Formula One Radiator Service Will Change Your Opinion About "Clean" (Serck Motorsport Tour)

your radiator turns into a water filter apparently there's a lot more going on with radiators and what's inside them than we ever thought hello good sir I have this radiator and it is dirty oh I'm Evan and we're certain Motorsport and that's what we can take care of cool if I got an information sheet we track everything we can um history any kind of engine issues more importantly your name your information so jot that down while he's doing that my name is Evan I'm the leak technician here at Circ Motorsport where did Circ come from it's British isn't it yep from the UK about 12 years ago started dabbling with the Formula One customers over there they were doing more damage to the to their coolers and they uh when they were cleaning them than they would when they were running on the cars so cert came up with this little process here that's not abrasive on any of the coolers so this is stage one of our our process just a simple oil draining that's Copper from main bearings and that should not be in your uh oil cooler we'll bring stuff in here and you don't know there's oil in it and it just gets everywhere yeah we've had a few messes up against the pigment um and we also nice paper towels in every room but our we we keep everything as clean as possible and it's kind of what we keep on our shoulders is to help keep the building clean and here we got Francisco cleaning an oil cooler hello guys over here we have your oil tank and one of your oil lines this is our rig that was designed in the UK pull the oil out of it removes the the heavy contaminants so far and then everything's filtered by a 10 Micron filters underneath right now what's happening is it's flushing in One Direction then it will after a certain amount of time it'll back flush you know sit there and just rush it back and forth every time fluid gets ran through it it is brand new fluid that that's not contaminated you see the kind of the tint and the oil that's um already in there but as far as the continuous goes metal dirt all that gets filtered underneath the bubble air so it really agitates all the dirt that's inside about an hour hour and a half this will run a cycle on there after this process that's what Francisco is doing um that's when we start cleaning it externally as well everything gets brought in here so that's only an oil oil rig this kind of starts the checklist if you will for the rest of it this radiator was just pressure tested you hook it up to helium drop it in there and uh the helium finds any small hole weld holes obviously damaged holes anything why helium over air as it go through a smaller hole Yeah it's the purest form there and so it can usually find the the small cracks or holes that maybe just compressed air can do you ever find helium holes in new radiators yes pretty frequently they are pressure tested from the factory but some stuff does get missed but yeah we've had plenty of customers probably weekly have brand new radiators that that uh have weld holes or this phone this bung doesn't get a complete weld around it's very popular and then usually down this is the tank there's usually something missed there but a lot of stuff we do here is to cross a lot of teas not a lot of eyes um that way you don't find stuff find issues at the track we try to find everything here that way you are getting a 100 ready to go right here oil cooler when we came here before you were talking about uh why distilled water is actually bad and I've never heard that before so some issues with distilled water um we can get it scientific as possible on it yeah it's trying to find whatever came to grab onto or the distilled water loses all its properties and so then it starts trying to grab onto the aluminum and your tubes inside and that's when it starts creating the rust discoloration negative things to start trailing that uh your tubes get clogged up so the best thing we we've always used and tell our customers Is deionized water and what that the ionized water is electronically uh charged to strip its properties to where it doesn't it can all the molecules stay together to where it's not trying to reach out and grab onto the aluminum and where it all it does is flow cool exactly what it's supposed to where did that myth come from because it's like you know oh don't use the hose water make sure it's distilled and like didn't you say hose water could actually be better than distilled water it can be depending on how there's a lot of hard water that's the town we're in has very hard and abrasive water so we don't recommend that um but best thing is just deionized um and that way it's it's not not harmful to anything at all um other than trying to locate where it's at but they make deionized machines and then our local Supply SRI um keeps it keeps it in barrels for us you go out of our way to find distilled water to put in because you think it's necessary it's like actually is that like a myth that was perpetuated by the radiator manufacturers keep it keep your keep your radiators dirty instead of uh instead of cleaning it or damaging it just buy a new one um maybe that maybe that could be variable where it came from next year this is our our uh we said we take a lot of information down throughout our process this is our flow rate um we're able to see flow rates throughout the radiators life and what that does for us is that we we were able to show you hey this thing is still collected is brand new um or hey there's an issue internally there could be whether it's clogged or damaged or even the new stuff it could be a manufacturer defect that we can find here in-house versus out on the track this one's mine is there anything wrong with it not so far 2004 this thing's 19 years old I noticed about all this stuff is everything here is fabricated out of stainless steel like even the framework it doesn't have to be but it is because it's fancy I can't see everything about us is cleanliness and we have a cleaning with spec so everything's welded kind of a food standard so if you look at it I don't know we didn't compliment a lot about like the the milk industry like all the rigs for milk are all out of the same you know similar tubing and everything like I said stainless and welded that's just to prevent the least amount of contamination possible we're flowing gallons per minute that's what the 50 50 is right there and then we're taking a pressure data of the pressure of what you have two pressure lines your Inlet and your outlet and this is posted off the difference and that's how we're able to tell the pressure's too high