Hello all,I finally put a thermostat in the used M I got last spring. (Used an autozone #800-180-thanks Bob M!). Tractor now warms up nice, coolant heats up and pressure actually builds (maybe for the first time in a long time). A few weeks ago I drained the rusty coolant, and flushed the system (used some gunk flush additive, and lots of clean water). The drain tube on the radiator (a 6 inch nipple) was packed solid, I had to take it off and hammer through the packed goo. Well, now the radiator leaks. Probably due to finally getting warm enough to build pressure more than the flush, but that probably helped to. I'm thinking I ought to figure out how to take it off, and run it into a radiator shop in town, but I'm guessing the steering shaft needs to come off first, and it looks like that's been on there for 60 years. When I used to work in the car-parts place, I'd laugh at the folks buying the "bars leaks" and other radiator sealant products. I figured that stuff can't be good for the rest of your cooling system. But now I'm wondering. What would be the down side of putting something like that in? Would it just last till it got really cold and I'd have to fix the thing in the middle of winter, or has anybody had any luck with such additives? If so, which brands? (Guessing the answer to the above is "fix it right") Is there a recommended shop manual for this? I see one in the farm&fleet that looks like it covers 20 different IH tractors (and it's none too thick anyway). I think those were 20 or so bucks). Is there a better reference? I see that I need to remove the steering shaft, but can't really see how the radiator is attached to the tractor. On the plus side, the tractor has lots more power than it did when the temp was only getting to 100 F. Thanks again for the T-stat advice. Bob
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