Vineagar/ Scale clean out

[fastfarmall]

Anybody had any experience with Vinegar in a dry sleeve engine, to remove the scale build up, does it eat the radiator hoses too,LOL ?? How long do you leave it in their ??

 

[rustred]

its disassembly time. vinegar is for cleaning your coffee pot!

 

[fastfarmall]

well they claim it works for this application also,Nothing wrong with the internal of the engine !

 

[old]

I have used it many times to clean out engines that tend to over heat due to rust and lime build up. Drain the old coolant out then fill with vinegar NO water. Run the engine till good and warm let cool then drain the vinegar out. Catch it so you can see how bad it was. The rig up a way to hook a garden hose to the block drain and back flush it for an hour or so. Hoses are made of rubber and vinegar is an acid to no it does not hurt the hoses. I have used it in any water cooled engine and it helps most of the time. Ya a real bad one you may need to do it 2 or 3 times

 

[fastfarmall]

Thank You; are the man, i was to wanting to hear from, Going to do that real soon.

 

[old]

My Oliver 77 would over heat in less then 30 minutes till I did that and it has not done so since I did that and that was years ago.

 

[Lucid]

I have done it a couple times on my 200. First time it stained the 5g bucket from so much rust/junk. Works pretty good (and cheap).

 

[fastfarmall]

Ok, but do you order the pure 99,00 per cent pure vinegar right, just the grocery store type is 5 %

 

[kfnut]

I was glad to read this post . It should work on all old vehicles .

 

[rustyfarmall]

(quoted from post at 21:24:55 07/28/16) I have used it many times to clean out engines that tend to over heat due to rust and lime build up. Drain the old coolant out then fill with vinegar NO water. Run the engine till good and warm let cool then drain the vinegar out. Catch it so you can see how bad it was. The rig up a way to hook a garden hose to the block drain and back flush it for an hour or so. Hoses are made of rubber and vinegar is an acid to no it does not hurt the hoses. I have used it in any water cooled engine and it helps most of the time. Ya a real bad one you may need to do it 2 or 3 times

I did pretty much the same to a Ford 390 engine, except I left the vinegar in there and drove the truck for a few days. It did loosen up the crud, but also exposed a couple of badly corroded frost plugs. Not a bad deal really, 'cause removing those frost plugs let the loosened up crud escape the engine. I drove that truck for several more years and then gave it to my son when he turned 16.

 

[Billy Shafer]

I learned that trick in the Navy. Add the vinegar run the engine until hot.Let it set for an hour. Drain the system flush with water. Never had a problem.

 

[Bob Kerr]

I use straight rain water or distilled if we are in a drought. Fill run till hot, drain refill and repeat a few times. Ok to run rain water a few days. it will dissolve all the lime. Use distilled or rain water when adding antifreeze. Don't use soft water, it has sodium in it and will cause rust. Some of the worst ones I did was an old M that had nothing but hard well water used in it since new. Caked up bad! First water change was white!

 

[Lucid]

I used the grocery store vinegar. Grabbed 3 gallons. I did run it and drained out next day. Prolly shouldn't leave in there extended time as vinegar will eat/dissolve some metals.

 

[Ken SE WI]

Will this also work with a wet sleeved engine? Or do I run the risk of messing up the O rings?

Ken

 

[old]

It works with either type of engine. But if the o-rings seals on the sleeves are bad yes cleaning it up can cause a leak but it would not be caused by the vinegar since vinegar will not harm plastic or rubber

 

[old]

Just plain canning grade vinegar you buy at most any store that has canning supplies 5% acid white vinegar

 

[old]

Yep if you have freeze plugs that are about to go out the vinegar is likely to find them for you which in many ways is a good thing. Sure better to find them while doing maintenance then to have them go out while your on a road trip or such thing

 

[CGID]

Pure vinegar is called glacial acidic acid. It's called glacial because it turns crystalline and "freezes" at around 50 deg. F. It's nasty stuff on the nostrils, nearly as bad as ammonia. A whiff will knock you over backwards. I don't know of any use for it straight. A 35% solution is available for photo darkroom work, but even it needs to be diluted quite a bit for use as a negative and print stop bath.

 

[Ken SE WI]

Old
Thanks. I'll have to try that.

Ken

 

[old]

As I said it will not harm o-rings but if you have a freeze plug that is close to being rusted out it will find that and let you know the hard way. Or if there is a build up of junk around a sleeve seal it can/will remove that and in turn cause them to leak but that will be due to bad seals