The wife bought a late model Lincoln LS some months ago and I guess she's feeling all independent now. So she takes this car in to the local "Oil Changers" and has them change the oil. Well the guy at the shop puts the push on her to have the radiator flushed...he didn't give her a reason WHY it needed to be done, just that she should do it to prolong the life of her car. She told him to pound sand and left with just the oil change. Well a few weeks have p***ed and now it's getting a little nippy here in SoCal in the early AMs. So when she turns the heater on nothing happens....well she does get a blast of cool air but no heat. This morning there was frost on the car so I went out and looked under the hood to see if there was anything amiss. The first thing I checked was the coolant level...it was low. I began adding some antifreeze and soon the coolant level came up to the top of the overflow canister. I looked at the liquid and wondered why it looked so dark...there was power steering fluid floating on top of the coolant! From what I can figure out at this point, the numbnuts at the oil change place topped off the coolant bottle with power steering fluid and realizing he screwed up, tried to get the wife to buy a radiator flush. I don't figure that I can prove this and for what it's worth I'd be happy to let it go because it's worth it to teach the wife not to spend money at these places when she can get the job done right at home. BUT...that still leaves me with the issue off cleaning out the cooling system. Anybody have any ideas about cleaning oil out of the cooling system? I think that most of the flushes are designed for scale and rust not oil....UGH
Detergent maybe? Dishsoap & water,run it for a while & flush? Maybe the best bet would be to run it with water only for a bit and see what flushes out?
Every so often we get a car here at the shop that the oil cooler puked and filled cooling system with oil, kinda a problem on some of them fine German cars. At any rate we flush them out with dishwashing detergent, gotta do it a coupla times, get one that really cuts grease. Just dump half a bottle or so in rad and run it to warm it up well, then dump and repeat till clean. A good trick is to remove the return hose from heater core, turn on heater and run car, add water to radiator, if car is plumbed in a convient way the water will circulate through engine, into heater core and dump out hose, just run it till it runs clean. Good luck. **** I hate those quick change places, they got no business working on cars.
To get oil out of the coolant system I used simple green/detergent. Breaks down the oil and it goes out with the antifreeze. Put the simple green or whatever is your favorite and run the engine a while to warm things up and than dump it out. Worked for me with one flush. A side note, are you sure it is power steering fluid and not automatic transmission fluid? Neal
I would get one of those radiator flushing kits that you can attach a hose to so you can continually run water through the cooling system. Some kind of soap will be okay with this set up, but wouldn't advise it without because you will always get some soap foam out because you won't be able to flush it 100%. Every try to rinse a shampoo bottle or something like that? I takes a year and a day and lots of water to rinse all the soap out of it. If you can, use HOT water, may dilute it better. Well, I now see the other replies and maybe I'm all wet about the soap.
I'd make darn sure it is ps fluid and not transmission fluid. I wouldn't spend a nickel on one of those quick change places either, but just in case, especially since you recently acquired the car, I'd check pretty thoroughly to make sure the ****** cooler isn't dumping fluid into the radiator.
[ QUOTE ] I'd make darn sure it is ps fluid and not transmission fluid. I wouldn't spend a nickel on one of those quick change places either, but just in case, especially since you recently acquired the car, I'd check pretty thoroughly to make sure the ****** cooler isn't dumping fluid into the radiator. [/ QUOTE ] That's a good point, I didn't check the ****** fluid level...sounds like it's time for a pressure test. I'm glad to hear that so many guys have used detergent for this clean up, I know that Dawn has a good rep for cutting oil and grease. Thanks....
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