Last time I did a hose flush, I was at my friend's house on city water. If I do another hose flush, guess where I'm gonna do it?
Which antifreeze for my 2001 Ford Windstar?
- Thread starter seapea
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Last time I did a hose flush, I was at my friend's house on city water. If I do another hose flush, guess where I'm gonna do it?
There's no simple answer to that unfortunately... You're putting in a low-silicate coolant with G05 so that does alleviate some concerns as left behind silicates do not play well with non-silicate coolants.
I would flush until clear, assemble everything, fill with water, turn the heaters on, and run the engine a bit to circulate the water. Then stop the engine, drain and keep refilling with water until it comes out fairly clear.
On city/municipal water the water supplier should publish annual reports on the quality of the water that can be used to determine how suitable it is for topping up a cooling system. My local water can basically be used as it, which is nice.
The car originally had either Motorcraft Premium Antifreeze/Coolant or Motorcraft Gold
Antifreeze/Coolant, both of which have silicates. Since it is an orangish color, I'm assuming it either had Motorcraft Gold, or at some point the Motorcraft Premium (green) was replaced with something else. Since Ford requires the coolant for this car to have silicates, it seems likely that if the original coolant was replaced, it was replaced with something containing silicates. Otherwise it seems unlikely the engine would have lasted 250k miles.
What I'd do is just keep repeating this process, but not adding coolant until you are satisfied that you have 90-95% of the old coolant out. You only need to drive it enough to get it real hot and mixed before you do the next drain. I recommend 4, for your comfort just do as many as you want. To me, 8 is overkill - but it's your ride, your dime, and your 'peace of mind' You get to a point of diminishing returns after 4 ish. Heater on the entire time, as noted above.
Start using distilled water on the next flush. On your last drain, if you are getting 7 quarts out, replace it with 7 quarts of concentrate. You can run 40% coolant just fine. Normal range is 40-60%. If you really want that closer to 50%, on the next to last drain add in a quart of the concentrate, then add the 7 on the last one. That way you can use up all 8 quarts of the CONCENTRATED 05.
Concentrated Motorcraft Gold is 20$ on rock auto. Cheaper than a lot of concentrated G05 but YMMV. The readily available 5% off code about pays for shipping.
The way I get 50/50 when doing a flush is to look up the coolant capacity, then, when it's all water in the cooling system, add half the capacity in concentrated coolant, then top it off with water.
If it has an overflow tank, that's filled with 50/50.
That only works for 50/50 if you can drain half the capacity. My drain came in a bit under half.
Yep, I'm fortunate that I can get out right at half.
I'd still just add a quart in on the next to last d&f. You'll bump the percentage to pretty close to 50% on the final fill when you add in the 7.
By my math, I'd end up with a 47.25% solution. After flushing out all the coolant, adding 1qt on the next fill (out of a 16qt capacity) is a 6.25% solution. However, after the next drain and fill, only 3.5% of that remains (9/16 * 6.25%). The last fill adds 7qts of coolant, which equates to 43.75% (7/16th) of the total capacity. 43.75% + 3.5% = 47.25%. Probably good enough. I live in a warm climate. The all time record low is 22F.
The downside to this approach is it produces another 2g of coolant mix I have to dispose of. So I'm thinking a better solution is after the last fill (with 100% coolant), I'll run it for a while, suck a qt out from the refill tank, and then add the remaining qt to the refill tank.
Yeah, that works for sure. Lots of hot climate dwellers run 40% coolant, so all good.
I think you are on a well, so that means septic. Some towns/cities allow for coolant to be poured into the sewage system. I didn't know that until.... bitog!
The forum is useful sometimes
You might be able to take it to gas station X and pour it in the toilet. It's gonna be a few years before I deal with it again but hopefully I can just pour mine down the laundry sink..... Toting that crap to dump sucked for 3 days in a row. The 4th run, it got spilled......
I think you are on a well, so that means septic. Some towns/cities allow for coolant to be poured into the sewage system. I didn't know that until.... bitog!
The forum is useful sometimes
You might be able to take it to gas station X and pour it in the toilet. It's gonna be a few years before I deal with it again but hopefully I can just pour mine down the laundry sink..... Toting that crap to dump sucked for 3 days in a row. The 4th run, it got spilled......
Our county has a hazardous waste drop off about 1 a month just a couple miles from home. I don't think they have any limits a quantaties. Last time I went the pickup in front of me had 8 boxes worth of random chemicals. The main issue is containers to use. I've saved up some plastic 1g chlorine and muriatic acid containers. Don't want to go through all of them though.
Most engines can be suitably protected by a number of different coolant formulations, the automakers take a whole host of considerations into account when selecting what coolant to use.
Silicates in the proper quantity do an excellent job of protecting aluminum when mixed with hard water, but they do have some drawbacks such as the tendency to drop out of solution.
You could probably use some other technology such a good quality straight OAT with excellent results, the problem is mixing coolants when doing the switch. When silicates are only present in low quantities they can actually accelerate aluminum corrosion, but as you're going to be filling with a silicated coolant you don't have to worry about the effect of any non flushed out residual silicate.
After 5 flushes, I don't seem to be making progress in getting the coolant to run clear. The 5th drain looks as dark as the first. I took a cup from the 1st drain and mixed it with 7 cups of water. That clearly shows the dilution. My 5th drain should have looked at least that clear, but is no where close. I get the feeling the orange I'm seeing is actually rust and not the old coolant, and each time put fresh water in, more rust dissolves into it. I don't want to do a chemical flush. The car is too old and I feel chemical flush is more apt to cause problems than to help. I'm thinking maybe a couple more flushes then I'm done.
I'm guessing the softenss of the RO water is quickly dissolving the rust.
I'd dump a bottle or two of Prestone radiator flush for $5 and let it cook for a week
I applaud the effort for a clean system, consider VC-9 for iron/rust removal
Irontite Thoroflush I hear works minor miracles
I applaud the effort for a clean system, consider VC-9 for iron/rust removal
Irontite Thoroflush I hear works minor miracles
I'd say that's a valid concern, sounds like you've flushed it enough that there should be no worry about mixing incompatible coolants at least!
I would probably just go ahead and fill it, then change it (drain and fill, no flush) in a year or so.
Better to find a leak now than later. If there's a place that's only being sealed up by rust and scale, it's only a matter of time till it leaks.
Well that depends. "Later" might never come. This is an old car on borrowed time that gets very little use. It's an "extra" car that I for the most part just use to drive to a park a mile away to go hiking. That way I save my nicer car from all the parking lot dust, body odor, and risk of theft (there have been quite a few break-ins). As I mentioned earlier, it only gets about 500 miles a year. If it were a car I needed to rely for a lot more miles and longer trips, yeah, finding the leak now might be better. The other thing to consider is that even a moderately expensive repair is likely going to send this car to the junk yard. I don't want to instigate a gasket, pump, or radiator leak at this point. That would likely just result in me dumping the car.
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