Hey guys! ChrisFix here and today I'm gonna show you how to superflush your cooling system to get all that dirty old contaminated coolant out of the radiator out of your engine block out of your heater core just really get a good flush going and then fill it up with brand new coolant. Before doing the superflush, go check out my other video on how to test your coolant and make sure you need to flush it. I go through all the different types of tests you could do to check your coolant and see if it's good or bad. So when you're done watching this video, go check that out, I'll leave a link in the description below Before you touch the cooling system at all, whether it's taking the radiator cap off whether it's
opening the petcock to drain the fluid touching any hoses always make sure that
the engine is cool the system is pressurized when it is hot
and you don't want to burn yourself. I'm working on a Ford 3-litre engine, it's a
V6. In my case I have a radiator cap and I also have a coolant reservoir tank.
Some cars might not have this radiator cap so whatever i do through the
radiator cap you could do through the coolant reservoir tank. A couple of days
before you're going to flush your coolant you're going to want to use a chemical
coolant flush you can see it is a flush and cleaner
this one is actually supposed to be mixed with water so you're supposed to empty your coolant
add water and then add this but the thing is it's getting below freezing so
I'm just going to mix this right in with the coolant. I'm going to add our coolant
flush to the coolant reservoir. The chemical flush is really going to help
flush out any contaminants, loosen up any debris, and it's just going to make your
super flush that much better. Use the whole bottle. And now I'm going to go
drive the car, put a few hundred miles on her and then we'll empty the coolant. A
few days later all the chemical flush has been circulating throughout the
system I use my heat to get in the heater core it's been through the radiator all the
hoses through the engine block so now we're ready to do a coolant flush. In
order to do a super flush here's everything you're going to need. Just
have some basic hand tools, a couple of drain pans to catch the old
dirty coolant, we got a bunch of distilled water make sure you're using distilled water
and not filtered water the only ingredient in this should be pure water i bought two chemical flushes cause I
used one and i'm going to use another in a few minutes and then you need to get
coolant i'm using a 50-50 mix so i don't have to add water it's cheaper if you use the concentrate
but for convenience i like using 50/50 it's all up to you i'm using long life
antifreeze it's just that much better and this is the green stuff so
you want to check your owners manual and see what kind of coolant you need to use
and also the capacity so how much coolant that your cooling
system will use in my case I know I need to use the green coolant and not the
orange coolant says it right there and when i go into my owners manual
under cooling with air conditioning i have an air conditioner on my 3-liter V6
it takes 10.2 quarts so that's about two and a half gallons
now that we know the capacity and what kind of coolant that we're going to use
and we know all the tools that we need let's begin first step grab one of your
containers here and we're going to slide it underneath the car so this right here is the radiator
shroud there's my fan this whole thing here is
the radiator that way is the front of the car just to give you a reference here's the lower radiator hose but we
want to look for something called the petcock it's pretty much just the valve
that lets the cooling out usually it's in the corners of the
radiator so here's one corner but we have the lower radiator hose so I'm
going to go check the other corner you can see here is the other corner and
here's the petcock it's just a valve and you see the coolant's going to flow
right out of there if you don't have a pet cock like this
then what you do is you have to take off the lower radiator hose get some pliers and
take that hose clamp off pull the hose off and let all the radiator fluid drain
this petcock is a three quarters of an inch so just get your ratchet on here
three quarters of an inch crack it loose yeah and you can see this coolant looks
disgusting. It pretty much looks like a coffee or mud and that's not good now you'll notice the petcock isn't
draining very quickly so i'm going to show you how to make it drain faster
since we have our coolant catch pan where it needs to be all you have to do is go to the radiator
cap and pop it open I don't know if you can hear that but
you can hear the air escaping I'm going to take this cap off and when I do
you're going to hear the coolant flow out a lot faster so now we're going to let this drain
completely out and we'll move on to the next step I'm going to catch some of
this coolant so we can see a good before and after good so as that continues to drain one
thing that's not going to drain is your coolant reservoir tank so we're gonna
open that up you can see that all that coolant is still in there and it's dirty
and disgusting so what we're going to do is we're going
to keep this on loosely we're going to go and find the hose the hose runs down
there runs across runs up here all the way across right to the radiator cap and
we're going to just take this off remove the hose the hose is actually
clamped on right there you could remove that clamp if you want but all you need
to do is get the end of this hose below the reservoir and then gravity will pull
the coolant out of this So I'm going to come over here i'm going
to aim for my coolant pan where the old coolant is emptying into. Just slide this
down here if we go underneath the truck we could see it comes out right here you're going to want to somehow suck on
this I wouldn't use your mouth I try to find something that could start
