What water cooling system stop leak do you consider best? I have tried the one with little silver or copper shavings in clear liquid. It didn't work. Then I tried the Barrs stop leak. Comes in silver bottle but it makes the radiator fluid look very brown. Several older men sai hat using about a tablespoon of ground black pepper works.
Stop Leak is a sort of temporary measure that you use to get a little bit of time out of a radiator before it finally blows.
The Barr's seems to be just fine. It will work well enough to get you home.
If Barr's doesn't work, black pepper won't be any better. Where is it leaking from?
--scott
I have used black pepper with success as a temporary fix when way back in the bush, but if the good stuff won't stop the leak, pepper isn't any better.
Where is it leaking from? The stop leak products won't usually fix o-rings or hoses or gaskets or pumps....
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail >Leak seems to be in heater core. Windshield steams up when I turn on heater or defrost. In summer when i run ac or no air, the fluid level stays the same, no loss.
The repair shop says it is 7 hours labor to replace heater core. Most of it because they have to remove the whole dash to get to it. (1987 Lincoln Town Car.) So that is about $560 in labor plus the cost of core. On old car thats to expensive so im going the stop leak route.
If you don't want to fix it the right way, you can probably just connect your heater hoses together under the hood, completely bypassing the heater core itself. Understand that you'll have no heat, lest you rig up a 12V heater out of some nichrome toaster wire and ceramic insulators.
But I don't know how crazy you are.
A friend of mine once built a very small wood stove for his car.
The stop leak/bars leak/pepper/ tricks are temporary at best, and let me tell you, you DON'T want to be in the car when that heater core decides to explode.
Just sayin'. Maybe Mr. * can correct me here ;)
Ouch.
It could be a fitting leaking and sometimes the hose will leak right where it enters the firewall which can cause this.
It's bad news when the stop leak won't fix it.....
You 'can' just bypass the heater core by hooking the hoses together or plugging them, but then your defrosting will be 'really' slow and cold....
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail >
Stop leak won't do anything to fix a heater core leak because there isn't enough circulation through there to get the stuff in to plug it.
And it _is_ a total bear to get those things apart. Seven hours seems about right. You could do it in a lot less time with a saw if you didn't mind it looking crappy afterward (which you may not).
The alternative is just not to use the heater ever. Easy in Florida, hard in Maine.
--scott
My friend put Bahr's Leak in his Mazda 929 and saved himself a VERY expensive heater core replacement. It was good for the the next few years until the car died of other causes.
Don
I used Barr's in my Eagle to stop a heater core prob., similar to what JJ described above. Been fine for over two years now. Same for an older GM with a small crack in the core inlet, that lasted at least that long. Never had any negative prob.'s with the coolant system from [as far as now] using Barr's.
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