Radiator Care

I recently replaced the radiator in my Roadmaster and that got me thinking about radiator care. It’s the only portion of the car that uses liquid but isn’t filtered. I’ve done a fair amount of research into keeping the insides of my cooling system clean and shiny. It seems that there is only one product on the market that actually gives results and that’s RMI-25. Added into the cooling system, RMI-25 prevents scaling and ensures that any particulate matter in the cooling stays suspended without adhering to the core. After a lengthy Internet search in which I attempted to locate a Canadian supplier for RMI-25 I discovered, that not only was the distributor for my area located in my hometown, but the sales rep lived only a few blocks from my home. I gave him a call only to discover that the company that manufactures RMI-25 had gone out of business. While I’m seeing many resellers of RMI-25 on the Internet I wonder just how long the current supply will last.

The concept of removing scale from my radiator core and ensuring it stayed suspended in the coolant got me wondering why scale and other particulate matter needed to be in my cooling system at all. Back to the Internet!

After a few minutes I found that many LT1 owners are installing coolant system filters to allow them to regularly clean out any particulate matter and ensure that it doesn’t cause any damage to the cooling system. While there a lot of different types of coolant filters, I think that the Tefba brand filter is likely to be the easiest to manage over the long term.

This nifty little widget installs easily into the coolant hoses and can quickly and easily be opened up to remove the filter screens for cleaning on a regular basis.

While I’m not entirely nuts about the look of the filter after it’s installed, I think the benefits outweigh the cosmetic impact. I’m anxious, as always, to get one of these installed and running.

Now if I can just find a decent supply of RMI-25 or a suitable alternate, I’ll be all set.