How much to reseal some cylinders?

[fast_st]

Yes, the water in the oil needs to be addressed as best you can, but any repairer knows that you will never make that oil look like pure oil in the system, unless every cylinder, hose, valve, is dismantled & flushed - something that will never happen.

A thread a long while back, had water contamination due to a defective vent cap, drained out the oil and put it in steel pails, heat it up over a big burner and let the moisture steam off until it looked clear. Pour it back in and cycle again, did that a few times while working on other projects. Got eyeball of disapproval from a few folks I fixed the vent cap and well its still going.

70 case 580ck and my cyls were painted shut at the joint before disassembly and greased like hell before reassembly.

 

[aighead]

Can you boil water out even if it appears to be very much in solution? I don't know if I would try that or not but it's an interesting idea.

 

[fast_st]

Can you boil water out even if it appears to be very much in solution? I don't know if I would try that or not but it's an interesting idea.

Seemed like a good idea, kinda worked but there were some concerns, locally overheating the fluid causing oxidation damage, boilover could be a big firey issue and something about part of the oil being hygroscopic so no matter what it'd be almost impossible to dry completely.

 

[Welder Dave]

Much better to just replace the fluid at this point.

 

[Willie B]

Roger is cheap! He is proud of how cheap he is. He makes it a point to call attention to his cheapness.
He owns the first Farmall M tractor sold here. It's in my memory it was the large by Danby standards farm's biggest tractor. It lived indoors when not being piloted, & is rust free. There is no paint or rust on the nose cone, worn off by 80 years of nosing through corn stalks cutting them down.
These days I own a 1940 Farmall M & Seth has a 1941.
Seth called Roger to ask his opinion what the best gear oil would be. "God, I don't know, I've never even checked it."

One night late, Roger must've been worried, he called me; his 1948 Farmall Cub had a ruined gear. He'd got a used gear & replaced the damaged one. Now he faced the problem how to get the bits of metal out of the oil before he put it back in.

I didn't have to think. It takes less than three quarts, put new oil in it. That you removed was 60 years old!

 

[OzDozer]

Boiling oil to remove water is a poor mans fix, as compared to replacing the oil with new oil.

Oil contains numerous additives, many of them relatively unstable chemical compounds that are designed to combat, interact with, and capture contaminants in the oil - such as water.
The additives are designed to hold the water in an emulsion and prevent the water from contacting bare steel components, and thus creating immediate corrosion.
There are up to 7 major additives in oil -

• Anti-oxidants. Oxidation is the general attack of the weakest components of the base oil by oxygen in the air
• Rust and Corrosion Inhibitors
• Viscosity Index Improvers
• Anti-wear (AW) Agents
• Extreme Pressure (EP) Additives
• Detergents
• Dispersants
• Anti-foaming Agents

Heating the oil assists in destroying the additives, as at any temperature above 125°C (257°F), the relatively (chemically) unstable additives start to break down, losing their full lubricating and protection abilities. The oils basic lubrication abilities are greatly aided by the additives.

Additives can reach up to 30% of the volume of the oil, so we aren't talking small quantities here.

So, in heating the oil, you may drive off a quantity of water, but you've also degraded the additives via heat breakdown, so the remaining oil now has a lower corrosion protection and lubrication ability.

Of course, if you can add a moderate amount of new oil to the system at the same time as you heated the old oil, you're adding a certain level of new additives, which will assist in surface protection and improved lubrication.

 

[aighead]

Interesting stuff, thanks guys!

 

[fast_st]

Boiling oil to remove water is a poor mans fix, as compared to replacing the oil with new oil.

Heating the oil assists in destroying the additives, as at any temperature above 125°C (257°F), the relatively (chemically) unstable additives start to break down, losing their full lubricating and protection abilities. The oils basic lubrication abilities are greatly aided by the additives.

So, fire bad

 

[kshansen]

Well if heat is bad, how about freezing and straining the ice out?

 

[fast_st]

Well if heat is bad, how about freezing and straining the ice out?

dry ice bath and filter it through a gym sock? Nige will bury our bodies deep.

 

[Nige]

dry ice bath and filter it through a gym sock? Nige will bury our bodies deep.

I've ordered the popcorn...........