generally the tubes are damaged or they're closed in if the pressure is too low the the tubes have expanded so if it's too low does the water not spend enough time in the radiator to actually cool off correct it's just a free flow right through it's pulling too much it's not the the radiator is not efficient or open it can happen in the oil coolers as well how do you know what that sweet spot is where it's enough but not too much and not too slow either um we've done enough of these to where we had we just we took an average of each kind of cooler that we that we see and we were able to kind of find that um you know our our Target upper limit lower limit and we just kind of have an equation of what they should be and what we've seen from multiple radiators but how's this one is it messed up no this one's actually dead on um we've had a few of these old ones and this is where you have like an internal oil cooler more of a heat exchanger we've had quite a few of these um other cars a lot of dirt stuff dirt dirt late models have ran a few of these so it's actually dead on took from what it's been so we're Formula One teams doing this stuff well before uh anybody in North America was oh yes by far um this is kind of a normal thing to where um I think we feel the good 75 of the F1 cars um because there's no other company like us there may be some you know imitations of it but usually it's all ultrasonic and we do not have an ultrasonic machine here we don't use it just for a fact of what it does to the radiator what does it do um it actually destroys it um if you look on how to how to know if you're um or your ultrasonic machine is still clean or cleaning um what they do is they throw a timing aluminum foil in the water or in the solution and if it destroys the aluminum aluminum foil then you're good to go in your your rigs good yeah so aluminum foil this is her I understand aluminum radiators it's almost just you know basically some thick aluminum foil in there yeah and that's what it is very abrasive yeah it does a great job cleaning off Rubber and dirt and pulling that out but you're also stripping the aluminum and destroying that as well so what did you do before this um so I'd speed uh seven years at roushates engines um whenever I got out of college and then I got sent over to Stuart Haas whenever they made the transition from Holt from Chevrolet to Ford and I took uh took care of the engines for the 10 and 41 cars for another six years and then I had some beautiful babies my wife had some beautiful babies and figured it was time to uh you never know these days yeah I know I know these things exactly what it takes but all right so that's finished up next uh we flush that the the solution out inside there and then it'll get ready to go on our stage two rig this is a water-based three that um has one micron filters underneath and again cleaning everything out um very similar to the other stage one rig except this is again like I said a water-based were these made in England and then sent over here um a lot of it was pretty much everything on the rig side um how to connect the radiators to This was um you know kind of designed here just because we have a great connection with brown and Miller Racing solutions that have been a great partner and with designing and getting everything made to where we can connect to generally any kind of cooler and when you were doing engines over there and had no knowledge of this technology how was how were your radiators cleaned um ultrasonic cleaned and just flushed out which is kind of amazing like a parts washer hose isn't going to clean out as as much as the any kind of block um even the cup engines are come from Top Notch facilities where every block is cleaned um to to their own spec but they still have containments in there to where your radiator turns into a water filter so after so long um after One race your radiator goes from 100 efficiency down to I don't know 80 because there's there's so much crap packed into your your tubes um and then even the fins to where if you're not cleaned properly after each race you're showing up to the next race you know with with less efficiency than what it should be what did you think whenever you were first exposed to this um from your old tribal knowledge it was kind of strange um because like I said it's a whole new whole new thing over here to where it's like you said tribal knowledge to where everybody's we've all seen it this way this is how we've done it um and then this whole new building whole new everything shows up saying that you've been doing it wrong for x amount of years so it is kind of a lot to take in um but I'm a whole believer in it especially seeing um kind of what it's doing for just our shark track customers who have always had heating issues being a shorter tracks um you know smaller Grill openings to where this has been a huge deal for them and then all sort track racing um and then now it's expanded up to the truck guys and XFinity and cup to where they can apply more tape to the nose of the grill more downforce and still have decent temperatures where they're not overheating to where they can apply more tape to the nose of their Grill more down for us and still have decent temperatures where they're not overheating what are those Wiggins clamps originate from for people who don't know most airplanes and you know spacecrafts all use it if they have connection lines they have these and then fun fact for you this is actually a ground strap kind of help with um electricity in the air I guess it helps Crown whatever line you're using to reduce the chances of the fire that's cool really so it grounds to each side of the line to where this may not be the best description but each side of this if it's on a normal hose um that's what's going to get its grounding too and they're all built that way they're all built to every single one of them um and then an art race trick because racing is such so defined about weight these are usually clipped off of each one so you're saying what ounces are pounds and uh pounds how much dirty or are like the dirt car radiators thing like only thing that keeps the dirt radiators from not being destroyed so they pull air from underneath the nose so actually they're not that bad other than just like residual dirt and air getting you know caught on um but they don't really see any direct rubber or air from the car in front of them um like a cup car would or extending her asphalt with the with the air Inlet being directly on the nose so they're actually not that bad just because for that sake that the air that they get from or underneath they're not