sucking on this just to get the fluid going and then the rest will empty into
here this is getting filled up so let's get a
new bucket under here - good now let's drain the reservoir i'm
going to try to use one of these turkey basters to start the flow of coolant and
then gravity should do the rest and there we go now let this drain out
and all I did was press the bulb in and let it suck it out to pull that water
down and then now gravity is doing the rest of the job this is almost empty you can see this is
pretty dirty in here so you're going to want to flush this up too now you could
remove your coolant overflow tank and clean it out but I know removing this is
a real pain so i'm going to actually just flush it in here. So I got my hose and
I'm going to use high-pressure water we're going to let that drain i'll do
that a few times to get that really cleaned out we look in here after doing that you
can see all the stuff that got flushed up so we're going to get this nice and
clean and not even have to remove it from the vehicle ok let's check out the inside here see
how much cleaner it is. It's definitely a lot cleaner there's some debris right in the corner
there where drains but that's not a big deal we're going to be flushing this whole
radiator out multiple times for the super flush so I'm not really concerned but it
definitely does look a lot cleaner in here compared to before and that hard
stuff that's connected to the plastic if you really want to get that off you
could get in there with a pipe cleaner start scraping that away but this is
good enough for me So now we're going to move on to the
next step. Remember, you want to recycle all your flushed fluid, all your
antifreeze. This is poisonous to animals. If a dog or
a cat gets into this and drinks it, which it does taste sweet, they will die. So you want to make sure
you recycle it. It's bad for the environment so make sure you have a bunch of
containers on hand and a funnel And then after you're done, make sure you cap them both off. And now they're ready to be recycled throughout this whole super flush video
I'll be recycling all my antifreeze and if you're wondering how to get rid of
your old antifreeze call your town recycle center a lot of
times they take it for free and also call around to your local auto parts
stores, many times they'll take it for free as well the radiator is completely drained, we
cleaned out the reservoir and now the next step for the super flush is to find
your thermostat. So usually the thermostat you follow the upper radiator
hose into the engine block and you can see it comes down into here right into there
and then right here where this connection is is where the thermostat is so we're
going to take the thermostat out so we have a lot of flow even when the engine
is cool if your thermostat is hard to get to you
can just omit this step. I'm taking the thermostat out because it's easy to get
to and I'm replacing the thermostat anyway. To get the thermostat off, we're
gonna be using a 10 millimeter with an extension. Just go in here. There's two bolts. One on this side.
That's one. Get the other side That's one. And get the other side... And that's two. Now this should just come right up like so. There's the thermostat. get my hand in here pop that thermostat out. You can see
there's a gasket on this thermostat you will want to replace that gasket and the
thermostat itself looks good it's fully closed which is what you want when it's
cold make sure you note the direction of the
thermostat when you take it out our thermostat was in here like this so this bottom part was facing down and
this little top part that comes to a point was facing up so with the thermostat removed now we're
going to have full flow even if the engine is cold and even when it's warm
we'll have a lot more flow than without the thermostat. So now we're going to
bolt this back up. Tighten each bolt down by hand first and once each bolt is
tightened down by hand, tighten it a little bit on this side, switch over to
the other bolt, tighten it a little bit on this side, go back, and tighten it a little bit more on
this side. Now it's pretty much snug and we're just going to give it a little bit
more of a turn you don't want to tighten this too much. Sometimes this goes into
aluminum and you can strip the aluminum so you just want to make sure that you
tighten this so it's snug and i'll give you the
torque specs later so that's good. So now that our cooling
system is completely drained, I'm going to close this by hand I'm not going to use a wrench or
anything this is only plastic I don't want to damage the threads or strip
anything you can see I was able to get it completely closed just by hand now don't forget we have this hose
dangling down let's reconnect this. That hose is easy enough, just pull it up. That goes on just like that. Now we're going to fill up the cooling
system with just plain distilled water it takes two and a half of these and
then we'll run the engine get everything circulated mix the water with all the
contaminants and do another flush. You want to try to find a funnel that will
fit in so if I push this down. It actually fits in
really good and that's not going anywhere and that just makes the job that much
easier they actually sell special funnels that connect on to this they're like no leak radiator funnels or
something like that and those are actually very helpful I don't have one of those so I'm just
using a regular funnel. Now fill the radiator with distilled water I'm also going to add another one of
these chemical flushes Ok, now when this doesn't go down any
further I still have almost a whole jug left so there's air in the system. What we're
going to do is we're going to start the car and then we're going to feed more in
here as the water pump sucks up the water and now fill the radiator to the top Then we're going to get our radiator cap. Put that on. Make sure it's completely closed. Now let's go and fill the reservoir. Don't worry about adding a little bit
