I seriously doubt this will help anyone, but I thought I'd toss it up anyway, and I needed an excuse to test the new battery charger for my camera. As you guys know, Daz informed us about a possible leak issue with TFC radiators. Turns out I was one of the affected customers. I had been seeing my water level drop off slowly over the past few months, but since I'm a noob I wasn't worried, figuring maybe some coolant loss was normal. Duh, how wrong I was! After inspecting the rad closely, the leak was obvious, but thankfully very small.
Clue #1: white stains on top of my new 3TB HDD.
Clue #2: coolant drop (upper left corner).
So I notified Daz, who responded quickly (as usual), and got the replacement end tanks in very short order. But I was dreading having to drain my loop, since it's pretty complex. So I decided to try getting the rad out without draining the entire loop. As it turns out, it was much easier than I expected, mainly thanks to the 2 sets of QDCs I use to connect my loop to the rads in my pedestal.
This rad is important, as it helps to cover up some of this awful mess. Rad removed and holes plugged:
Rad prepped for surgery, with the new end tanks:
A decent amount of screws need to be removed:
The screws screw into these hex-headed screw receptacle thingies, which I now hate:
Off comes its leaking head. You can see the cause of the leak on the bottom row of chambers, last one on the right is cracked:
A glimpse of the guts:
Broken piece on top, replacement piece on bottom:
10 screws later, new top is on and we're leak testing:
Initial leak test (around 1.5 hours) was good, so put her all back together (damn this is a nice looking rad):
Put it back into it's rats nest:
HDD cage re-installed:
Initial flow test looks sub-par compared to normal, but that always start off slow when you're paritally refilling a loop:
After a little while, the flow rises:
It lives:
Water temps look normal (ie damn good):
CPU temp looks good (gotta love Indigo Xtreme TIM, it really cuts down on the variance between cores):
GPU temps look good:
All in all a very easy fix, even for the mentally challenged (ie me). I should mention that I only had leakage on ONE side of the rad, but Daz sent me replacement end tanks for BOTH ends. I only replaced the leaking one (if it ain't broke...)! Thanks to Daz for informing us about the fix, and the quick replacement parts!
Clue #1: white stains on top of my new 3TB HDD.
Clue #2: coolant drop (upper left corner).
So I notified Daz, who responded quickly (as usual), and got the replacement end tanks in very short order. But I was dreading having to drain my loop, since it's pretty complex. So I decided to try getting the rad out without draining the entire loop. As it turns out, it was much easier than I expected, mainly thanks to the 2 sets of QDCs I use to connect my loop to the rads in my pedestal.
This rad is important, as it helps to cover up some of this awful mess. Rad removed and holes plugged:
Rad prepped for surgery, with the new end tanks:
A decent amount of screws need to be removed:
The screws screw into these hex-headed screw receptacle thingies, which I now hate:
Off comes its leaking head. You can see the cause of the leak on the bottom row of chambers, last one on the right is cracked:
A glimpse of the guts:
Broken piece on top, replacement piece on bottom:
10 screws later, new top is on and we're leak testing:
Initial leak test (around 1.5 hours) was good, so put her all back together (damn this is a nice looking rad):
Put it back into it's rats nest:
HDD cage re-installed:
Initial flow test looks sub-par compared to normal, but that always start off slow when you're paritally refilling a loop:
After a little while, the flow rises:
It lives:
Water temps look normal (ie damn good):
CPU temp looks good (gotta love Indigo Xtreme TIM, it really cuts down on the variance between cores):
GPU temps look good:
All in all a very easy fix, even for the mentally challenged (ie me). I should mention that I only had leakage on ONE side of the rad, but Daz sent me replacement end tanks for BOTH ends. I only replaced the leaking one (if it ain't broke...)! Thanks to Daz for informing us about the fix, and the quick replacement parts!
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