Repairing a radiator

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As some of you may have seen in my project log I managed to puncture my radiator by using the wrong screws to secure the fans :(

I would like to have a go at repairing the radiator and would be interested in anyone's advice/opinions...

First off I am going to find all the holes by immersing the rad in water with the fill holes all bunged up. Once I've done that there are a number of options for plugging the leaks...

From the car industry there's:

1. Evostik Liquid Metal (available from H**fords)
2. Plastic Padding Leak Fix (also available from H**fords)
3. Soldering (although I am not the world's best solderer, nor do I have a great soldering iron.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance
 
If the hole is in the bottom of a thraded hole, you could actually plug the hole by using threadlocker and a screw. It would be a bit of a bodge fix, but I doubt that soldering would work due to the coatings on the rad.

I don't know if either of these photos help

Broken%20radiator%20003.jpg


Broken%20radiator%20016.jpg


The thread appears to cut into the edge of one of the radiator pipes.

I have now bent the metal case out of the way so I could take a better photos tonight.
 
I've never actually used either liquid metal nor leak fix but I'm leaning towards giving them a try. Even though I used 6 of the wrong length screws it appears that I got lucky with 5 of them.

I immersed the radiator in water and blew air into it and only got bubbles from the one hole, so I think it's fixable.

I confess that I am a little concerned that it'll happen again. I was leak testing the whole system and checked the joints but didn't notice the pool of water on the floor.... (My rad is behind the desk rather than in the computer case - see my project for details).
 
I did exactly the same thing, in the same place and tried to fix it using my soldering iron however the solder didn't seem to take if that makes any sense. Try the liquid metel.

Thanks for the info. I think the problem with soldering is that you need to get the metal on the rad hot enough for it to take. Plus the hole I have is, er, not small. Consequentially I'm on my way to H**fords on the way home from work...
 
My honest opinion is to get a new rad, I would NOT risk it leaking in the future, especially if the rad is mount above my motherboard/RAM/CPU/GPU/PSU.

And that's exactly what I did when I first punctured this rad. However the punctured one is just sitting there doing nothing with one hole in it, so I figured I'd try to fix it.

The good news is that I will not be putting it anywhere near the computer - and that's supposing I fix it to my satisfaction. It's going to be sitting behind the desk. So the worst that'll happen is there'll be a pool of water on the floor that could ultminately leak through to the floor below to the kitchen. OK so it wouldn't score me many points with the Mrs, but shouldn't kill the computer (unless of course it overheats...).
 
Definitely worth it if you have access to a soldering iron, less so if you have to start from scratch buying stuff I guess but even so, they're not cheap things (although you've not said what rad it is.. I guess it could be a cheapy)

Thanks for the advice. The radiator is an EK CoolStream 420 and costs around £70. To be fair I managed to claim the money back so I'm not out of pocket, but I still managed to hang onto the (now spare) rad.
 
And here it is after the first coat of Leak-Fix.

Picture43.bmp


I goes off really quick and it's pretty stinky, but after a few more coats it should be good. Then I'll be able to find out if it worked and if there are any other leaks....
 
After letting it dry and scraping off the excess:

Picture48.bmp


Second coat:

Picture51.bmp


Gonna give this a quick leak test and then a more thorough one @ my father-in-laws as he's got a compressor to give it a thorough pressure test :)
 
I tested the rad with my father-in-law's compressor up to 2 bar which equates to 20 m of head pressure - far more than the 4m my pump can produce. I am therefore fairly consider that the leak has been fixed.

Thanks for all the advice.
 
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