Has anyone ever heard of using water and dishwashing liquid to clean out the radiator. Our mechanic at my fire department does this to the firetrucks when he services them. He drains it, feels it up with water and dishwashing soap and then runs them up and down the highway. Brings them back, flushes them out, then fill them up with coolant. He says this really cleans the radiator and lines really good, didnt know if this would work on our trucks. thanks

 

That is a new one on me. Who is going to take one for the team? I have taken the WVO for the team

 

I'll bet that keeps em smelling lemony fresh too !!

 

I've heard of it but only when the oil cooler went bad.They used Dawn to cut the oil.

 

I think I remember Jakebrake saying something about using automatic dishwashing detergent (Cascade?) for this purpose.

 

Well I do something similar on the powerstrokes, except I use Simple Green. Pour a big jug of that in the cooling system, fill the rest up with water. Then I get the engine to about 200 degrees or so and let it run for around 10 mins like that. After that, I pull the drain plug out of the radiator and flush it with water until it runs out clear. I've had trucks come back 6 months later after doing that and the coolant is as clean as when I put it in(the 6.0's use Gold coolant so its really easy to tell).

 

We flush out the rads that way when they loose an oil cooler, but remeber to use the powdered soap like cascade. If its rust and scale that your trying to clean out, it best to use a radiator flush like Donaldson p/n P901870

 

Jake, where can I buy this Donaldson at. also, I dont know if the radiator has ever been serviced at all so I want to make sure to clean as well as i can. How much cascade should I use if I go this route. Also, do I pour the cascade the resevoir or the opening where the actual radiator cap is. I do know the manual says to fill it up through the resevoir. Thanks.

 

Either one is good really, as you want this to clean your whole cooling system. Just flushing the radiator out doesn't do much good if all your hoses and the block and head are full of crap.

 

personally if i were doing the flush i would try to unbolt the overflow bottle if you can easily and then rinse it really good. then flush the rest of the cooling system. i have used the powdered draino before when doing some cooling system flushes. the only times i have used it though were on a 67 Rambler American and a 68 AMC AMX. it seemed to work really good especially since the blocks were pretty plugged up and i actually had to open the drain plugs in the block and stick in a coat hanger to get them to flush out all of the gunk. the only problem with using draino is that if you are not careful it can eat away your core plugs in the block and then you are in trouble. atleast it will do this on the older cars.