Coolant flush

[markeemsz]

This is for my brothers 89 beretta with a 2.8. A while back I broke his radiator and we had to buy one out of the junkyard. Anyway the radiator had a lot of rust . Well I ran some coolant flush with water and flushed the radiator 5 times but the water was still rusty. When I say I flushed the cooling system I mean that I filled the cooling system up with water and turned the heat on full blast and then removed the lower rad hose after a few minutes. After that I gave up on it and filled it with coolant ( forgot to take the car off the ramps it was on! ) I was wondering if anyone has any advice on getting the cooling system really clean. I was planning on removing the thermostat and getting some heavy duty radiator flush and running that in the car. I wanna flush the cooling system tommorow or saturday b/c its supposed to be warm. Any suggestions ?
edit - I forgot to add that my brother car seems to run hot. I think its related to the coolant needing flushing though

[TheProfessor]

RE: Coolant flush

just unhook both the upper and lower radiator hoses at the engine
get a garden hose and flush it out through the top to your hearts desire
just make sure you are doing it in the yard or something and not a garageor anywhere that all that water would flood something

[markeemsz]

RE: Coolant flush

Well I tried flushing the cooling system today and now I have fairly clean water (when I flush the car through the waterpump). I think Im gonna install one of those flush kits to get the system truly clean. Does anyone know which hose is the coolant inlet hose? Is it one of those hoses connected to the throttlebody and if so which one ?

[TheDirtyBen]

RE: Coolant flush

the engine block is most likely what's so rusty. an old mechanic's trick i remember, is to run some Dawn with water thru the cooling system. in other words, putting some Dawn in, then filling system up with water and run the engine 10-20 minutes. drain and flush with pure water 3-4 times. it may be in your best interest to pull the stat out while you are trying to flush the system.
when i worked at one of the local quick lube shops in town, i noticed that doing coolant system flushes when the coolant had been that severely degraded, could sometimes cause more problems. if you had rust water in the system and it seemed impossible to get out, it almost never failed that within a month their radiator or heater core sprung a leak. not sure if it was because the flushing process removed deposits that would have otherwise blocked pin holes, or if it was the pushing all of the rust thru system that sandblasted holes in them.
you may get lucky, but it's been my experience that a system THAT rusty is an early warning sign of a radiator or heater core going bad soon.

[TheProfessor]

RE: Coolant flush

yeah
id check the heater core
the one in my 93 retta gt was so bad i had to bypass it cause i couldnt afford a new one at the time

[RednBlack]

Rust=electrolosis as far as radiators and heater cores go. They are toast. Flush the block, replace the rad and core.