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")?

2. 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?

3. 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!

On Feb 11, 1:52*pm, abaker wrote:

2. 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?

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.

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
abaker wrote:


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")?


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].
--
Cheers,
Roger
______
Email address maintained for newsgroup use only, and not regularly
monitored.. Messages sent to it may not be read for several weeks.
PLEASE REPLY TO NEWSGROUP!

In article ,
1501 writes:
On Feb 11, 1:52*pm, abaker wrote:

2. 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?

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.

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.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Roger Mills wrote:

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.

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

The message

from abaker contains these words:


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")?

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.

In article
,
abaker wrote:
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")?

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

--
*Would a fly without wings be called a walk?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.