have any of you done a radiator flush?

[mookie]

Obviously I am thinking about trying to flush my radiator, I have some questions.

The people that have done it was it worth the time?

What products did you use?

Is there any negative to doing this, I own a 96 Explorer with 125,000.

last one, What is your opinion of water wetter?

thanks

[Scottwax]

I've done them, but now you have to recycle the old anti-freeze, so really, it is easy to take it to your local lube goons and have them do it. The one by me hooks it up to a machine and flushes out all the old coolant and replaces it with new. Even the best home flush and fill kits will probably only get about 90% of the old coolant out, and you still have to take the old coolant somewhere to be recycled. Best of all, it was only $69.99 and took about 20 minutes.

[bmwtinut]

Do you need to actually flush the system or do you need to just change the coolant? I have done both. Changing the coolant is pretty easy. I just drained my coolant and refilled it. To flush the coolant I first drained the coolant and then refilled with distilled water. Warmed up the engine and then redrained the water and then added coolant. Don't worry about not getting all the water out. Just add half of the full capacity of the cooling system with coolant and then top off with water. You should have a 50/50 mixture then. If you want to really flush the system out you could refill with water one more time.
If you have a place to do the work it really doesn't take that long. I always like to do as much work as I can. It is amazing the amount of $$$ that places charge to do some simple proceedures.
I just take my old coolant in soda bottles to my local autoparts store to dispose of. Good chance to pick up some more detailing supplies.

[Aurora40]

Just a suggestion, but I always use that non-toxic coolant that Prestone makes. It's like an extra $1 a bottle. That way if when you are flushing with water, any stray coolant runs out (which is going to happen) it won't kill any local children or animals. It hardly takes any coolant at all to kill. Unfortunately I can't do that in my car because it is that red dex-cool stuff. So I'll probably just take it to a shop since they can contain spills and such to within the confines of their shop.

[Shiny Lil Detlr]

Originally posted by Scottwax
I've done them, but now you have to recycle the old anti-freeze, so really, it is easy to take it to your local lube goons and have them do it. The one by me hooks it up to a machine and flushes out all the old coolant and replaces it with new. Even the best home flush and fill kits will probably only get about 90% of the old coolant out, and you still have to take the old coolant somewhere to be recycled. Best of all, it was only $69.99 and took about 20 minutes.

I agree, only thing is you need to watch these guys like a hawk and have some shop rags on hand... I would've had coolant all over my engine compartment if I hadn't chewed the guy out for being so d@mn sloppy...


and as for Water Wetter, I assume you're referring to the Red Line product? I have been running this for about a year in both my and my wife's vehicles, and it really does seem to help with the efficiency of the coolant, and I noticed about a 10% drop in coolant temp. on the dash gauge (210 before to about 180-90 after) So at $8 a bottle from autozone, and needing only one bottle per vehicle per system flush, I'd say go for it.

Another thing you may want to do is before you take it to have the coolant done, try to flush and rinse out the overflow resevoir as much as possible... if yours is like mine was, its probably got alot of sediment and crap in there. You'll want to remove this to make sure the new stuff is as clean as possible.

[mookie]

thanks all

the reason I was thinking about flushing the system was I had to add some coolent to the reserve and the little bit that was in there was all brown.