Cast iron raditor assembly wrenches

Dave Stroman

I do a lot of work with cast iron radaitors. I am so tired of having to scrap them when they have only 1 of 2 bad sections, but I have never been able to take them apart. My friend, Bob Vesa, here in Denver showed me a set of radiator wrenches that he and his dad used to use to disassemble and replace bad sections in radiators. So cool! So I am on a mission to either find some wrenches to buy or have some made locally.

So I am posting here to show some photos of the wrenches and to see if anyone knows of any that I might be able to purchase.

Dave Stroman

bob young

SORRY FOR THE CAPS , DAVE.

MAYBE YOU CAN TAKE THOSE TO A LOCAL WELDING SHOP OR MACHINE SHOP & THEY CAN DUPLICATE THEM. IN THE EIGHTIES I HAD A WELDER MAKE UP SOME special CAULKING IRONS FOR ME & IT WAS NOT THAT DIFFICULT. [ i never look at screen while typing & i ain't re-doing it ! ] lol

tim smith

Dave, will he loan them to you to see if you can actually get

one apart. I will be very intellested if you are able to. I did locate a company in England who does it all the time. Pretty cool. I talked to company president about it and I wanted to pick his brain on how they get the old ones apart. Tim

Radiator Ranger

Wrenches

Wow, those look like useful wrenches!

I agree about the machine shop solution - the cost may be high for a one time project but the wrenches look simple enough (I'm prone towards optimism).


Gwen

Unknown

Not absolutely sure Dave,

but I think Burnham sells similar wrenches for this, but I can`t find the exact link.

Dave

clammy

roca /baxi

dave i recently have seen some similar to that at a local supply house which is selling baxi luna line of cast aliumium rads which used left right threaded nipples you would have to check the sizes to see if they are usefull.if not i would think that any wrought iron railing manafuctacting company could easily make them for you and then just hve them heat treat them to strenthen them up .cool tools thanks for the post and pics peace and good luck clammy

Dave Stroman

The story Bob told me about his experience with these tools is that he and his dad would rig up some sort of a ramp so they could park their truck on top of the radiator as it laid on the ground. Then they would work the tool into the radiator until they engaged the proper nipple. Then one of them would get on the wrench the fit the square end of the tool and the other would put a 4' pipe wrench on the shaft with a long cheater. He claims that they were able to repair all the radiators in a big mansion here in Denver where all of them froze.

Dave Stroman

tim smith

Dave, I too have been on a mission to figure a good way to

diassemble and reassemble old ornate cast irons. I have tried using impact wrenches to get plugs/nipples at to no avail. As I said in other post, there is a company in England who has figured it out, I talked to them and yes it is a lot of sweat to take apart these units. I may try in near future to have a old one dipped in hot acid bath to see if first it will clean up and 2nd maybe loosen nipples/plugs to allow to get apart. I would just dig making this happen. So many old rads out there that we all could make good use of. A process to do this would be great. Tim

Nelson_6

Dave- I don't have much experience with radiator tools but have made custom tools for hydraulic applications. We first made them out of wood to the size and shape we wanted and then took them to a machine shop where they cut them out of steel plate using a plasma cutter. Very accurate!

The wood we used was Baltic Birch plywood of the same thickness of the steel plate we wanted the tool cut from. Super glue and accelerator was used to hold any parts together. (You put on a drop or two of super glue and then spray on the Accelerator and it instantly hardens the glue) The plywood/glue /accelerator are available in any hobby shop that sells model airplanes. If you need a thicker piece of Baltic Birch plywood, go to cabinet shop and ask for some scrap. They use it for drawer`bottoms. (Baltic Birch plywood has multiple layers, is high quality, and forms well)

We often had our tool heads welded to a piece of steel hex bar so we could use an large air impact wrench (or a socket /ratchet) on the tool. I imagine something similar would work well on radiators.

Here is a link to Burnham's I&O manual for their radiators which might be of interest to you.

http://www.burnham.com/PDF/IO/Classic Radiator.pdf

- Rod