Questions about Heat Exchangers
 

Greetings,

I've been reading quite a bit on the maintenance of the heat exchangers, and have a few questions:

1) What type do I have on my 85 Carrera? They are the originals, but I'm not sure if they're stainless steel or some other metal.
2) I've heard of folks cleaning the heat exchangers themselves. I'm not talking about bead blasting, but using chemicals and brushes. What is the recommended chemical for this process?
3) Assuming I get them cleaned up, is there anything I should put on them to keep them clean?

Thanks,
Scott

The ones on your Carrera are stainless and are probably in very good condition. I doubt that you need to do anything to them. I wouldn't waste my time cleaning them as no one can see them!

Kurt,

Thanks for the reply. I bought my car two months ago and have since noticed the engine compartment has quite a bit of residue (dirt, old oil, etc.) on it, including the heat exchangers. I get that "race car smell inside the car after driving for a while. While going thru the service records from the previous owner, I noticed many of the oil lines as well as the oil return tubes were replaced last year. I do not see any leaks (that's not to say they don't exist, but they're not making it to the floor) and it doesn't appear to smoke at all.

I believe the residue I'm seeing is left-over crap that was not cleaned off the engine after the repairs were made to the lines and tubes, thus I'd like to clean it up. The goal being two-fold, first to get the engine looking clean and second to hopefully get rid of or reduce the "smell".

The heat exchangers do have residue on them as well as other parts of the engine.

Scott

That smell is likely oil that got into the outer seams of the HE's and now heats up when you drive, if it gets worse when you open the HE levers then that is it for sure...

getting it out is very hard, you can burn it off over time, but it will take a while, otherwise you would need to remove them and wash them out

if on the other hand you still have a leak of somekind, it may be driping on the HE's and giving of that same "oil cooled" smell.. we all know so well...the only way of course to fix that is to fix the leak. often those leaks are from v-cover gaskets/bad v-covers.