Hot Hot Hot

Like I said before I'm still learning diesel engines but if ur running a cat. On the passenger side you can disconnect the rubber boots and downtube coming off the radiator. You should be able able to look right down inside and see if it's all clogged up or any other issues. Someone with more knowledge hopefully will give their input but I know you can check fairly easy

 

Run that baby at 1700 you need the fan moving a lot of air. It also keeps the pyro temps lower. I run a 550 CAT and that is what I have to do. Water never gets above 200 and pyro never gets above 1000. Lower rpm and they both climb.

 

The only way to see if cac is bad is to pressurize it. To see if it is plugged up just look at it from the front with a light shining from the back. Dont clean with a water hose use air but be careful with the air pressure so you don't damage fins.

 

Why shouldn't you use water to clean ?

 

I believe the water has a tendency to clump the debris and makes it harder to get out.
I was also told to use air and to blow from the motor side out. I have an attachment on my blow gun (little aluminum tube) that fits between my fins to clean radiator it has a variable pressure trigger.
Of course the best way is to take it to a shop and have it put in a tank to clean, if it is really clogged up.

 

all the water will do is turn it to mud if it is real bad. then when it dries it will be like trying to knock concrete of with a hammer. air put the dirt in, air will take it out.

 

Back when the family had trucks we kept up on keeping the rads clean. Washed them out every weekend. Used to kick on the engine fan and rev the truck up to 1500 while spraying every inch of the rad with the hot water pressure washer. As long as you hit the rads straight on from a foot away you wouldn't hurt the fins. You could actually hear the engine start to pull down under load from the water being pulled through. Blowing it out from the back is ideal though but with all the shrouding and crap on these newer trucks its not always practical unfortunately.

Edit: You need to keep up on it from day 1 for this method to work best. Use compressed air if you haven't cleaned it in a while.

 

It turns the dust into concrete and coats the fins and tubes even worse.

I chased this heating on a hill problem for quite a while on an '05 BXS. The first thing I tried was rinsing the radiator out on the fuel island at the truck stop. That made it much worse. Instead of heating on a good hill, now it was heating up on even the slightest incline.

Next, I tried leaving the fan on 24/7... didn't help.

Changed the thermostats out for 180's... didn't help.

New fan clutch... didn't help.

Heard someone say the water pump impeller was probably spinning on the shaft. Changed out the water pump beside a motel in Las Cruces, NM when it was about 120 degrees outside... didn't help and definitely not an experience I want to relive.

Finally listened to a crotchety geezer who told me to remove the crap from in front of the radiator and blow it out with an air hose... it worked.

An amazing amount of dirt came out. It looked like someone dumped a frontend loader full of dirt under the hood. (it was easier to blow it inwards than to remove the fan hub, shroud, etc)

So... if you hosed the radiator out, or even pressure washed it and think you got it, try running up an down each and every row with a blow gun (with a fine, non-OSHA tip). I guarantee there's still dirt in there.