That last sentence will make me not be able to sleep tonight thanks very much.

Running water through the coolant system wont cause rust since you will be filling the system back up with antifreeze. Rust doesn't happen immediately.

What I would do is drain all the water out of the system once you're done, and refill with 50/50 pre-diluted coolant. You can buy straight antifreeze if you want but you'll have to measure out the correct mixture. I would just get the 50/50 bottles as they already do it for you.

 

Also, removing the reservoir is super easy. No need to siphon the coolant out. Remove the reservoir (about 3 bolts) and give that bitch a full washdown. Mine looked bad. Not as bad as yours, but bad... I used lots of hot water and simple green to get the nastiness out... looks like new.

 

alright yeah definitely just going to take that out haha thanks man

 

thanks for the quick reply! I think I will buy the 50/50, Is the capacity 1 or 2 gallons to completely fill the car with coolant?

thx again

 

Full system is 8.5 quarts. This includes the heater core as well as the reservoir. Get two gallons at least. That will probably be ok since you will have a little residual amounts of water left in the system after flushing.

 

once you flush the bad crap out there are also two plugs on your block that will drain the left over water... i;ll scan the pages from my factory service manual for you

 

This...



and this...

Man your system looks bad .
Do that flush and then pour one of those flushing coolant bottles on it, drive the engine and then flush again, i wouldn't do it with just water.

and this too LOL!

looks like oil contamination more than anything els. what does it smell like?

use rad flush. its got everything in it to clean out the system

Don't just drain the radiator. That will only get about half the coolant in the system; the other half is in the block, heater hoses and heater core. You'll find when you drain the radiator that only about a gallon or a bit more will come out.

I'd start by cleaning the overflow tank and draining the radiator. Then, refill with distilled water or Prestone 50/50. You may not want to pull the drain plugs from the block, but definitely get a can of radiator flush, put it in, and drive around for however long it says. Typically it's a while - like hours.

Now, drain the radiator again. Refill with distilled water or Prestone 50/50 premix, let the engine come to temperature so the t-stat opens, and let the whole thing circulate for a while. Drive the car again if you want.

Then, drain the radiator one last time and refill with Prestone 50/50 premix. At this point, you've got about 7/8 of whatever was in the radiator and block originally out of the car, it's been cleaned some by the can of flush, and that's about as good as it'll get without draining from the block which can be a PITA to do. If you can get to the drain plugs in the block, and get some more out when you drain before and after the flush, you can skip the third drain and refill. If you just drain from the radiator, though, I'd do three seeing how nasty the overflow tank looks.

Good luck, let us know how you make out.

Edit - if you do use distilled water for flushing, then get some full strength Prestone and a tester to do the final fill. Since some always stays in the system, you'll have to balance it at the end if you've been using distilled water. The 50/50 mix is more expensive, but if you use it throughout (or make your own out of full strength and distilled water) you won't have to worry about the balance at the end. Personally, I wouldn't use tap water in an engine, but I have a well and lots of iron and minerals in my water. Even if you don't, your safer using distilled for this so that you don't wind up with any more scale in your engine.

 

here's the scanned pages..

 

Man your system looks bad .
Do that flush and then pour one of those flushing coolant bottles on it, drive the engine and then flush again, i wouldn't do it with just water.

 

looks like oil contamination more than anything els. what does it smell like?

use rad flush. its got everything in it to clean out the system

 

You get this whitish goo when you mix oil and coolant. This usually means you have a headgasket leak that connects the oil system to the cooling system.

 

hey guys thanks for all the replies..

I just got finished doing a flush and I used the heater hose line to push it all out through the radiator cap. And I just drained it from the radiator I can't tell where the other 2 drains are on the block. I cant tell what I'm looking at on the pictures.

thanks a lot for the help.

My coolant wasn't that dirty. It was a little cloudy but it wasn't brown and goopy like my reserve tank. I don't know why my reserve tank was sooo nasty :X.

 

I tryed looking some more and to my understanding the frontal drain plug is under the headers? I couldn't see it just by looking in my engine bay. :O

still cant find the 2nd drain plug behind the engine :-(.



Colby

 

ok I found them..

I couldn't even fit a socket wrench to get the back drain plug and the front one came off.. nothing came out of it. FML

Edit: I'm just going to do what tachy said and refill it with 50/50 a few times to get all the water out. the block drain plugs are impossible to do upside-down in my garage.