Flush your system with distilled water. Drain and refill a few times will ensure you have almost 100% distilled water. Use a cooling system cleaner or don’t. Whatever. Then, drain your system. There will still be some distilled water in the system. Now look up the cooling system capacity. Add 1/2 the capacity in pure coolant. Then top off with distilled water. Congratulations you are at 50/50 concentration.
Coolant System Advice
- Thread starter MachineBuu1997
- Start date
since I'm taking the water pump off anyway, I'm gonna do it after draining the thermocure, get the spray nozzle on my hose and forcefully flush out the water jacket until it looks clean and then put the water pump back on to start doing the fill/run/drain cycles until it comes clear out of the radiator.
annihil8ted
TJ Enthusiast
I've always been conflicted about using a hose and tap water. I understand that the hose will provide pressure but it's the tap water that gets me. Will a final rinse with distilled be enough and okay to get all the tap deposits out?
Since we're working on our own vehicles and have time I like to do a distilled fill then run a few days then dump after any cooling system work when the coolant is being replaced.
Earlier in the thread we've discussed that...you want to do more than one but (if you don't drain the block) you leave about 2 quarts, or 25% of what's held in the system (not counting the overflow bottle) when you drain the radiator. So the recommendation is, after using tap water, to drain and fill with distilled water, run for 10 minutes, and repeat two more times before the final fill. By that point you've reduced the concentration of tap water to 25% of 25% of 25% of 25%, which is less than 1%.
It sucks to throw away antifreeze but based on what I experienced last week I would add a quart into the water to prevent corrosion. I had sparkly clean internals until I hurt my shoulder and took 4 days off while the jeep sat with distilled in it. By the time I came back to it the water jacket had a light coating of rust over the entire surface again and now I'm on thermocure flush #2.
I had a diluted Thermocure mix in my Jeep for about a week. I'm finally getting that flushed out now. I've gone through 4 flushes and it is still looking pretty cloudy. But it was pretty bad in the first place. There's so much junk in it that I may do a 2nd Thermocure flush. I'm also considering a new radiator because this radiator is pretty dirty from sitting in a garage for 3+ years.
Nothing wrong with flushing with tap water. I would still do 2-3 drains, fill, and run a little with distilled water if you use the tap water. However, these vehicles aren't the Space Shuttle. A tiny bit of tap water left inside won't cause any problems. A vacuum fill tool makes it SO easy to get it 100% full with no air pockets the first time and every time. It's not the only way but is probably the easiest way.
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