[Vwdiesel] Cooling system flushing

[Dave Cook]

Prestone has a product specifically for flushing coolant systems.  Don't know what is in it, but they make it.

I used it Friday to flush the system on my Cabriolet I just sold before installing a new radiator.  After running that in the system for a while, I drained it, and started flushing with water.

To do that, I dumped and filled the system with water until I got a couple of clear dumps.  Then I filled and dumped the system with a couple gallons of distilled water to get most of whatever is in my tap water out, and finally filled with antifreeze to get the needed mix.

For the rinsing cycles, I filled the car with hot water from the kitchen sink.  My figuring was that because you want the car to run long enough to get the thermostat open, hot water would make the time shorter.  Of course my hot water heater was also burning gas so I don't know which ended up being cheaper-though the water heater's gas bill is split with my roommate ;) - but the warm up time was much shorter than if the engine was trying to heat up the added water.

Dave
Dave Cook


--- On Thu, 11/18/10, Tony and Lillie <tonyandlillie1 at earthlink.net> wrote:

> From: Tony and Lillie <tonyandlillie1 at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [Vwdiesel] Cooling system flushing
> To: "James Hansen" <jhsg at sasktel.net>, "'Rudy'" <petersenrudy at hotmail.com>, vwdiesel at vwfans.com
> Date: Thursday, November 18, 2010, 3:18 AM
> That's exactly what I was going to
> say. I'll add that I've done this quite a 
> bit on the Dex-Cool equiped cars to rid the system of all
> the old coolant, 
> then flush well with water (I like to do four cycles with
> water, but I'm a 
> bit of a perfectionist) then put the new coolant in. As
> mentioned, acid 
> builds up, and therefore I don't like going longer than 2-3
> years max 
> between flushes. But, YMMV,
> 
> Tony
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> Subject: Re: [Vwdiesel] Cooling system flushing
> 
> 
> > Citric acid, and some liquid dish soap if it's grease
> you're trying to
> > remove.
> > Citric acid is a cooking thing, the sour stuff on sour
> gummy bears and 
> > such.
> > It's available, but you usually have to look. It is
> too mild to eat 
> > aluminum
> > such as heater cores, but removes magnesium and
> calcium carbonates just
> > fine.  I have a big jug of it that was intended
> to lower the ph of water 
> > for
> > crop spraying, so I'm set for  long while. 
> The Mercedes crowd uses it, I
> > think benz sold it as a factory rad flush under a
> fancy name for big 
> > bucks,
> > but it's cheap if you just buy the chemical not the
> branded product.
> > Btw, when you're done, a bit of washing soda in the
> water isn't a bad idea
> > either.
> > -james 
> 
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