Monday, July 19, 2010

A little further on that radiator

in case you aren't familiar with this and run into it; people like Og and Dick can skip as I'm sure they read my original note and said something like "You didn't know that? Dumbass."

I mentioned the overflow tank also acts as the filler location; the cap holds pressure. Take it off, open the drain cock on the bottom of the radiator and let it go. Then you have to use something like a siphon or vacuum pump to suck all the old coolant out of the tank(I used the vacuum pump I have for bleeding brakes and soaking epoxy into stuff).

When it's completely drained, close the drain, mix your coolant and water 50/50 and fill the overflow tank(is it still that, really?), then start the engine. It slowly sucked the coolant into the system, I just kept adding solution until it stopped drawing. I'll check the tank again after driving it a while and top off if needed.

Couple of notes: I checked a Ford forum looking for information when I first found no cap, which is where I found 'fill the tank and start the engine'. One guy there said his would not suck the solution in, the consensus was that his thermostat may not be working; no idea. He took his to a shop, and they stuck a vacuum hose onto one of the hoses going to the tank and sucked the coolant in that way.

Second, it occurred to me as I watched the stuff flow that you could, after things have stopped draining, start the motor for a minute so any old coolant still in the system would be pumped to the radiator to drain; if there was any, it wasn't much, so I didn't worry about it. Doing it again, I'd give it a try.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

So basically once you've vacuumed out the old coolant, your options are to either suck via vacuum new coolant from the reservoir back into the engine OR start the engine dry(!) let engine heat some which blows the heated air trapped in the dry(!) system back through the coolant reservoir, shutdown engine to let cool which sucks coolant from said reservoir to refill coolant into engine?   Yup, there's dumbass involved here.   It's just not you that's the dumbass, Firehand!
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Firehand said...

Happily, on this one as soon as the engine started it began drawing the coolant into the system, so it had the stuff in place before the engine could heat enough to cause a problem. Otherwise I'd have been figuring how to hook a hose to the line, and then destroying my hand pumping the vacuum to fill the system.

Anonymous said...

YIKES! y'all are doing waaaay too much work.

Start on cool engine

Put your catch bucket under the engine.

Remove the lower radiator hose.
catch as much of the old stuff as you can.
Wash the antifreeze off your arm.

Reconnect the hose.

Refill.

Unknown said...

@anon..:

Start on cool engine

Put your catch bucket under the engine.

Remove the lower radiator hose.
catch as much of the old stuff as you can.
Wash the antifreeze off your arm.

Reconnect the hose.

Refill.

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Yes I got that part.
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It used to be an issue that running the water pump 'dry' would, if not certain death to the pump, shorten pump life.   I guess they're making Ford water pumps impervious to damage if/when run 'dry' these days?
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