bad except you know we have a few customers that decide to use well water and uh so they get more stressed internally in the next turn so this is our final rig this is going to be our kind of final stage of flowing these things this is down to a 0.45 micron filter at the end of this it's gonna uh push all the water out all the water that's in these coolers will come out of the side these are our test lines to add into this we don't we don't just say hey good luck your radiator's clean your pool is clean good luck um we're trying to stress how clean we can get these and how clean they are and they're they're back to brand new um or better than brand new any dirt that's left in there gets collected onto a little filter and then taking over to this microscope to where it'll count every single particle so this is a brand new one this is what we deliver to every customer this is a particle count so brand new straight from the factory is brought over and does it had a particle count of 219 000 particles and then when we're done with it we're down to 284. that's insane so it's 219 000 particles on this little disc is that what you're counting yeah when it's new but when it's new yep so these are all um kind of labeled what we have so that that's a brand new IndyCar cooler pre-analysis so as soon as we get it it's taken out of the box um straight from their Factory um and then we throw it on this rig do a pre-analysis to where there's no only thing that floats flows out of it is directly out of the cooler this is a clean um radiator it still has a lot of uh you know scale built up inside so tubes are pretty closed on that one and it was no no near to satisfactory how long is the dirty burp test water exposed to those little filter discs to collect that matter is it like the same time duration every time yes we do uh two minutes at the end of this so this is just like a CNC machine where it's programmed to um you know do different things at certain times step one step two step three I think there's a 16 steps to this one step 14 is when it starts flowing out flows for two minutes after two minutes is up it goes through a tempting or draining process to where it pretty much is just pumping air through it to try to get all the all the water that's inside we get strained out so if the test isn't satisfactory do you run it through everything again you start back all over um usually but that's pretty and again kind of goes back to that first room where we wrote down the information we get all our information down right on that paper to where hey this thing's X old or it's got one race on it stuff like that to where we can kind of we know like I said we can change all this as far as how long or how frequent um it changes its steps to where um that rarely happens so where we kind of see all right hey this is going to need extra love on stage two or you know brand new ones we can kind of you know not as much contamination what's the proprietariness of this is that the solution that you're pumping through it um is that the secret sauce or is it how it's being pumped through it yep how to be made that's why we have it all all covered up on it um internally there um like the solutions we use like I said nothing everything's not abrasive so that's a lot of it um obviously we're pretty uh obvious what power connecting the hose is there that's no big deal um now there are some proprietary stuff on what gets brought in here um whether it's you know there are some advantages in the cooling system and so a lot of that you know these are all these a lot of stuff that you've seen today is all spec grade year to where it's off the shelf now we do get sent some stuff that is where it's it's for our eyes only if you will current NASCAR IndyCar teams that don't want people seeing their stuff can't say well if you found like 2 000 particles on that one that was brand new how long will it take until you start seeing overheating from that um would it be like immediately or would it be like one or two races in or well a lot of that with that many particles in there if you're going to start hurting the fish and shape of everything um your coat your oil filter is going to get you know clogged rather quickly you know or it's getting into your bearings and we do not live by the standard of all it's good enough How We Roll so like what is the goal number of like what it should be um so we do this is this is actually this chart is based off Mercedes um so I feel like a Mercedes fishing with that then that's pretty close to what we can see like Mercedes Passenger cars or Mercedes race team uh race team so how often should you like have it cleaned or do you wait until you're having an issue you never want to wait until until it's too late um we usually see our stuff after every race so if you're like a drag racer you've got like the same kind of aspect as yeah I'm thinking about like for streetcar drag guys who have really really tight they never do that they have some people you know Big Turbo systems they don't have a lot of room for a radiator so they have to have maybe a smaller one than they want and driving around on when it's 95 every day we do intercoolers as well let's see if it's a turbo car that doesn't have an air filter how bad is that inner floor going to look if somebody well we'll clean it if somebody me where to do that how bad is my air cooler look there might be parts of a rubber belt in there some aluminum uh and your fins off your turbo maybe the turbo was fine it ate the belt the intercooler stopped it uh fixing some fence from decor you know when to get a uh even temperature sometimes they all plugged up and it restricts the air so all the temp all the temperature and this line goes up between this Gap so that's why we make sure the fans are straight up so that way it has an even temperature passing through the core you go through and pick out every single one of those yeah that's the goal is that your favorite part of the job picking fins uh it's it's just the last step it's in order to have a good prep we will have to do it but yeah that's helps with the thermodynamics of the cooler yeah I bet that'd be a really good job for one of those girls that likes to pop pimples like that'd be like yeah there's Therapeutics sometimes yeah what do you do the edges there Francisco in here we make sure that it's clean and Polished polish everything majority of it it's kind of our own touch nice nice and shiny so if your average four track guy drag guy whatever just wants to bring the radiator here and get it clean how much does that usually cost um for for just a radiator on its own get it in and out…