rad sprung a leak

[shambles1980]

ok so my 240mm rad sprung a leak. (guess i must have knocked it doing a clean out)

i cant seem to find the hole. but the pump sure manages to get the water out of it..
If i could find the hole i would solder it. But as i cannot does any 1 know of something i can put in the rad or on the rad that will seal it up?

running on just a 120mm rad right now and at stock clocks managed to hit 80c after 2 hours of GTA 5 online..
So i would like to fix it up untill the replacement arrives.

i probably have an old pump some where i can use to circulate the stuff if needed (one that does not matter if it dies)

i also have some new tubing on order since a few days "its that time of the year" (re tube clean out replace the water and so on)
So i can re use the old tubing for the process..

any ideas welcome. but preferably none that will result in my pumps and block being full os crap after a month..
"I assume the only reall fix is to solder the repair. but like i said i simply cannot pinpoint the hole"

 

[tinytomlogan]

You shouldnt 'put anything in it' dude

Find the leak or replace the rad

 

[shambles1980]

Already replacing it.
I just dont have a compressor to find the leak and its not obvious.

I will see if i can get the wife to help me find it tomorrow.
Would like to fix the dumb thing. i really hate to throw things away when i know i can fix them if i could just find where its broken.

 

[Warchild]

Already replacing it.
I just dont have a compressor to find the leak and its not obvious.

I will see if i can get the wife to help me find it tomorrow.
Would like to fix the dumb thing. i really hate to throw things away when i know i can fix them if i could just find where its broken.

Why dont you just do a simple loop in your kitchen sink. pump res and rad. If you have blue paper towel, you can find it very quickly

 

[shambles1980]

what i did "which should have worked" was find the general area of the hole.
cake it with solder paste. (its like a grey flux paste that is full of solder dust)
baked it in the oven on a tray un-till the paste turned in to solder.
Then pulled it out of the oven..
That was the leak fixed...

THEN
I stupidly tried to pick it up with 1 hand (only had 1 oven glove) before wating for it too cool down.. (i needed to put the lamb in the oven so it was in the way)
And I managed to squish it.. this means that the parts where the barbs go stuck popped off, because they are soldered on and obviously that solder had melted too..

SOO..
leak fixed, BUT now i have some SERIOUS soldering to do if it will ever work again lol...

Im going to leave it untill i have time to spend a good few hours prepping before i try and fix it.

I will have to clean off all the old solder before even thinking about trying to re solder the things on or I will NEVER get a water tight seal.

hopefully the replacement rad will arrive before the week end.
I bought 2 240's. Just trying to figure out where i will mount the second one lol.

 

[JR23]

Is it really worth spending the time and money of solder, even it is only pence, to turn a broken radiator into a poorly fixed radiator when you could just buy a new one and have it the next day, or even just a used one. I wouldn't even want to put it back in a test loop after all that.

JR

 

[The_Governour]

This thread NEEDS photos!

 

[Tolemac]

Yeah we want evidence

 

[shambles1980]

I will grab some pictures tomorrow lol.
And its no money on solder for me i have tonns of the stuff.. (granted im more used to electrical work and haven't soldered any radiators before) but how hard can it be right??

I just dont like wasting things. And like the satisfaction of something being fixed..

I already orderd 2 240 rads which are coming because even after repair it wont go in to my gaming pc any way.. possibly throw it in the media center although I have no idea how i would mount it as that is a low profile system. and the server cant use it because there is no way it could cool down 2 quad core cpus.. But i may think of something involving copper pipes and the ram modules because they do get stupidly hot for some un known reason..

 

[GhostShadow]

Is it really worth spending the time and money of solder, even it is only pence, to turn a broken radiator into a poorly fixed radiator when you could just buy a new one and have it the next day, or even just a used one. I wouldn't even want to put it back in a test loop after all that.

JR

I would try and fix it, just to prove that i can.
It's the journey that counts and if you are good at fixing things you would trust it to work.

 

[SuB]

lol I was reading through this where you were just explaining about putting it in the oven and immediately thought "wouldn't that melt the existing stuff?"

And you proved me correct in your next paragraph, so thanks for that lol.

 

[Warchild]

Not to mention the consistency of the resoldered areas may not be 100% successful and could spring a nice leak when under high pressure from the pump(s)

 

[shambles1980]

i stupidly presumed they would have brazed the thing together. never got round to taking pics due to the replacement rads arriving. and as i still havent figured out how to remove the solder left over cant try to start fixing it either.

 

[Warchild]

i stupidly presumed they would have brazed the thing together. never got round to taking pics due to the replacement rads arriving. and as i still havent figured out how to remove the solder left over cant try to start fixing it either.

Just bin it and put it down to a lesson learned!

 

[SuB]

Not to mention the consistency of the resoldered areas may not be 100% successful and could spring a nice leak when under high pressure from the pump(s)

if there's a major pressure increase from your pumps, you're doing something wrong shouldn't be any real pressure created in a closed loop at all

 

[shambles1980]

IF i can clean up the old solder should not be an issue at all to resolder them. Its not something difficult to do PROVIDED i can get all the old solder off lol.

 

[Aquatuning]

Deffo needs pics!