My 07 Acura TL had some yellow chalky looking residue in radiator hoses. was told likely stop leak additive from previous owner so ive been flushing system with LOTS of distilled water and it started out mostly green then slowly got faint yellow looking now its mostly cleared up but when i pour out the water from cooling system into a container then rake my finger through the drain pan i still get a little bit of the yellowish powdery residue on my finger. i was hesitant to do any flushing with water hose as our water here in town is horrible, and hesitant to use any chemical flush as i was told none of that is good for aluminum and many claimed to have water pump failures shortly after running chemical cleaners...so im just curious do i need to just keep flushing this thing til every last bit of this stuff is out of the system? it never clogged heater core or anything i never had issues with car running hot or heat not turning on,etc.....just trying to do preventative maintenance as im hoping to keep this car for as long as possible
Trying to flush yellow powdery stuff out of cooling system
- Thread starter RH43
- Start date
Post a picture or two please.
May be adding a bit of vinegar would help?
I was going to add vinegar but was told its too acidic or something and isnt good to use?
Heres a few photos of when i started flushing and photo of jug is how clear it looks now. These r the only ones i had saved
It already looks pretty clean, but if you want to do more cleaning, I'd suggest the Prestone radiator flush/cleaner. You can also find it at WalMart, AutoZone, Advance Auto, O-Reillys, NAPA, etc.
Thanks. I can't tell what that is other than it looks a bit like rust. When you say it was yellow, do you mean bright yellow?
You get this stuff on sale at Advance Auto
I hear it's on the stronger end of coolant flushes
I hear it's on the stronger end of coolant flushes
Sorta. This was what was in the hose when i pulled it off
And there were little bits of soft stuff in it
Looks like stop-leak to me. Hopefully you don't spring a leak after flushing it. I would keep an eye on it for a while.
At this point, I would just fill with coolant and drive on doing a drain and fill every few years. Since you've flushed with plain water, you won't get back to 50% concentration by putting pre-diluted 50/50 Asian coolant back in it so you'll need to do an addition drain and fill to get it close to that concentration. If you can blow the hoses out with compressed air to get as much water out as possible, that would be good.
At this point, I would just fill with coolant and drive on doing a drain and fill every few years. Since you've flushed with plain water, you won't get back to 50% concentration by putting pre-diluted 50/50 Asian coolant back in it so you'll need to do an addition drain and fill to get it close to that concentration. If you can blow the hoses out with compressed air to get as much water out as possible, that would be good.
but if i drain the block most will be out right?
If your engine has a block drain, then it will be fine with filling with pre-diluted coolant. You can't get 100% of the coolant out even with a block drain, but it will be close enough. Some cars don't have a block drain and draining the radiator can leave half the coolant still in the system.
If that's it then it explains why I've never seen such a thing.
Hopefully that's not why it had stop leak added in the first place
You've got that right.
What do u mean? Sry im a newbie at this stuff
ripcord is saying that he hopes that the stop leak was not added by the previous owner to stop the heater core from leaking.
Similar threads
