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The previous owner of my car basically let it sit for awhile and didn’t really do much to it, I noticed I had all this brown gunk in my radiator and flushed it with at the mechanic with water and coolant but I don’t know think he flushed it thoroughly, should I flush the entire system and block or should i just replace the radiator?
No idea... I’ve had the car almost 3 months and I’ve put a lot into it so far, this was the first issue I noticed when the mechanic popped off the cap and it threw up
What I was getting at is that aluminum and plastic don't rust. Rubber hoses don't rust. So what does? Cast iron? Like the engine block? Yep, cast iron will rust. So you need to pull the water jacket plugs out of the block, flush all the garbage out, and go from there. Otherwise the garbage in the block is just going to mix with your new fresh anti-freeze and contaminate it.
Do multiple flushes until (IF) it cleans up. An old radiator shop owner told me to use 1 cup of Lestoil to clean, and baking soda to neutralize acids (not at the same time). Try to remove the 1/4" plugs on each side of the block (center) just above the oil pan rail. Short of removing the "freeze" plugs (good luck with that), those 2 plugs are the only way you can get the chunks out of the lowest areas of the block. Just keep doing the Lestoil flushes with tap water. Run the car for a while so it can clean. Drain and repeat until you are satisfied. Then when you are ready to use coolant again, use DISTILLED water. Because it is winter, when filling the cooling system with water only, you risk freezing and cracking the block if the temperature gets too low.
A friend of mine lost an engine this way.
Here is what I did to my 3.1 V6: I drained the radiator and cooling system and refilled it with a 50/50 mixture of distilled water and white vinegar. I then ran it for a day or two(keeping it in the normal temperature range) and then took it to my mechanic for a full radiator flush- they were NOT happy!! You should have seen all the foaming brown mess that drained out! But it sure cleaned out the system! It looked like I had been running my cooling system with a rootbeer float...
