Radiator progress

[Great War truck]

As i have not posted anything for a while, i thought that i should add some photos of the restoration of the radiator. As you can probably tell from the dates on some of the photos this has been going on quite a while and i think that Tony is sick to death of it.

As you know, by now we have acquired the remains of 7 Dennis lorrys now, but we acquired an engine and radiator off of a water pump. These are the correct ones for our restoration and we think that the pump was assembled from bits left over at the factory not long after the end of the war. However our thrill of having an original radiator lasted up until the moment that we took it apart. It had obviously been sitting full of water for a large part of its life and was terribly corroded.

There are lots of interesting photos of this, but i will start off with just the top tank. This is what the inisdes looked like after we took it apart.

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A closer view will show the deep corrosion.

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Steve purchased a large quantity of citric acid from a home brew shop and pickled the radiator in a large dubish bin. When it came out and was given a polish it looked quite good

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However, you can see under the D a hole. Not too bad, but take a look at the other side.[/img]

 

The aliminium is rotted away almost the entire lenght of the flange. One option is to make a pattern and get a new radiator cast. However, Tony thinks that he could fix it, so he drilled holes in the casting to which he bolted aluminium plate reinforcement.

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Then packed the gap full of Devcon which bonds to aluminium.

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Then painted over the whole lot with an epoxy resin.

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This should keep the water in the thing, or at least reduce the leak to a managable level.

[Great War truck]

Sorry, i posted that as a seperate topic when it should have been a continuation of the WW1 Dennis thread