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Cleaning Tygon?

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torin3

Member
Joined
Dec 25, 2004
Well the when I added the new heater core to my system, I think I managed to let in something that decided it could live in my water. The water has been getting darker in the reservoir, and I'm getting a slight impression of cloudiness. It is currently distilled water and water wetter, but I'm planning on switching to zerex.

But getting around to my question. I've searched the forum, but I didn't find any real consensus on how to clean that pink stain off the inside of my Tygon tubing. So is there an effective way of doing this, or will I just have to deal with it until I feel like replacing the tubing?

I'm also going to switch from the reservoir to a t-fill line. The current res is starting to show some worrying cracks around the corners, and I'd rather not deal with a failure there.

I don't want to use alcohol in the loop as I understand that can have an adverse effect on the lucite top of my Danger Den Maze4-1 block. I will be switching over to the brass top to the block when I move over to an A64 system.
 
dicecca112 said:
yes that is true, I would try to run vinegar in the loop and see if that does anything.

Any suggestions on concentration. 25%, 5%?
 
I don't have tygon tubing, but have some serious build up, I have everything dismatled to clean it. Will the vinegar kill any remaining algie before re-assemabling or is there something else for a rinse? And what is good addative that wont corrode copper but kill bacteria the vinegar again?
 
sunrunner20 said:
Personally I would run almost pure, I see no reson not to unless the pumps can't take it.

Well it is a ViaAqua1300, so it isn't any great pump. But I'm not aware of any reason it couldn't take it. Sounds like a plan.
 
I used WW once and it stained into the walls of the Tygon, beyond where a surface cleaning agent could reach. Nothing I tried helped. This taught me an expensive lesson about throwing just anything into my loop. ;)
 
Perseus said:
I used WW once and it stained into the walls of the Tygon, beyond where a surface cleaning agent could reach. Nothing I tried helped. This taught me an expensive lesson about throwing just anything into my loop. ;)

Oh, I agree, but this was what I found from about a year and a half ago when I was first setting up my w/c setup, and that looked like the addtive of choice. However, I hadn't found this froum at that point.
 
torin3 said:
Oh, I agree, but this was what I found from about a year and a half ago when I was first setting up my w/c setup, and that looked like the addtive of choice. However, I hadn't found this froum at that point.

Same here. Bases on what I was reading at the time, I thought WW was the ONLY additive.
 
sunrunner20 said:
Personally I would run almost pure, I see no reson not to unless the pumps can't take it.

Well, I did it last weekend. The vinegar seemed to take a little bit of it off, but not much. Ran it for about 3-4 hours before I dumped it and cleaned out the loop.

Flushed it a few times and the loaded it up with Zerex and distilled water. It seems to be running about 2°F cooler on average.

Oh well, it was probably past due time to clean it anyway.
 
what zerex are you running? the antifreeze stuff (colored) or the pump and corrosion adative (clear)?

the clear stuff made my tygon **** colored and cloudy.
 
zip22 said:
what zerex are you running? the antifreeze stuff (colored) or the pump and corrosion adative (clear)?

the clear stuff made my tygon **** colored and cloudy.

Antifreeze stuff. Dark purple in the bottle, and light purple (almost pink) at about 10% concentration.

However I noticed that the tubing that was clouded/stained from the water wetter seemed to be worse at areas that had UV light shining on it.
 
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