I've tried it all now. The car doesn't overheat, doesn't run funny. It's just the coolant is nasty brown. I will flush it until the water is clear (even if it's clear there is a brown tint still) then run it for a week and flush. Last weekend I flushed it 3 times in one day and it still turned brown. Here's what I've bought:

-Prestone Back flush kit
-back flushed 4 times in last week
-2 bottles of Prestone Super Flush bottles to help remove rust deposits
-1 vial of Bar Leak
-1 bottle of coolant.

What else now? Is the raditator rotten? What keeps turning the water brown?

I feel I need to conquer this coolant before I spend money on the AC.

Please help!!!!

-Kevin

 

Keep flushing it with water until its clear. If you dont want to keep buying those flushing fluids, just go through the same process with water until its clear (idle 10 mins, heater on 10 mins, flush, repeat, etc). If it gets clear but then turns brown again in a week, just keep flushing it. The brown color is most likely rust deposits from somewhere in the cooling system (probably radiator). Eventually you will flush it all out if you keep doing it. My Camaro has the same problem except the fluid turns white, probably from carbon buildup in the intake manifold (firewall side). Just keep flushing it.

 

I had the same problem.Never overheated but coolent would turn brown no matter how much I flushed it Original rad . BTW.Now that I have a new rad. it stays nice and green and runs cooler too.

 

I'll keep doing it. I have no other choice right now. If the car was overheating I could see replacing the radiator, but it's ok. Won't running just water make the rust worse?

I just can't believe how much rusty water comes out w/i a week. It's like the rist particles hide somewhere, then turn all the nice clean water particles to the dark side and they all become rust particles. Anyway that's my dandy little Sci-Fi analogy.

 

Using just water for flushing it should be alright. When you fill it back up to use the car, straight water isnt a good idea because it'll prematurely wear the seals in the system. You need something else to act as lubrication. Aside from that, water is fine as long as you are in a warm temp area. Like you, I live in a warm area so I run a mix of majority water. My mix is 80% distilled water, 10% antifreeze, and 10% water wetter. If either of us lived in an area where it gets cold you'd want to use more antifreeze and less water.

Another idea to clean up your radiator is to remove the entire thing, get a big tupperware bucket (or whatever), and soak it overnight in one of those rust stripping fluids. Then flush it out with the hose, reinstall, flush the system a few more times and refill with the good stuff.

 

And now that I have a new radiator I run distilled water With antifreeze of course

 

I have no time to do that sort of thing, and no container big enough to store it. But thanks for the suggestion. I'll keep doing it every weekend until I can get a new radiator or it's clean. Hopefully clean comes first.

One more thought, won't a rusty radiator be bad soon enough anyway? I mean once it deteriorates and starts to rust, it's pretty much on borrowed time right?

 

Correct. Unless the corrosion is coming from the heater core. If you are pretty confident that it IS the radiator, then just bite the bullet and go spend the like $110 for the new radiator. (here comes a radiator war...)
Run 50/50 antifreeze/distilled water. if you're too tapped out to buy a gallon of water, just let a jug sit out for like a day....

 

Like I said before the previous owner put in a new radiator and hoses. I'm 99.9999% sure the radiator is good, but if it is the heater core, how can I be sure?

How much are they and how much of a p.i.t.a. is it to fix?

 

yeah mine does that too. i flushed it out and i drove around and it was brown again. i was thinkin of takin it to a place to have it looked at but if all i have to do is keep flushing it out ill keep doing that.