Reconditioning Cast Iron Radiators

[abaker]

Everything takes such a long time when you do it yourself!

I am in the middle of rec-conditioning three cast iron radiators. Thus far I have had them sand blasted and primed, and am currently removing the existing bushes, painting and flushing.

A few questions...

1. I am using a Stilson wrench to remove the existing bushes. However due to the softness of cast iron the wrench simply seems to be marking the metal and not removing a few of them. What are the alternatives? Can you purchase spanners for 1 1/4" bushes (they have a 1 3/4 outer hex so I am guessing the spanner size would be 1 3/4")?

1. Since I have no spray facilities my only option is to paint them with a brush. If I wanted them sprayed, what sort of companies should I be looking for (car body shops?) Would I be able to give them an oil based paint or would I be subject to their own colours?

2. My plan for flushing was to fill the rads with hot water and a high concentration central heating cleaning fluid and pump the water around for a few hours with a pump. Sound suitable? Is there an alternative?

Really looking forward to the comments!

[1501]

I'm reluctant to advise on the other issues but if your budget runs to it get the rads powder coated. Most colours are available nowadays and powder coat does change colour with age anywhere near the way regular paint does. I.e. white rads stay white.

[Roger Mills]

Can you, with help, get the rads into a position where you can hold the bushes in a vice? If so, you've then got plenty of leverage, simply by rotating the rad.

[In my youth, I used to get bicycle 3-speed hubs apart in this way - by holding the big nut in a vice and rotating the wheel. It was a doddle, even though the nut was virtually impossible to undo with a spanner].

[Andrew Gabriel]

Not sure if it's the same process, but a company I worked for 20 years ago had loads of metal filing cabinets and other office furniture which didn't match, having come from lots of different offices over the years. They got a company in which electrostatically painted them over a weekend. They did it on the premises or possibly in their van outside (didn't see it happening), but certainly without taking them all off-site. Looked very good afterwards, considering they looked like a load of beaten up filing cabinets beforehand.

[Pete Verdon]

Sounds a bit OTT :-)

Mind you, this got me thinking. I suppose one could bolt a vise onto a long beam, and by clamping it onto a nut form a very long adjustable spanner. Vises are a bit big an unwieldy, so how about those clamps where you just buy the metalwork and bolt them into your own piece of timber? A long timber with both halves of the clamp near each other at one end might make a good super-AJ. Not sure what you'd need it to undo though.

Pete

[Appin]

The message

from abaker contains these words:

Yes. Your nearest industrial suppliers should have plenty of large spanners and suitably beefy spanners far beyond that size. But you're going to be paying £30 to £50 for one. Shove a piece o fsteel pipe over the handle for Extra leverage.

Of course a Stilson wrench will mark the nuts -- the jaws are quite deliberately serrated and they aren't parallel either.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Try a motor factor which does tools. Trucks etc use even larger nuts than that. 1 3/4" will be either 44 or 45mm.