleaner works great. However, if I was bringing an old tank back to life, I wouldn’t worry about how to get inside to clean it out. I’d take it apart. Then it can be scrubbed.

Many of the header tanks have fatigued soldered flanges from years of thermal cycling and high pressure cycling. Plus the factory didn’t always do an admirable solder job either. Yet many have survived these stresses.

They are easy to take apart and resolder. Just use a propane torch, acid core or acid flux solder used for general plumbing. It’s a lot easer to clean everything when apart. Resolder the two pipes too.

Remember, there is a reason some cars never have problems. It’s because someone paid attention to the details to prevent a problem.

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