How to clean a coolant expansion tank.

Whilst 'leak hunting' I saw that my expansion tank was in need of a clean up. The guides on how to do that are vague and rare to say the least. So, I thought I'd knock one up for the T-Bar pages.

Pre 'Clean up' the tank looked like this -











Some ingredients to get the cleaning process going -







Shake it up and let it marinade for 20 minutes while you find something else to do (pastie optional).







Give it a scrub out inside using tools improvised for the job -





You can see the effect the rice had on the grime inside -





Put it all back together -



The job's a good un! :broon:

Nice one Leigh :broon:

Think I will go with the dishwasher tablet one, I have got my hands dirty enough this year :whistle:

Softly~Softly wrote:
Think I will go with the dishwasher tablet one

?

Drop a tablet or 2 in the expansion tank, do about 30 miles, I think, and it will all be nice and clean for when you change your coolant :yesnod:

Great meal and night Tuesday Alan

do you put the pasty in as well leigh? :lol:

I have found in past jobs that an overnight soak in a strong solution of bio washing powder works well on plastic composites. Good for cleaning alloy components too.

But.... the pasty!

John and Sue wrote: I have found in past jobs that an overnight soak in a strong solution of bio washing powder works well on plastic composites. Good for cleaning alloy components too.

I Agree, works like a dream, an Aunt of mine used to clean her bone china tea cups in this way. I have recently done my washer bottle which was full of black mould, now looks like new. :woohoo:

Luckymarine wrote: But.... the pasty!

I thin that went down very well

Just some more to add on this. I cleaned my tank out this weekend... First I got a 5 litre bucketthen filled with hot water. Then I put three cup fulls of the cheapest bio washing powder I could find and stirred this into Tue bucket with hot water in.

Next I dropped the expansion tank in and weighted it down with something heavy. I left this for a day to let the bio powder do its thing.

The next day I emptied the bucket and tank band everything was super soft inside.

Then I used a combo of rice, coffee and sugar poured a bit in he tank and did the shakeyatanklikeamaraca for about 5 mins and all the crud was gone.

So if the stubborn stains won't go get some bio in there!

I dont have any basmati rice ,,do you think normal long grain will do the job?

I used some out of the boil in the bag packet anything to rough up the gunk.. I'd be tempted to chuck in a little bit of sand that should really work a treat