Latter half of my 99 Taurus' life, we had to back flush the heater core every other year, then every year, to get heat during the Winter. I just had my mechanic do it every time he replaced a water pump, which was every other year, or every Fall if it was an off year for the water pump. I never scheduled an appointment just for the heater core because something else would always come up. Always.
Those with older model Taurus's
- Thread starter camperbob
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Just did this to mine 3 weeks ago. Coolant is running green for now.
My 99 Vulcan has been running Prestone all makes for quite some time probably 6 years? The core was plugged when I flushed it anyways.
Even after flushing and back flushing and getting all kinds of brown rusty stuff out the heat never lasts the whole winter.
Surprisingly it's still on the oem water pump at 145k miles. I actually bought one to replace at one time and changed my mind.
I think the system actually stays cleaner with it than green.
If I was going to do it again I'd probably use Motorcraft Gold or Zerex G05.
Even after flushing and back flushing and getting all kinds of brown rusty stuff out the heat never lasts the whole winter.
Surprisingly it's still on the oem water pump at 145k miles. I actually bought one to replace at one time and changed my mind.
I think the system actually stays cleaner with it than green.
If I was going to do it again I'd probably use Motorcraft Gold or Zerex G05.
Don't let the neighbors see you do this, but this is what I did on mine when the system was gunked up. Drain coolant, disconnect the hoses from heater core, use garden hose at full pressure with a trigger nozzle to blast water one way through the heater core, then the other. Did that repeatedly. I mean repeatedly. There was rusty, muddy, nasty stuff flowing out both ways for quite some time before I was getting nice clean water. And I would pulse the trigger, like full blast on, off, on quickly. After doing that, the heater finally worked! And the coolant stayed looking nice until I ended up selling it. The previous owner had replaced the transmission and once I fixed a few little things, I really loved that car. Drove very nice and got respectable gas mileage for its size and being a 98 and all.
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