Cleaning lines to front mounted oil coolers

[swade]

My engine had a rod bearing failure due to a crank oil passage plug falling out, not a catastrophic failure unless you consider my wallet. Very little material was found anywhere the bearing just beat around a bit. There were some bits of copper in the case when disassembled.

I am having the engine mounted and the fender mounted coolers cleaned but was wondering how I would flush the lines forward to the cooler in the fender. The PO installed these through the rockers and I did not want to pull the lines out. I used to do a lot of work with hydraulics and remembered that we used to blow foam plugs through lines prior to commissioning systems to clean out any asteroids that were left over from the construction. I went to a hydraulic shop and sure enough they had them in several sizes and gave me some. I used about 20 psi of air to blow them through several times and it worked very well. The oil that was collected from the end of the hose I am happy to say had no bits or pieces in it, I feel that I have addressed all the places that debris can be laying now.



W

[Flieger]

Cool, good idea.

[GH85Carrera]

Great idea. I hope I never need to use it, but that is good thinking.

[Jack Olsen]

Cool solution.

I cleaned mine recently by using a drill-mounted pump and running 10 quarts of mineral spirits through the lines (I've got two front coolers, so longer-than-normal lines). After the mineral spirits, I blew the lines empty with air and let them dry for a couple of days.

For extra safety, I didn't re-connect the return line to the tank until I ran the engine until the thermostat tripped and let the first couple of quarts of the foamy oil run into a catch pan. Then I shut the engine off and connected the line.

[swade]

I thought of pumping mineral spirits myself. To achieve the turbulence necessary to pick up any debris you have to pump with a pretty high velocity (google Reynolds number if you want to read more), but thought the solution with the foam "pigs" was the way to go.

W