Living in Arizona we all know how important a functional cooling system is for your vehicle, so we’re going to cover how to keep it that way and prevent failures within the system. The owner’s manual for your vehicle is a great source of information but some are lacking in the maintenance category, especially regarding coolant. It’s not unusual to see coolant recommended to be changed at 100k-150k miles. In our opinion that’s severely over due and recommend having the system flushed every 30k-50k miles depending on how it tests.
In the early stages of coolant break down the coolant may appear discolored, cloudy, or just plain dirty. If you see these signs, then it’s time to give us a call. Ideally the system should be serviced before you see these symptoms exist. As it worsens a chemical reaction occurs affecting components internally. At that point if you see signs of rust in the radiator, reservoir or cap then you may have waited too long. Rust can spread throughout like wildfire, so if it’s visible at these access points there’s a good chance it can be found in the hoses, heater core, engine block, cylinder heads, oil cooler, basically everywhere. We’ve seen some that have been neglected for long enough that we cannot use a flush to clean the system and requires replacement of expensive components. As the chemicals in the coolant are lost it cannot protect the metal surfaces allowing it to eat away metal anywhere it flows through which can also be damaging to seals and both causing leaks at some point.
So how do we prevent these issues? Our cooling system flush method begins by running a cleaner through the system to break up rust, scale, corrosion, and other deposits from the system. We then use our flush machine to reverse flow the coolant to exchange the old coolant with new coolant using the specified type for each engine. Keeping up on this single maintenance will help prevent costly repairs and vehicle downtime.
If you have any questions about your cooling system or would like to schedule in for service give us a call!
Strictly Diesel, 623-582-4404 sales@strictlydiesel.com
