Was out in Scorpion bay for New years, noticed I was overheating a bit when I arrived, once we got to the beach I started investigating and found that
the rutted roads had cracked my upper radiator neck where the hose attached to the radiator, it was a hairline crack but enough to leak under
pressure.
I JBwelded it at the beach and kept on partying, a few days later we were headed back to Loreto, over the same rutted roads.
well my JBweld held for a bit, but eventually let loose and the crack got even bigger, dumping coolant out at an alarming rate
Luckily i was in the RV with plenty of water onboard so just kept pulling over every 5 minutes and dumping another gallon of water down in here to
keep her cool. Each time I was pulled over with the hood popped, every single car that passed by would stop and ask if I was OK.
Limped her into Cid Insurgentes and stopped at the local auto parts store who directed me to Don Jose, the radiator man, tracked him down in a local
neighborhood. Pulled up and explained the situation.
Jose crawled under the truck and pulled the lower rad hose before I had a chance to say lets grab a bucket! dumping coolant all over the street,
luckily by this point it was mostly water anyway.
He had the rad pulled out in 5 minutes and took into his dirt floor workshop, he took a giant torch and started blasting the rad with flames, melting
down the solder that connects the rad neck to the rad itself, he got the neck popped off and used some sand paper to clean up both pieces, then he
grabbed a random blob of solder, dropped it into an old corrugated piece of siding, heated it up with the torch until it melted and ran down the
corrugation, then let it cool into a nice thin bar of solder
grabbed his new bar of solder and a smaller torch, holding the filler neck back onto the rad, he methodically worked melted the bar of solder all
around the rad neck, firmly affixing it back to the rad
splashed it all with some cool water, took it out back of the shop where he had a cement pila full of water, he had 2 old pieces of rad hose that had
been capped off with what looked like old pieces of rubber boot, he capped one end had a schrader valved worked into it. he capped off both ends of
the rad with these homemade caps
he dropped the rad into the water tank, grabbed an old bicycle pump and pumped the rad up with air, checking for any bubbles
no bubbles! no leaks!
Had the radiator put back in the truck in another 5 minutes, filled it back up with water and away we went.
total time less than 30 minutes from start to finish!
total cost: $5!!! |
