Cat 30 radiator leaks, even with new gaskets

We have a Cat 30 that always over heated. We tried everything, so finally pulled the radiator. To our surprise, somewhere in it's life, squirrels had packed the top of the radiator with Douglas fir pine cones. They were packed in tight and we could not seem them when looking down the fill hole. Sometime in the fall in the life of the cat, the cap must habe been off and a squirrel thought this might be a good place to cache some winter food.

The ratiator is in excellent shape, the base and top cast are slightly pitted, but not bad. We got new cork gaskets from Olson's are put it back together. On our first attemt, we used Cat green cement glue on one side and Cat red gasket goop on the other. Put it back together and leaked in several places. We ran it a while, re-torqued the bolts and stil leaked. So we tried it again with the Green cement still holding and this time we used Grey Permetex. Still leaked. So we got a new set of gaskets and tried it again. Got all of the old gasket off and put grey Permetex on both sides of the gasket. Leaked even worse. I'm stumped and frustrated. Any suggestions?

Scott

Sounds like you might have some warpage there so you may have to draw file it some to get it flat. Get a good straight edge and put on it from end to end and see if there is a low or high spot in the castings. I never heard of gray permatex but I (we) always used the black # 2 permatex at the dealer and I always did at home and I found that the best in my opinion.If then you only get a slight seepage then try some stop leak in the radiator and that may seal up things but if it,s more than seepage then do more exploring as to the cause. The Cat 5H 2471 is just a contact cement and not meant for sealing, just to hold things in place so just apply it to one side of the gasket and the surface it goes against just to hold it in place and then coat it quite heavy on the other side that wasn,t cemnted down with the #2 permatex and the metal surface it goes against and that should do the trick. That,s the process I always did with probably 1,000s of things and never had a problem if things were normal and not all warped out of shape.

I'm not sure how the core is made on the 30 radiator, but if it's core has thin sheets that you bolt to the top tank and bottom tank with a lot of bolts, be sure you haven't overtightened the bolts and dimpled the thin sheet so that you are over tightened around the holes, but don't have any compression of the gasket in between the holes. Might have to do some gentle flattening with a hammer and flat piece of iron for an anvil if you have dimples or creases.