Why not just use motorcraft coolant and not mess around with water and you 100% know you’re good?

 

hey there,

the distilled water is only to flush the system. When you initially drain the radiator there is still some old fluid left in your system that cannot be drained. That is why you fill the system fully with distilled water and run the car. Once the car is fully up to temperature, the thermostat opens and the fluid runs through the whole system and the distilled water will mix with the left over old fluid. Then you drain it. I repeat the process to get as much old fluid out. Then I add the motor craft coolant and distilled water in step 16 after I have fully cleaned out the system. Initially it’s just distilled water to flush out all the old fluid.

 

Are you planning to use the new ford yellow, or another coolant?

I topped mine off with prestone orange before, but when I flush mine I'll probably go aftermarket closest to ford spec for yellow.

Kudos doing a proper flush with distilled water!

 

I already purchased the yellow coolant from the Ford dealer. I did some research, but I could not find a benefit to using other aftermarket brands of coolant. The Ford brand is low cost and is the recommended fluid.

 

I did the coolant flush today! It took wayyyyyy longer then I expected. I don’t know if it was worth it to do myself. If anyone knows how much it costs to get this done By a mechanic would be really interested to know??? Anyway, here is some details about the coolant flush.

first of all, when you drain radiator, there is only about 2 litres or so that you can drain. Total system is 5 litres according to the manual. Therefore the rest of the fluid must be through the rest of the system. This must be why they recommend a vacuum or pressurized flush, it saves time and fully gets all the fluid out.

I had to do the flush three times, whereas I intended to only do it twice. On the third time the fluid was still orange, but was significantly better then the first couple flushes.

there is a flaw with my process which is you never really know the exact coolant ratio at the end. I thought by the third flush of pure distilled water that there would be mostly distilled water in the system, then when I added 2.5 litres pure coolant concentrate I would be very close to 50/50. However, it was very hard to get all the old coolant out with just draining it. I did it multiple times, (it drains painfully slow from the drain plug) and still the coolant I drained was orange. If I had more time I would of done it again, but I was getting impatient.
YouTube made this process look really easy and quick, but in reality, on this car, you can only drain about 50% of the fluid, unless you use some sort of pressure or vacuum to do it

 

Remove the lower radiator hose; you should be able to get more of what's in the engine block.

 

3 months ago at 90k miles I drained radiator and put in at least 3/4 gal of predilluted yellow. It was so easy I think I will do it every 6 months for a while and call it job done.

 

Thank you for the list! I'm trying to do this in next couple of weeks.

I'd run Motorcraft Premium Cooling System Flush with first water fill-in step. How long do you often wait during each flush to let the coolant cool, making open that cap not too dangerous?

I remembered saw someone running engine 2-3k rpm to speed up the coolant will that help much? Oh my poor neighbours I'm gonna run 40-50 minuets in total with ford exhaust😂

 

I was reving the engine, but also idling at a higher rpm to bring it up to temp higher. You can tell when the thermostat opens because heat starts coming through the vents. I didn’t wait to long for it to cool. I have of a few minutes, but as time went on and I got impatient I waited less time and i was opening it when it was warm. Just open it real slow, and watch that no fluid comes bubbling out. That is the only risk doing it to hot, the fluid comes out as if you opened a pop after shaking it. I never had a problem. But I also did this at 5 degree Celsius weather. So it cooled quickly. Last, I would suggest you buy a tool to measure the fluid concentration. They are cheap, I forget what they are called. But months later when my mechanic checked, I was only protected to -10 which is not enough for Toronto Canada. Having the tool I could have adjusted the coolant ratio more precisely.

 

One more question: when you are filling the reservoir tank with distilled water during the initial flush and when running the car to flush through rad, is it okay to go past the “max” line on reservoir tank? Or can you add more during the flush and draining process? Obviously when finalizing the coolant change with new fluid you’ll keep it at the max line but during the flush can you go past?

 

You're fine to go slightly past the max line. Just don't fill it till the water comes out of the cap.

 

Having just done this, you just need to raise the front high enough to get a good angle to drain the whole rad. Ramps work well for this. It also helps bleed the system (you'll still have to rev the engine to 3500rpm or so for 20 seconds a few times). Airlift will help but you'll still have to bleed it.

How To Flush Radiator In Car? Simple Guide

Find out how to flush radiator in car. Cararac.com gives advice on servicing the vehicles without any damage to your car.

cararac.com

 

Airlift will help but you'll still have to bleed it.

Not if you're using it correctly, you dont.

 

The Prestone orange is the same spec as Ford, if you look it up I believe. Yes it was fine and I ran it awhile like that.

A lot of aftermarket longlife coolant says it mixes with everything these days, but folks have had issues with some combinations. I like to get all the old out if switching the basic type of coolant, especially orange.

The Prestone yellow has been working fine in mine. I picked it because it's most available and common. Others also reported it was OK.

I ran several cycles with distilled water to help get all the orange out.
I mix it stronger than 50%, but don't go over about 70% based on manual spec for total capacity.

I would find another shop to do a better flush if my coolant looked bad and I couldn't do it myself.
It just doesn't matter what the manual says, as the manual assumes a properly maintained car and no issues.
Coolant usually looks OK if changing at the recommended time or mileage, even the longlife stuff.

I haven't used any flush cleaner additives in a long time and usually avoid them.
I might consider it on a neglected car or if coolant looked bad enough.
I would rinse well with distilled water if using those.