Best way to flush and change dexcool?

[shenanigans]

My last car I had green stuff... I am tempted to switch to it after seeing others have nightmares with dexcool. BUt I might change it.


Is this way pretty much fool proof.


drain radiator, fill with some distilled water, run it a bit, drain again.

then fill with a good mix of dexcool and distilled water?


Or is distileed water overboard, and do they have any "flushing detergents" I can run through the cooling system before I do the swap?

thanks in advance.

[Fredless]

I'd keep it. I flushed mine at 110k with the backflush kit from wal-mart. Simple to do.

[hockeyman]

I drained my old dexcool, ran it for a few days with distilled water and a pre-flushing coolant cleaner, then refilled with 50/50 distilled water and dexcool. I still had that brown MUCK buildup in my rad a few months later.
I went with the green coolant, and there has been no buildup ever since.
It was written here once that dexcool was the "spawn of satan", and I totally agree!

I ended up using about 5 gallons of distilled water from flushing the radiator/engine, over and over again. As long as I used dexcool, I still had that brown crap floating in the rad. Them problems are long gone now thanks to good'ol fashioned green coolant.

[ August 28, 2005, 10:06 AM: Message edited by: hockeyman ]

[shenanigans]

any other thoughts...


I don't really trust this crap longer then 60k...


It ate away just about everything in my girlfriend's car, after about 6 years 75k miles.

[grayman]

why are they using dexcool in the first place? when you do a seach on the topic it comes up with lots of bad experience and some lawsuits as well.

[Fuelman]

I changed mine not to long ago.
I refilled her with the MEAN GREEN.

I flushed mine out with the garden hose. Then ran Prestone super flush and water for 2 days to and from work. Then flushed with the hose again and drained the radiator and removed that sensor on the block to drain it. Then refilled 50/50 mix.

If you want to use the red stuff, The only one that works is the mixture for over the road trucks. It has a different additive package and you can "recharge" the additives life extender.
Texaco makes the stuff for GM but GM specs it to not have all of the additives. So you must use the
one for heavy trucks.

[shenanigans]

ugh... see what worries me... is thats how I flushed my old car.


was I drained it, then hell just put the hose in it filled it drained it, did tha like 3 times, then let it set with the hose flushing water thorugh the system, while motor was running(keepin and eye to not overheat too much)

but I have heard you can risk putting anything but distilled water in contact with dexcrap...


ugh... I hate this crap. why did they every change it?

[hockeyman]

Originally posted by shenanigans:
ugh... why did they every change it?

Because the dexcool is supposed to be 100,000 mile coolant. I got to 20,00 miles after I bought my car and noticed the brown sludge buildup in the rad. I thought it was just my car until I signed up on this site a few years later and saw that others had the same problem.

[shenanigans]

Originally posted by hockeyman:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by shenanigans:
ugh... why did they every change it?

Because the dexcool is supposed to be 100,000 mile coolant. I got to 20,00 miles after I bought my car and noticed the brown sludge buildup in the rad. I thought it was just my car until I signed up on this site a few years later and saw that others had the same problem. </font>[/QUOTE]Thing is it don't seem to see it last that long. IE, g/f's cavalier and the sludging of the entire cooling system at like 75k.

[Tyler]

what i did to "flush my radiator" was drained the orange ****...

ran nothing but regular tap water for a couple days.. drained it.. filled it back up.. then stuck a water hose in my radiator at full blast.. disconnected the retun tube to the radiator and just let the water / sludge drain out through the thermo.

ran the car for about 10 min with a constant supply of fresh water.

then put on the electric water pump since i was doing that anyways.

But i didnt put just any green stuff in. i got the **** for the new 04 and up fords and ****. supposedly its a "better formula" or something.

i dont care about having to change fluids every 60k miles thats the least of my worries. I just heard that for the electric water pump you want to have some kind of antifreeze cause it acts as a lubricant as well as a coolant.
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