Rusty coolant

[RMS]

I'd like to make a bit of a plug for a product that I used last year.

When I bought my car the cooling system was not in good condition.

I found three holes in hoses, two of the little metal pipes leaking, the 'infernal plug' leaking and a shot water pump. In addition to this there was no coolant in the system, just mucky brown water.

I tried a couple of those radiator flushes from repco but this had no effect on the rust at all - I think they are targeted more at grease and mineral buildup.

After doing a lot of googling I found evaporust on trademe and bought a 5l thing of that. I left it in the system for about two weeks making sure I took it for a drive to warm it up each day because it's meant to work better when warm.

Anyway, after draining that and flushing with copious amounts of clean water, the inside of my cooling system has been clean and the coolant is still clear and green as of last weekend (flushed it in June last year).

So if anyone has an issue with rust in their cooling system you might want to give it a shot.

Note that I had fixed all of the other cooling problems by this stage and I installed a new aluminium radiator right after the flush so that may have had an effect as well in terms of physically removing rust that was in the radiator.
The telling thing for me though is that the overflow bottle had had a layer of brown stuck to the inside of it so that I couldn't see the coolant level through the plastic. I'd tried scrubbing this off with a brush and detergent which didn't work and I couldn't get into every nook and cranny. I tried the pebbles + shaking method along with one of the other radiator flushes I'd had and that didn't work. The evaporust dissolved it right off though.

I hope I don't sound like an infomercial or something, just very happy not to have brown crap in the system any more.

has anyone else had experience killing rust in their cooling system?

Also, one reason I was keen to try it is that it's safe on Aluminium. Reading about killing rust on the internet pointed to acid based products which apparently aren't good for aluminium, probably not a major for anything other than the radiator but still..

[Mr. Shine]

I seem to have a similar issue with my car, so perhaps I'll give it a shot!

[m4vr1k]

Pro tip: Make sure you use a coolant with a corrosion inhibitor! Actual glycol content doesn't really matter, unless you live in an area where the temperature regularly drops below 0.

Also, a good idea when flushing your cooling system is to remove the thermostat. That way you completely remove all the old coolant.

[Gravelben]

Also if your cooling system is a bit gunked up etc, keep an eye out for drips under the car after changing the coolant - my previous MX5 had seriously yucky coolant and then the water pump let go as soon as I had it flushed.

[dethy]

My coolant system is exactly like this - full of brown gunk, even after vigorously flushing everything after the turbo build. I also can't see the coolant level in my overflow bottle because of the buildup inside (which I've tried all the same methods for cleaning) I'll give this stuff a go!
cheers
Martin

[RMS]

Remember to update us on how it goes.

I think the trick is to leave it in there for a decent amount of time. It's not something where you can just run the engine for ten minutes then drain again.

[RMS]

Also I should point out that they do a bunch of different rust killing products but you want the specific coolant system one.

This is the stuff

http://www.evapo-rust.co.nz/Cooling%20S ... 0Flush.htm

[SLYDIT]

When I used to service steam boilers I used an awesome product called hydrochem 204 the stuff was the best. Had to careful with alloy stuff but as long as your sensible with it . It made boiler tanks look like new