 

[Delmer]

Cold oil doesn't filter very well. Heating oil to dry it doesn't have to be so you can keep using the oil. You dry the oil so you can recirculate it and dry it again until the whole system is dry then change it, as an alternative to step by step flushing with clean oil, or multiple oil changes. Boiling works, but it will foam up as it boils. Mildly heating the oil and bubbling air through it will dry oil more slowly, but is easier to do in place. Headspace dehumidification will dry oil way more slowly. Then there's centrifuges, and vacuum dehydration, that could be doable for the right person, or water absorbing filters that are expensive for the quantity of water removed.

 

[OzDozer]

Actually, one of the best way to filter contaminated oil - including water contamination - is using the old toilet roll bypass filter setups.

I've got an old Frantz toilet roll bypass filter setup that is so old, it has the cast alloy filter housings. They're great at keeping oil clean, the toilet rolls just soak up water.

I didn't realise until I just searched that Frantz is still in business. They kind of disappeared off the market down here many years ago.

 

[63 caveman]

This has turned into a mess!

I can't say for sure but......

I could have drove from here (western PA) to Dayton, OH in my pick-up with a hand full of tools and took care of this job in a day. Sorry for all your troubles.

 

[joe--h]

Been 3 weeks with no updates, are the cylinders back yet? Is it running or has this turned more to sheet than it was sounding when he wasn't calling you back?

Joe H

 

[aighead]

63, it could have made you a decent chunk of money.

Sorry for the lack of update. The cylinders are back, but the job wiped out my wallet. He said he'd help flush hydraulics to get water out and put new oil in before reinstalling the cylinders, but I haven't heard from him after attempting to contact him a few times. I'll try to reach him again later today, after the holiday weekend, but I'm not holding my breath and it's getting to the point where I really would like to have my machine back in working order. Next is finding the money to buy all that oil and the filters and junk...

 

[aighead]

I heard back yesterday. Says he's deep in some stuff and couldn't talk at the time, but at least returning my contact. My next conversation with him will be clearly spelling out my timeline or moving on. I understand I may be a very small fish but as a note for any of you that have customers; clear communication can work wonders. Even if it's just a "Hey, I haven't forgotten about you, but I'm working on these other jobs."

 

[Willie B]

I am not in the business of resealing cylinders. As an electrician, I have some circumstances similar.
I receive almost no requests after Christmas. In these 4 months I only get calls for generators. Homeowners start thinking about inconvenience of power outages after a tree falls on a power line & it takes the linemen 3 hours to restore power. Otherwise NO one wants electrical work done in winter. People are in hibernation until April. From April first until Christmas, it ramps up in volume & urgency. Since Covid began, a mass exodus from cities has overwhelmed nearly all tradesmen. In my case newcomers begin their work with solar installation. From here on electricity is free. They choose to install a bunch of new loads, most commonly, heat pumps. Heat pump space heating, water heating, clothes dryers lead. Plug in cars are growing in popularity. No older house has sufficient service equipment to power all this new load.
There are several categories of work for us. Construction requires us to coordinate with other tradesmen Carpenters build the buildings we wire. We must wire when they are ready. Emergencies must be dealt with. Others choose an arbitrary deadline work MUST be completed by. While a job may be in the future, we don't know exactly when.

Can't be in two places at once, especially true of a one or two man operation. There are times an elective project gets on a back burner. I can't afford to have my regular customers neglected while I take care of a small job that could wait.

 

[Welder Dave]

After this long the shop needs to make YOUR job a priority.

 

[OzDozer]

Always remember the old adage, "the squeaky wheel gets oiled first". Keep calling, keep pestering, make yourself a real nuisance, and you may find your job has suddenly become a priority.

Some people just take on too much work, and they need constant badgering to keep focused on the jobs they started, and then didn't finish.

I've got a cylinder head guy like that, right now. The first cylinder head repairers simply ripped me off and weren't going to repair anything, just replace every single item - so I took the job off them and gave it to a smaller operator, recommended by my workshop neighbour.

But this smaller cylinder head guy has a huge backload in his shop, and he's always running off and doing jobs elsewhere.
He's had my head for over 3 weeks and still done nothing to it - so very soon, I'm going to become that "squeaky wheel".