Rusted water jacket

[37coupe]

Hi, all... Well, the engine and transmition are removed from my 37 Business Coupe. Does anyone have experience with cleaning the inside of an engine water jacket? I have no experience and am not sure how to handle it. Are their companies that do this, or is there a product I can put in it to flush rust from the system? Any and all sugestions would be appreciated.

[Larry]

For the average home-grown engine flushing, the old garden hose will usually do fine. However, for a real professional job (aside from the rip-off flushes that the corner gas stations used to do at antifreeze changing time), a machine shop "boiling" is the only real way to go.

That being said, many people have reported STILL not finding their engines clean. For the best job, punch out all the freeze plugs, remove everything to an absolute bare block and have it boiled out. Have the cylinder head boiled also.

I have even seen people then use rifle cleaning brushes to go in all the water passages, etc. Don't forget the oil passages. When doing this, a local car wash with high pressure soapy water works good too. You just need to be certain to get it dried well and the cylinders and any bare metal oiled down real good between the cleaning episodes and then final assembly. Rust is not our friend!

The old straight 6 and 8 engines were pretty simple without many hiding places so it is pretty easy to get everything clean. If you have some local shops, a visit, some discussion, and seeing some samples of their cleaning work is a good idea.