extra because if you're low on coolant, this is a good backup. It'll suck out the
coolant from here and add it to your radiator, but you also want to have some
room for expansion so that's pretty good. Now we're going to go in the truck and we're going to start the engine. We're going to pay attention to that
coolant gauge. I'm going to run the engine for about 10 minutes. You could go for a
ride if you want Wait a few minutes before you go for a
ride to make sure that coolant gauge doesn't spike. If it does, that means you have some air
in the system. And then all you have to do is squeeze the upper radiator hose as
the engine's running and try to bleed the air out or if you have a bleeder valve
on your water pump just open that up, let the air out and close it. Don't forget when you go for your ride
make sure the heat is on all the way and then turn the fan on. This will get the heater core circulating and all the contaminants in the heater core flushed
out. So with the heat on all the way and the
temperature gauge not fluctuating at all I'm going to go for a ride and get all
that water in the cooling system to flush through the engine and get that
cooling system nice and clean. So I'm back from my ride, the coolant
temperature really didn't go up at all It's pretty cold out, and since the thermostat's open, a 5-10
minute ride won't let the water heat up very much. I still have the heat on. You can shut
this off if you want now that you're back. And that will drain that water out of
the cooling system. So now we'll go back underneath. We'll drain the petcock. Be
careful because the water might be hot Remember, to make it drain faster you're
going to open up the radiator cap. Make sure this is cool to the touch. Pop that open. So I'm going to grab a sample for the first flush with fresh water. So here's after the first flush. You can
see it's still pretty dirty What you're going to do is you want this to
run clear. So that was nice and clean bottled water Now look at it. So we're getting all that
dirty contaminated fluid out and this is going to really help our cooling system
here Now, depending on how bad your cooling
system is, it might take one flush, it might take two flushes, it might take four
flushes. So with the cooling system completely drained, we'll tighten this up
again, and we'll repeat the process. Now there's no need to show you the process. All it is is filling it up again. Make
sure you get the radiator filled Remember to fill your coolant reservoir.
Run the engine. Make sure the engine isn't overheating. Run it for 5 to 10 minutes.
Drive around if you want Drain it again. Just keep doing those
steps until that water runs clear ok the radiator is completely drained
the system has been completely flushed you can see there's the original there's
our first flush with fresh water and also the chemical flush and then there's
our second flush with just fresh water and our third flush with just fresh
water and then this is what it's going to be after we put the 50-50 antifreeze
mix in as you guys know I like to show proof of the work i do and if that's not
proof right there I don't know what is. So now that you've
seen the results let's finish this flush up I just want to make sure you have
everything done correctly we have the whole radiator drained completely We also have the coolant reservoir
completely drained and flushed out. When we did the flush, we turned the heat on
which flushed out the heater core as well if your heater core is clogged or
not heating up I have a video on how to do that very
easy to follow and could find that video link in the description below but we did flush this out a little bit by
just running the heat as we ran the car for each of the three flushes. Now the
whole cooling system is completely empty so now we're going to fill it up with
brand new antifreeze so this is a pretty important part you
just did all this work to flush out your cooling system you wanna make sure you
do this right on my coolant overflow tank you can see there's a sticker here
so this sticker shows you're not supposed to be using the orange coolant you're supposed to be using the green
coolant and also if you want to see what kind of coolant you need the capacities and
stuff already mentioned check your owners manual it's the best thing to do
to be sure most vehicles need a 50-50 antifreeze
and water mix in this case I'm going to be using a pre-mixed antifreeze it's just a lot more convenient sure is
a little bit more expensive compared to buying the full concentrate and then
diluting it with distilled water but it's just a lot easier. If you want to use
concentrated antifreeze, be my guest. another thing i'm using a long life this
stuff lasts a hundred and fifty thousand miles or five years since the cooling
system is completely drained before we fill it with new coolant we want to change out our thermostats so
I have my new thermostat here and we already took the old one out I'm going to take the thermostat housing
off we're going to put in this new thermostat same process as before to
take it off 10 millimeter That's one. That's two. that comes right out you wanna make sure you remove the whole
gasket so i'm going to use i'm going to use a plastic scraper i'm using plastic so don't gouge the
surface here you don't want to gauge that metal surface because then water
could seep through even though you have a gasket on their want to make sure you
remove all that gasket material more you get off by hand the better and this is actually coming off pretty
good by hand okay that wasn't to bed they're gonna get your scraper any
pieces that didn't come off scrape it off get that surface nice and
clean to clean the gasket surface off more i'm using a paper towel and some
brake cleaner just spray some brake cleaner on your
paper towel we're going to get in here just rub all that off the brake clean i
hope lift some of that dirt in there that you're having trouble getting off
