cleaning 3208 heat exchangers while on engine

L

leisure-lee

Member
Mar 5, 2015
36
Newport RI
Boat Info
86 390EC
Raymarine radar Furuno GPS Sitex AP
Engines
3208 Cats
Antbody have a technique for cleaning the heat exchangers while still on the engines. I know there is an outfit in the Miami area that does it but I am in the Newort RI area.
Also how hard is it to get those out if I have to take them to a shop
 
It requires a recirculating pump and reservoir, breaking into the sea water system right after the seawater pump, rigging up adapters to pump descaled into the system, then breaking in again just before the seawater is expelled into the exhaust stream. You then remove all engine zincs, install plugs in their place and recirculate descaled thru each engine for 3-4 hours. Depending upon your engines cooling water capacity and the size reservoir you use, you will need 5-8 gals of descaled. This method cleans everything seawater passes thru…..oil coolers, transmission coolers, fuel coolers, etc.

You probably won't find a cooling system cleaning business in your area, but I'd bet many repair shops have them, so you might try calling your Sea Ray dealer to start and go from there. This can cost $1000-$1200 because the descaling pump must be tended…….you don't want acid under pressure getting loose in your boat.

Another approach is to just remove the tube bundle from the heat exchanger and clean only it. This only cleans the tubes in the heat exchanger and does not clean the other coolers on the boat, it also only saves labor if you have room between the engines and the hull to slide the tube bundle out of the heat exchanger.
 
You can use Rhydlyme and circulate it through your cooling system.
I bought a cheap sump pump along with some fittings and hose and pumped the Rhydlyme at 50% from a garbage can through the raw water cooling system and back to the can. It worked great.
 
wow, this seems like a great service of $1,000! Complete flush, new engine zincs, and impeller replacement labor... hope they are around the Chesapeake too!
 
Let me know if I should post this separately, I don't want to hijack the thread. I just built a closed loop flushing station for my 3116's. Intended on using Oxalic acid in the form of barkeeper's friend. Don't what the ratio should be however I think that I had it plenty strong. Seemed to have minimal results on the trans cooler by itself. I wanted to test the system so I isolated the cooler and ran it there for about 4 hrs. Let's here all the recommendations for different choices please. GO!
 
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