The previous owner like many Floridians used water in the cooling system and it was rusty.

I flushed it twice with water but want to use chemical flush now before coolant.

I notice that there is an oil heater/cooler that could have been affected by this.

How great is the risk of this rusting through?

Any brands recommended for radiator flush?

 

hi
after you use any radiator flush of any kind make sure you use a bottle of stop leak as it will surely leak someware .

mine was fine when i removed it to set timing and do killer dowl pin and flushed it with just water and washed outside off with gunk engine bright .
a week later started to leek big time at tank crimp ends so i installed 1 bottle of bars stopleek ,the kind that looks like ground alu filings , and it slowed right away and after app 30 days it sealed compleatly and no leaks now for app 1.5 yr !

 

I don't like using any of the chemical flushes for the reason oldlues stated. They always seem to leak after running that stuff through them. The way I see it, if temps were running normal, then don't worry about it...you know the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." More often than not, I think that stuff does more harm than good, or at least, that's been my experience. Now, if you want to approach it from the view that your checking the integrity of your radiator by seeing if you can cause a leak with that stuff, then it might be a good way to determine if you need to replace your radiator.

 

There is a small infrequent seepage leak in the radiator, I don't care to make it worse. I believe it's from the gasket and no one seems to replace those things these days, they like to sell the whole radiator. It doesn't amount to significant fluid loss within the time period that I check it.

Mostly I want the rust residue out of my system but I may have to live with it in...

Actually, it was running at 148 degrees and I just put in a 180 to replace the failed stuck-open one and that was in hot Florida weather with AC on without load at high speeds so I don't think there is a cooling efficiency problem at the moment...

So I guess, toss in some coolant or minimally anti-rust and waterpump lubricant and hit the road? It never sees freezing temps. Too bad they don't make an anode rod or something for the cooling system like the thing that makes a boat not rust.

Has anyone ever heard of a oil heater/cooler rusting through? That could spell disaster.

 

CLR will remove all the crud!!

 

For real?

I'd hate to run that through and then find out you were joking and it ate something up.

 

It appears that the CLR would indeed remove the rust from my system, along with the radiator. Read on.

From hotrodders.com:

If your cooling system has aluminum in it, you'll want to stay away from anything with strong acids in it. There are industrial strength radiator flushes, but most of them are for old cars with copper core radiators. CLR is a no no on new cars.

another post

I was reading the groups to find out some info on using CLR to flush/clean the cooling system in a vehicle. I found lots of posts asking if it was a good idea, but none with any links to hard data.

Here is a link to the Jelmar (makers of CLR and other products) where they answer two questions of using CLR for cleaning your cooling system; 1) is it acidic, 2) can I use it in my cooling system.

Yes, it is acidic.

No, they say you should NOT use it to clean your cooling system, and they also say to not use it in your iron because it could damage the internal parts of the iron (ergo, it would seem that it would do the same for your cooling system).

from ih8mud.com

CLR is a weak dilution of hydracloric acid. Do not use it on AL. It attacks it.

CLR IS more effective than over the counter radiator flushes.

Muruatic acid (a 28%-31% dilution of hydracloric) is MUCH more effective than CLR. This shoulkd notbe used on AL either.

There is really little need to flush your block/waterpump or any thing like that. Build up in this part of your cooling system is minimal and does not cause any problems. Flush your radiator and your heater with muriatic (assuming that neither are AL) and leave the block be.