at the scraper ok that's it looks pretty good and also
don't forget the other side of your thermostat housing take a look here surprisingly the gasket seems like it
didn't stick to this side mine just give that a little clean and
we'll put the new thermostat in the new thermostat gasket goes right on top just
align the holes goes on just like that now when we put our thermostat in if you
remember the deeper part goes in towards the engine and the reason why is because
this deeper part here is what adjust the thermostat so this needs to get hot in order to open up the thermostat and
since inside the engine is hot you want this to be facing down so this
is very simply goes in just like that put that right on top in
this case these bolts don't need any teflon or anything because they don't go
into the cooling system the antifreeze doesn't touch them you can just push
them right in like that and it's lightly tighten this one down just to get that
the red started kind of hold everything in place now with the thread started on
that bolt this could just swivel back and forth
and we get the other bolt in that in there and then tighten that up now these bolts get tightened down to 10
foot pounds a hundred and twenty inch pounds so the
first thing i do is tighten both bolts by hand all the way about the left one
Titan by hand and then we'll do the right one now since there's a gasket on here
there's two bolts we want to tighten both bolts down evenly so I'm going to
tighten this bolt down first you see it's pretty tight it snug
they're going to give it a little bit of a turn and then i'm going to go to the
other side do the same exact thing that's pretty snug I'm going to give it a little bit of a
turn good going to go back to this side a little bit of a turn go back to the other side a little bit
of a turn now i'm going to tighten it down to 10
foot pounds i'm just going to do it by hand good get the other one down good now that our
thermostat is in we could fill the radiator and the whole cooling system up
with brand new antifreeze and go for a ride My vehicle takes 10.2 quarts which is
pretty much two and a half gallons so it's going to take two and a half of
these. That's two. Now you can see after two bottles it kind of backs up a little bit and now
all we have to do is find a radiator hose (I'm going to use this upper
radiator hose) and you just give it a squeeze just like this, and that burps the air out. If that's as much air as you can get out now we'll go start the
engine and the rest of this will get sucked down and we could add our other half.
Before we start the engine just go down to your serpentine belt make sure that
you don't have any liquid on the belt so your belt doesn't go flying off so
just make sure you clean that off. Now I'll go start the truck and you'll see
this will get sucked right into the radiator. Not as much got sucked in as I thought
would because I forgot, we put the thermostat back in. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
wait for the car to warm up. The thermostat will open just a little bit
and then it will suck this fluid in. So while you're doing this to try and
get the air out of the system plus adding more antifreeze, you want to keep an eye on
your temperature gauge and make sure you don't overheat. If you want to get some
of that coolant to get sucked down, just rev up the engine just a little bit. And if we come over to the engine after
revving it, you can see it sucked a bunch down. So now I'll go shut the engine and we'll
put the radiator cap on When putting your radiator cap on, you
want to make sure you put it on properly it turns then you have to press down and
then you turn and that locks in you want to make sure this connected
properly because the radiator cap is actually under pressure the whole
cooling systems under pressure don't forget we'll have to fill up the
coolant reservoir on the coolant reservoir there is a "Fill Hot" line and a "Fill Cool"
line. You kind of see it down there. It says "Cold Fill". So that's the line we want to
fill it up to. I filled it up just a little bit above
that cold fill line just because we ran the engine a little bit so it's slightly
warm you can take this up close up our cap here ok let's go for a ride now we're going
to go for a ride you want to pay attention to your temperature gauge can
see here it's slowly rising we want to make sure it stays at the middle as we
go for a drive you don't want to get too hot you don't
want to stay cold we're also going to make sure that we have the heat on we're
going to come here and you want to make sure that you're going to feel heat if
you don't feel heat you have air trapped in the system I can feel here already and just sitting
here for like two minutes when I'm talking to you guys you can see it's
coming up to the middle ready so let's go for a ride and see what happens ok went out for a ride for a few minutes
brought everything up to operating temperature you can see it's right there
in the middle exactly where you want to be the heat is
very hot which is awesome and that's pretty much it when you get
back let the car cool down you can check your coolant level and make sure it's
good i used a little bit more than two-and-a-half gallons which is exactly
what my truck calls for so I'm not concerned that the levels low but if you
want to check your level just make sure that the engine cools
down completely before you take that radiator cap off and that's it now you have a nice and flush cooling
system if I could do it on this truck which was a mess you could definitely do it on your
vehicle hopefully this video was helpful if it was, remember to give it a thumbs up
also if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing the top tip for
this video is if you're having a hard time getting air bubbles out your
cooling system try shaking the car although it seems
silly a lot of times the ship's the cool inside the engine and inside the
radiator and it will burp the air out
