Use distilled water to flush and then fill up with coolant.
How will you capture the flushed coolant? If you let it run onto ground, it will kill animals if they drink it. Any dogs around?
If you want to get all of that rust/corrosion out the system, try this stuff: https://cms.fleetguard.com/en_NA/li...retm-plus-heavy-duty-coolant-cleaners/lt36625
I would drain coolant properly. Catch what ever comes out. Then I would connect water hose and fill it. by now what ever left over in the system will be diluted enough to make it safer. Then start the engine, open radiator on the bottom and let it run/flush for couple of minutes.
This will leave it with significantly less than a 50% mix as about half of the coolant is still in the rest of the system. It's better to add half the cooling system's volume of concentrated coolant and top off with water.
Restore Plus would be the way to go for rust, it’s similar to citric acid acid flush. Good news is, silicate gel (caused by SCA overtreatment) shouldn’t be an issue in a Cummins B, it doesn’t need them.
But that doesn’t inform you if the corrosion inhibitors and other additives are present. The glycol is obviously important, but it won’t go bad…
Not that coolant should be allowed to go onto the ground, but Congress passed a law in 2005 that denatonium benzoate (a bittering agent) has to be added to antifreeze to prevent animals and kids from drinking the stuff. Basically, it's all yucky tasting now.
I had a 5 gallon drain pan under the truck.
Coolant test strips are usually great for that purpose.
Right..... But he said he Flushed it with water so he needs to get the right ratio for freeze/boil protection and enough corrosion inhibators
Those things are spendy. Why do they have so many in a container?
How much and what are you looking at? I might be able to hook you up.
Oh so one for ethylene glycol and a different one for propylene, etc?
No, I meant that the test strips usually check for additive levels in addition to the ethylene glycol content. Like silicate levels for conventional green coolant or SCA anti-cavitation additives for certain types of diesel coolants.
Our 3-Way test strips are good for all nitrite-based coolants...older technologies so it's more consistent across different brands of product. When you get into OAT coolants though, those test strips do tend to be brand specific because the additive chemistries are more varied.
