Prestone Super Flush - just water or some coolant?

[spongebue]

Hi all,

I'm looking at flushing my coolant, and figured that on an 18-year-old car (1995 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, 3.1L engine) that hasn't had *that* much attention to the coolant system, it may be a good idea to also run a bottle of cleaner (this stuff here: http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/PRS0/AS1016A/N0453.oap)

When I drain the radiator, it's just the radiator that drains. There still seems to be quite a bit in the engine and heater core. On a ~11.5 quart system, I can get 4-5 quarts out of the radiator, plus another quart or so in the reservoir. The rest seems to be somewhere else in the system and won't drain out without a fight.

I'm planning on running a hose through the system to flush it out, but living in an apartment and not even owning a garden hose, let alone having access to a spigot, makes it a bit more of a pain. If I can, I'd like to drain the radiator and reservoir, dump the cleaner in, then fill the radiator and reservoir back up with distilled water for the 3-6 hours of driving to let it run through the system. Then I'll find a place where I can run a garden hose to do a total flush. Is that even how the cleaner is supposed to work? I'm not sure if the cleaner needs the entire system completely in water, or just more watered down coolant. Simply water kind of scares me, but I guess smaller trips not in winter can't be too bad.

Anybody have experience with the stuff? How do you use it?

Thanks!
-Brian

 

[mechanicx]

Ideally you'd want to flush all the old coolant out of the system first but Prestone super radiator cleaner only requires to drain radiator and add it and top up with water. You can run this mix for a few days if necessary. Drain radiator again and refill with water and run till hot. Drain radiator once more and refill with half system capacity of concentrate coolant.

This will get you 3 radiator and drains and refills, and about 85-90% of the old coolant mix out without having a water hose to flush the system.

 

[Donald]

First how does it look when you look in the neck? You may be able to get one of those Prestone flushing tees and flush it with a garden hose. I would not use any cleaner unless you see evidence that it needs a more thorough cleaning.

 

[spongebue]

Sorry for the dumb question, but when you say the neck, I assume you mean where the radiator cap screws on? Either way, it's hard to see too far inside that, but the reservoir was filthy as was the radiator cap. I think the problem is mostly localized to those two areas, as what came out of the radiator seemed fairly clean, but then again some stuff floated to the top after I emptied it into some milk jugs. I pulled out the reservoir and gave that a good scrub inside, and also cleaned up the cap already.