VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1929-1932 F.S. Eagle Rad. Cap 1932

Has anyone else had a problem with the guts of the cap rusting badly ? The tab and screw that hold the cap on the radiator is corroded and rusting bad enough that I don't use it on my car except for display.Contacted F.S. and they said they have not heard of any problems like that. I asked if they had replacement parts for the cap and they said no.A lot of $ to invest and be afraid to use it.The cap was bought about 3 years ago.I don't drive the car that often.

KERRY, CAN you easily replace the screw with a stainless steel one.??? and a tab too.

Is this another junk china made one or a USA made one. Be interesting to hear who the supplier is to F S>

mike..............

My reproduction cap from TFS is rusting also but so is my standard cap. I thought about replacing the rusting parts with stainless but have not attempted it yet.

I don't have a reproduction radiator cap from the Filling Station so can't comment on them specifically.

I suspect that the reproductions are close duplicates of the originals. The originals had a similar problem. The cause is electrolytic corrosion because of dissimilar metals in a moist environment. Keeping moisture from the die-cast/steel (or iron) interface is key in reducing the corrosion. I have coated the radiator side of the caps with a urethane or epoxy coating with relatively good success. Another possible "fix" can be to put a plastic film barrier between the radiator and cap.

Many years ago I found a Eagle Radiator Cap repair kit that someone was making to replace the rusted parts in the original Eagle Radiator caps. The kit worked great....however, I believe that the kits were discontinued a long time ago. It would nice if someone started making the Eagle Radiator cap repair kits again.

"A lot of $ to invest and be afraid to use it.The cap was bought about 3 years ago.I don't drive the car that often."

Steve from The Filling Station here. I looked up your purchase of the radiator cap. You bought it on April 26, 2012 - 5 years ago. We spent nearly $10,000 to bring the Eagle Cap back onto the market and yes, that is "a lot of $ to invest".

With that said, we did try to get parts made in stainless but we had to have two different companies involved with the manufacture of the caps - the die cast company and the hardware company. Stainless was not an option through the hardware company. What is more unfortunate is that we did not have the budget at the time to make up additional hardware kits for the caps.

If any of our machine craftsmen in the club would like to tackle the project, we would be willing work with you to offer a repair kit.

Steve
PS. We have less than 90 of the original 1,000 Eagle caps left and do not plan to have more made. Our original production date was Oct. 2009. After these are gone we will offer the stainless version - currently at $700.00 each.

My originals have always been corroded pretty badly, too. It's chemistry, as Chipper explained.

I'm wondering if with today's technology they could be made from plastic (maybe 3d printing) and plated.

the key would be to made them and cast them from stainless then polish. like they are doing with the handles.

My radiator cap rusted pretty badly on my 31 coupe after a number of years. I took it apart and remade all of the parts out of SS with a SS screw, that was a couple of years ago and it still looks like new. Just use a good grade of SS.

Stainless steel is definitely the way to go!