My honeycomb radiator is clogged

Question:

I am the proud owner of a 1928 Model A Business Coupe that I have restored.

I first received the coupe, which I called the rust-bucket, with a honeycomb radiator and I could not achieve enough water going through this 80+ year-old radiator. Rodding out a regular radiator with fins straight up and down is an easy task for me. The honeycomb radiator has no such straight tubes to rod-out. I’d say that close to half of the honeycomb radiator is clogged.

In addressing this issue, I first obtained a tall and narrow metal water tank from a local friend who makes ducts for houses. I removed both upper and lower tanks and tried boiling the radiator core in water.

This opened a few more tubes but clearly not enough.

Not even half of the tubes were working. I tried radiator flush several times, and based on advice from others I used Liquid Plumber, but nothing worked.

One day I handmade a rubber piece to fit on the end of a compressed air valve. After using radiator flush and flushing out with water, I placed the compressed air to each end and, to my surprise, this opened up a few more tubes that were clogged with rust. Now I would say that I have just a little bit more than half the tubes working.

I am an original-equipment kind of guy and would like to place this honeycomb radiator on my 1928 coupe.

I am disabled in a wheelchair and have figured out a way to drive my 1928 coupe around the neighborhood with the local kids who call me grandpa and I love it.

Any help you can give me on getting this honeycomb radiator core working again would be appreciated.

Answer:

As you may already know, high quality reproduction radiator cores are available for the Harrison honeycomb radiator but they are not inexpensive at about $975 each.

I think you probably can clean out your old radiator without damaging it using a chemical rust dissolver or a combination of a chemical and an electrolytic process.

A service provider such as Redi-Strip redistripindy.com) can help you.

If you want to trydoing it yourself, contact the folks at The Rust Store (theruststore.com). They sell a variety of chemicals designed to dissolve rust and can provide you with something that won’t harm the radiator.