Worst coolant I've ever seen

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Mopar to ya

Mopar to ya

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A college girl came in with a Jeep Wrangle and a complaint of no heat. The pictures are what we found. I've never seen coolant so bad. We flushed out with water, twice with Dawn dish soap, water two more times, and then it was clear enough to add coolant. And she had heat. The lesson here is: maintain your vehicles.

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You should've seen what came out of my S10. It looked like my radiator was filled with mud. I don't think the previous owner ever changed it but I sure as hell did.
 
Where is all that draining? Into the city sewer? lol
 
My sister's keep Cherokee was the SAME way when she bought it a few years ago. I flushed it all day long and finally got it clean and a nice hot heater.

Jump ahead 4 years later I had to do it again this winter because the heat was getting weak. I've never seen such an issue with a cooling system.
 
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I don't know why but Jeeps tend to do that. Water pump is going to go within 6 months if it is not already bad. Cooling system needs to be flushed again in 30 to 60 days as it will already have all the corrosion inhibitors gone and will do it all over again. CHANGE THE THERMOSTAT. Guarantee it is going to fail.

How do I know this? Used to work on Mail Carrier Jeeps.
 
Jo Diesel said:
I don't know why but Jeeps tend to do that. Water pump is going to go within 6 months if it is not already bad. Cooling system needs to be flushed again in 30 to 60 days as it will already have all the corrosion inhibitors gone and will do it all over again. CHANGE THE THERMOSTAT. Guarantee it is going to fail.

How do I know this? Used to work on Mail Carrier Jeeps.
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Interesting, My coolant in "Project CheapJeep" is lookin pretty funky, but nuthin like that,...and I ain't messin with it till it gets to 32 degrees here,...sometimes It's best not to mess with these kinda things till your ready to replace EVERYTHING,....just sayin
 
BlueDream said:
You should've seen what came out of my S10. It looked like my radiator was filled with mud. I don't think the previous owner ever changed it but I sure as hell did.
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Did it still have the orange Dexcool crap in it? My diesel looked like that when I got it. Talked to a friend that owned a radiator shop, Mike said that is often the result of someone mixing regular coolant in....
 
inkjunkie said:
Did it still have the orange Dexcool crap in it? My diesel looked like that when I got it. Talked to a friend that owned a radiator shop, Mike said that is often the result of someone mixing regular coolant in....
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Yep. That's what was in it. I found it when I changed my heater core. Had to pull the dash, inner fender, and front passenger tire just to get the stupid heater core out, AND deal with the crap in the radiator. That was not a fun weekend at all. It was so gunked up that it didn't even want to drain and it was hard to get the radiator cap off. My Camaro has Dexcool in it too and it's supposed to be good for 100K (or 120k, I forget) miles but I'm only at 10k so far so I haven't checked it, I'm definitely NOT going to put regular coolant in it when the time comes. I wonder why it reacts with regular antifreeze, seems like it causes more problems than it's worth.
 
RustyRatRod said:
Where is all that draining? Into the city sewer? lol
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It drains into a holding tank we have to pump out every so often. Not dexcool in this one, just plain old 50/50 coolant. We told her she would have to come back after a month or so and let us look at it again. I never saw the girl, but she is a vet student at the U of M. We get all the students from that program and virtually all of them are hot.
 
So here's what happened. Somebody saw that the original coolant was low (pink G-05) and added orange Dexcool. Never mix Dexcool with anything but Dexcool!!!

Gotta be smarter than antifreeze
 
Green for Green, Orange for Orange, Pink for Pink,...We got all three for the shop fleet and never had a problem,...or at least that kind of a problem,....But I guess It's a bit much fer some folks to use theyeballs AND their brains at the same time...
 
I am thinking a Wrangler is as typical a hot chick vehicle as a Miata convertible is for manly studs. Not sure why Jeeps would be any more prone to coolant rust than others. Grand Cherokees even have the same Magnum V-8's as Mopars. The 4.0L six goes back to the 1950's and is well-proven. I use citric acid (ebay) in water to flush well, then totally dry and use Evans Waterless Coolant. No more rust worries or cooling maintenance.
 
Looks like a mess I saw a couple weeks ago. We're not sure who, but someone decided to start up a hmmwv and walked away in the middle of doing their PMCS. What step were they in the middle of doing? Apparently, checking the coolant, as they left the cap off the radiator. Someone walked out to the yard and saw coolant spewing up into the air all over the place. Privates..... this is why we can't have nice things in the army!
 
From all I have read, the most common issue with Dexcool is when it gets any air in the system. The OAT inhibitors allow all lot of rapid block corrosion in the presence of air (catalyzed by heat) that is prevented by silicate inhibitors (which are not used in Dexcool).

If Jeeps are having such issues with Dexcool, it may be that the Jeep cooling system design is such that there is more air in the system than in GM cars. Chrysler (with Jeeps) switched to HOAT coolants in 2002 or so, which has the silicates that give much better block protection in the presence of air in the cooling system. (The older green coolants have silicates too.)

It sounds like using Dexcool in such cooling systems that have some air in them is a problem guaranteed to happen, and investigation by GM showed low coolant was a consistent cause of rusty type contamination. S10's, perhaps like the one mentioned by BlueDream, had a known issue here addressed by an SB. See here:
http://www.imcool.com/articles/antifreeze-coolant/dexcool-johnbrunner.htm

I have been converting slowly to HOAT's like G05, which have the silicates to avoid the low coolant/air-in-the-coolant block corrosion issue with Dexcool. With the old Mopar systems with the open air gap in the top of the radiators that was the norm in non-overflow systems, there will always be some air in the cooling system so OAT's like Dexcool look like a bad choice there. So far, so good with the G05 for my car.

To the OP, I have to wonder if the Dexcool just got low or if perhaps there is a head gasket leak in that Wrangler. Any leak would not be good with Dexcool.
 
Oh great now I gotta change the anti freeze in my Jeep, I think the last time was in the 90's.....
 
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