Ford 6.4L cooling system flush

[ZRrrr]

I would like to get rid of the Ford Gold and move to Shell's Rotella ELC. Doing research into using Ford's VC-9 or Fleetguards Restore and Restore+ flush it seems this could be an all day affair and perhpas not best to be doing this in winter. I also read a little about using Citric Acid but can't find a lot of details on the concentration or process. Any tips/advice greatly appreciated. Would like to attempt myself, but if too complicated and time consuming, I'm open to having someone else with good experience do the job. Did call one shop I like, but found it was quite pricey.Thanks

 

[acesup800]

Simple. Go buy the 4 jugs of ELC and 10 gal of distilled water from Walmart. Cold or hot, drain the rad from the little plastic peacock at the bottom corner of the rad and unbolt the drain plug at the back under the truck on the drivers side, where the freeze plug would be. Then fill rad with water. Start truck and go for a small spin to ensure it circulates and the thermostat opens. Drain again. Do it one more time. Now this time, fill with ELC coolant. Truck takes 30 L, so dump in 16 L of ELC and top the rest up with water as needed. It will need more as you drive it and the thermostat opens again. This will get 95%+ of the old coolant. Good enough. Also, don't flush it with restore or acid. Too high of a risk or loosening off particles and plugging your oil coolers, etc. Good luck.

 

[ZRrrr]

This is the thing......many guys seem to use a chemical flush of some sort to get rid of silicates left from the Gold coolant, then run a cleaner to descale and remove rust. An all day affair and yes, there is debate about loosening particles and plugging the oil cooler.

Thanks for the input.

Simple. Go buy the 4 jugs of ELC and 10 gal of distilled water from Walmart. Cold or hot, drain the rad from the little plastic peacock at the bottom corner of the rad and unbolt the drain plug at the back under the truck on the drivers side, where the freeze plug would be. Then fill rad with water. Start truck and go for a small spin to ensure it circulates and the thermostat opens. Drain again. Do it one more time. Now this time, fill with ELC coolant. Truck takes 30 L, so dump in 16 L of ELC and top the rest up with water as needed. It will need more as you drive it and the thermostat opens again. This will get 95%+ of the old coolant. Good enough. Also, don't flush it with restore or acid. Too high of a risk or loosening off particles and plugging your oil coolers, etc. Good luck.

 

[uninc...]

What's so bad about the ford coolant?

 

[sirkdev]

What's so bad about the ford coolant?

Its been known to crystallize and is just not the best stuff period. Best off to flush it out and change it out to a ELC type coolant. Opinions vary on this but that what several websites recommend.

 

[ZRrrr]

You have to monitor the nitrite levels. At some point it will need a top up of the additives and even then may not recover. With some of the ELC coolants you can go up to a million miles, no monitoring, no additives, no silicates dropping out of solution.

 

[muzbomb]

I went with the Cat antifreeze and distilled water