Since I do not know of an "active" car repair group, maybe some home repair people might know the answer. I sure would like to know of an active car repair group.
Anyway, I drained the radiator on my 96 Mustang GT. My car manual says it holds 14 quarts of fluid. I had a gallon (4 quarts) of full strength anti-freeze. I wanted to shoot for a half and half solution. According to my math, I should have been able to pour the entire gallon in the radiator and fill the empty container with a gallon (4 quarts) of water. That would have taken me to 8 quarts. I should have been short 6 quarts of mix.
The car took the 4 quarts of anti-freeze and most of the gallon of water. I am guessing that the engine still had 6 quarts of water in the hoses or in the engine somewhere.
What is the proper way to completely fill the radiator? Car running? Heater on?
That's the whole car, right? Not just the radiator.
Sounds good.
Makes sense. And sounds about right. I don't think I've ever gotten more than 2 gallons in my car, even iirc when I went out of my wat to flush and back flush the cooling system. These were LeBarons, Catalinas, and a Centurion.
Well, if you want, you can put as much as it will take in with the car off, and the heater off, but yes, eventually you have to run the car and turn on the heater, and let it warm enough that the heater valve opens so you can make sure that part is full. And even then you should check the water level the next day, until it doesn't need any. This last part can be done cold.
When running the car is really important is when the car is overheated and spuring out water, and then you need to add replacement water or
50/50 mix**. Stuff which is probably at room temperature. Then you have to run the engine and add the liquid fairly slowly, so you don't get room-temp water on a boiling hot radiator and cause it to contract unevenly (or whatever)
**Except for the initial fill-up I usually take a whole bottle of anti-freeze and mix it with a whole bottle of water and make two gallons of 50/50, so that it's easy to add "water" without changing the protection level of the coolant. I guess one needs, counting the new gallon of antifreeze, 3 gallon containers to do this easily.
As a guy who went through 18 gallons of water in the last 4 days of his last car's life, I know a little about this, but maybe a better example was when I went through 5 gallons of water in a day and still got home at the scheduled time and got 5 more years out of the car.
I've found on my vehicles, that the water remaining in the block is about half the system capacity. You ought have added pure antifreeze, until you got enough in to be half the system. I'd have tried to fit 7 or
8 quarts of pure in, and put the cap on and run it. check it with a float later, and decide if you want to add water or pure.
If the vehicle has overflow tank, fill that to the "full hot" line and check it in a week or so.
. Christ> Since I do not know of an "active" car repair group, maybe some home
Adding pure antifreeze would have been just about the right amount actually. Half of the system should have been 7 quarts of pure antifreeze. I put 4 quarts of antifreeze and 3.5 quarts of water.
Metspitzer wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
Try rec.autos.tech. It's still quite active.
That would be the amount for the ENTIRE COOLING SYSTEM, not just the rad. The engine block, hoses, and heater core will hold at least a couple of quarts, likely more.
You've done the drain/fill completely incorrectly. Ask in the group I mentioned above. Lots of Ford guys in there.
Tegger wrote in news:XnsA229A11FEB952tegger@208.90.168.18:
If you don't mind a Web board, you can also try signing up to:
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They've got a very active Mechanical/Maintenance forum with some very knowledgeable posters. And it's reasonably free of ricers and other children that tend to pollute some other Web boards.
Yes, that's pretty much what I found. My first try, I carefully mixed up the 50/50 and ended up with about 25% in the system. Had to drain it again and add more pure.
. Christ> Adding pure antifreeze would have been just about the right amount
Actually the simple way is to flush with clean water, run untill warm when full of water then drain as much as you can, and add 50% of the published capacity of the system in pure antifreeze, then top up if necessary with water, with the engine running and warm.
Only after knowing how much coolant drained out would you be able to calculate the correct amount of water and antifreeze... that is assuming the coolant was at the correct level AND the correct ratio to begin with.
In your case after you drained out half of the total volume of the system, with the above assumption, you knew you had 3-1/2 quarts remaining of water and 3-1/2 quarts of antifreeze. Because that is precisely half of the system volume that is precisely what needed to be replaced... 3-1/2 half quarts of water and 3-1/2 quarts of antifreeze.
Ain't it great to be lucky. You couldn't have got much closer.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. ;-)
So the total system is 14 quarts. He adds 7 quarts of pure, and that some how makes it way off? Around here (NY State, USA), we run 50/50 glycol to water. Where are you, and what proportion do you use?
. Christ>> Adding pure antifreeze would have been just about the right amount
Stormin Mormon wrote in news:AcbTt.206277$Dy1.79803 @fx18.iad:
It does if he's failed to pull the block drain (if applicable) and/or opened the heater-control valve (if applicable).
I'm two states north of you, and we use the same proportions. But those proportions start with *known quantities and fresh fluids*. Failure to do a full drain introduces variables, and not good ones.
He's never going to completely drain it, unless he removed block drain plugs *and* opened petcock at radiator (assuming there is one) nobody ever removes the block drains, so it's a fair bet that there's still some old coolant mix in, really the only way to know for sure is to check it with one of those floating ball things.
Nate Nagel wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news7.newsguy.com:
'Cause all your cars were worked on by the above-mentioned persons.
On what cars? I've yet to encounter a block drain that required more than hoisting the vehicle. But then I've never worked on a Porsha or a Zaporozhets.
This example system holds 14 quarts of coolant. This total system holds 7 quarts of water and 7 quarts of antifreeze for a 50/50 mix, right?
OK, now drain half of that out and you have 7 quarts of coolant left. The remaining 50/50 mix would consist of 3-1/2 quarts of water and
3-1/2 quarts of antifreeze, right?
If he were to add 7 quarts of straight antifreeze to the remaining
50/50 mix he would end up with a mixture of 3-1/2 quarts of water and
10-1/2 quarts of antifreeze... a mixture of 25/75. In other words -- way off, right?
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