Hello Joseph.
In the year and half the hay was washed several times by putting a garden hose in a plug on the lid . I also gave it a little washing before pulling it out of the tank to avoid getting the side of the truck dirty.
The heat exchanger was dumped several times also but this is done by removing a screw on cap at the bottom
Thanks wayne on the water heater , I plan on making lid from car rim and 2 or 3 " down too make lid seal and the other side half of rim shrunk down too make lid.Getting ready too weld cooling rack this week,in between odd jobs,scrap is still about half what it was last year,so i got about 8 water heaters,10 bucks each from add in paper.Might strech a water heater out for s10 4.3,for burn tube and hopper one piece houseing, SWEM
If you go searching around old houses and junkyards, you might get REALLY lucky and find an old heater with a Monel tank.
http://www.waterheaterrescue.com/pages/whh/pages/historypages/monel-copper.html
They are near indestructable and have great heat transfer.
“Monel is a group of nickel alloys, primarily composed of nickel (up to 67%) and copper, with small amounts of iron, manganese, carbon, and silicon.”
67% nickel. About 10 years ago, I priced a 1/2 in pure nickel pipe coupling. $ 238. Monel withstands very high acid concentratyions, including hydrofluoric. It takes high heat and was used in the X-15 rocket plane. It’s appearance in old water heaters is a dark copper color. It melts at about 1350 C. I imagine that it would make a good burn tube, kinda thin, though. I know where there is a tank at Apex Surplus in Sun Valley, Ca.
How does this monel weld?
From Airgas; “SPECIAL METALS Monel® 67 AWS A5.7 ERCuNi 3/32” Dia X 36" Filler Metal is
ideally designed for welding of MONEL alloy 450 and other copper-nickel
alloys using oxyacetylene, gas-tungsten arc, gas metal arc and
submerged arc"
Anything that can be welded with a torch can’t be too awful to weld.