jschildge12

Hey all,

I'm hoping that someone who has also experienced this issue can help me out. Recently I was driving uphill with the air conditioner on and all of a sudden I started smelling burning coolant. Temp rapidly rose to the absolute top and I had to drive to a safe spot to pull over. My lower radiator hose had popped off from the pressure and was leaking disgusting brown burnt coolant.

Later I checked the radiator and it was full of what looked like straight soil.

View of Gunk from radiator cap.

Sample of the soil-like gunk

I ran hose water through the radiator and also the heater core hose. I took the thermostat housing off to see inside and some water got in. Is this bad?




This is the stuff I'm using


My Question is: How can I safely run Prestone Cleaner through the system? I'm nervous to reconnect everything and run the car with all this stuff in there and accidentally ruin my car. The directions on the bottle aren't very detailed either. What would a safe approach be for this? Do I need to run distilled water to get the hose water out? Do I need to empty the reserve tank as well before doing the cleaning process? Thanks in advance.

awg

You need to follow a process.

Step 1) Using ordinary tap water, fill the system, drive for a day or so, and discharge.

You should add an ordinary dishwasher tab each time. Do this until the water is no longer obviously muddy and silty. This can be up to 10x times !

Next stage, you should do such things as reverse flush your heater core.

Then try with chemicals.

If things are bad, it is cost effective to replace radiator, water pump, thermo/housing

Once it is all cleaned and flushed, the correct ratio coolant should be added, system bled, and replaced every 3 years max

How are your hoses?..unknown or +10 years means you should replace them all

Replace all of above would be not much more than $300

(still needs to be flushed first to clean the block of silt)