Wonderful!!...another blown LG Coil!!.....

Anyone have a coil for an LG3?....Mines kinda leaking again.

Ahh man that sucks. Were is the leak? Check craigslist a couple of lg3 high pressure for sale

You do know that you are driving me right to that Northstar heater with all this busted coil postings, don't you?

I hope this is a rare thing to have happen....maybe after years of reliable usage?

LOL you're next Rob

milspec6 wrote:You do know that you are driving me right to that Northstar heater with all this busted coil postings, don't you?

I hope this is a rare thing to have happen....maybe after years of reliable usage?

Yes, I got about 12-15 years of reliable usage, and have now been threw 3 or 4 of them in the last 10 years or so.

Man, I'm tired of it, I just bought this one about 6 months ago, and finally got it working good, now she's blowed up on me!

Just saw the video it doesn't look like it leaking at the kneck so thats good. Looks like a pinhole not a rupture try and fix it till you find a new one . the new coil is 900 for the low pressure one

Yea, it's actually leaking right on top where it was previously repaired prior to me owning it.

Being right on top, under vent hole, I'm hoping to get to it without having to remove it.

In the morni9ng I'm going to see if I can solder it and get it plugged up, I've had success a couple times before repairing them.

Silver soldered?

The solder I've used in the past in silver colored, but I'd have to look and see what it actually contains.

It's the same stuff I used to solder the copper pipes in my house when I re-piped it.

That's what little giant reccomends

This is what I've used........

I think that is a pretty weak solder material for your purpose.  You want to braze the coil with a high silver content rather than solder.  The Safe Flo is an alloy with a mostly tin and probably 5% silver content.  (See if you can find the MSDS for certain)....I think that is where things went wrong with Mo's heater coil.

I would look for a silver solder that contained greater than 50% and a MAPP gas torch......don't forget the flux, really vital step.

Look to these guys for the right stuff

http://www.harrisproductsgroup.com/en/Products/Alloys/Brazing/High-Silver/Safety-Silv-56.aspx

The Oatey solder is 2% silver...really not much different than the old lead-base solders, so I would not expect it to hold very long. Maybe at 150 psi or less it would, but we push things harder than that.

Sorry to hear that Dave !!

They seem to develop issues at that first bend....wonder if that is due to hard water pitting? You would expect failures down low where the main heat source was located.

I wonder if you could just pipe wrap it like they do in the navy? Just wrap it and clamp it in-place?

You might be right on the weld Rob don't recall if the term was silver braze or solder. From what I recall a leak there would indicate freeze damage

Dave you can ship the coil to little giant and let them weld it for you last I heard it wasn't more than 50.00 gotta pay shipping though

Mo wrote:You might be right on the weld Rob don't recall if the term was silver braze or solder. From what I recall a leak there would indicate freeze damage

Dave you can ship the coil to little giant and let them weld it for you last I heard it wasn't more than 50.00 gotta pay shipping though

That's kinda what I plan on doing since I have two blown coils now. But I need something to use while those are being repaired.

I would just have it fixed locally, a radiator shop should be able to help you out

Talk to the Hvac guys instead of radiator shops. They spend more time dealing with pressure coils than a radiator shop. The pressure in a radiator is nothing compared to a cooling coil.

The only problem would be that you would still have to pull the coil to do it right. I don't know how hard that would be, but looking at the leak, it would be a simple fix and you would be back in action in a day.

Buck up, it will hold this time with the high percentage silver brazing....might even fix both coils and sell one to Mo.

I'm done buying used coils and LGs

I think I'm in the same place, new from here on out. Only way I'd buy another used one is for temp. use until I can get theses leaking one's I have fixed.

That is a bummer, I kinda think it starts to get weak over time with all the cold to hot cycles, and I think we work them pretty hard too.

here is a set up don't know if he still has it
https://redding.craigslist.org/tls/4955184083.html

SCCC wrote:That is a bummer, I kinda think it starts to get weak over time with all the cold to hot cycles, and I think we work them pretty hard too.

I think you're right, Tom.

Last night when it sprang the leak, I was flushing it out, along with my whole system with de-scaler to flush out contaminants (Which has been a problem since I fixed the low heat problem I was having....I assume now that I got the heat back up, it's loosening the crap in heater and causing it to flow out and it keeps clogging the filters on my tools). So between the acid flush and the on/off high heat cycling, it was showing 260 deg on the gauge. ......I wouldn't doubt that between those 2 things, it didn't contribute to the leak. Plus, the leak happened on the seam of a big area that had already been previously repaired by the former owner.

I've done the best I can do to repair it with some 45% silver solder I got today, but haven't tested it yet.......Fingers crossed!!