just want to share. I flushed my cooling system this morning. brought on by a Tstat change a couple weeks ago, where I noticed poor quality coolant. despite the fact the antifreeze was bright green under the rad cap and overflow cap, what came out was surprising.

I broke the system up into 3 different flushes. the heater core, the radiator, and the engine. removed the Tstat then I disconnected both heater hoses and the upper rad hose at the Tstat housing. I disconnected the lower rad hose at the water pump.

I flushed the heater core both ways and wow, a bunch of crap came out. it would flush clean one way and dirty the other. I kept alternating hoses until it was all clean; took maybe 4 times each way. then I flushed the rad feeding thru the upper rad hose. not much bad stuff came out. engine wasn't holding much bad coolant either.

I drained everything I could and refilled with a Prestone and distilled water mix. I had no cooling issues before, simply thought a flush was in order due to the not so good coolant that came out when I swapped Tstats.

 

I need to do the same thing. I have replaced all the hoses and will be flushing when I get a new water pump/tstat/tstat housing.
Did you just stick a water hose in to flush or did you use a cleaning agent?

 

Perfect time to flush your heater cores with winter just around the corner. Just did mine a few weekends ago when I put on a Hesco water pump and high flow tstat housing.

 

I just used the hose.

edit: my heater worked *ok before. i noticed on the way in to work this morning it is a dragon now. dayum.

 

has anyone ever used CASCADE dish washing liquid as a cleaning agent? about 1 cup in the radiator, drive a couple of hours, drain. works great.

 

I've used CLR before. How much flushing did you have to do?

 

I was afraid of using any kind of cleaner out of fear it'd break loose gom I didn't want floating around in there.

 

after running the CASCADE about 2 hours, I drained and refilled with water and antifreeze. no problems. wasn't a Cherokee but a IH Scout 340 V8.

 

i did this last fall on my 99 when i had it

i flushed the heater core

i put the bottom hose to the heater core into a empty milk jug to see if anything came out


i couldnt believe what i seen

i had chunks of ....well i dont even know what it was. It was bad

And yes my heater after would get hot enough to melt the dash it seemed

 

this lol

 

If you do a regular flush on the cooling system as a regular maintenance item you shouldn't need to use any of those chemicals. I have never had to use any of that stuff since I bought my 98 XJ and I have never had a problem with the cooling system and I have had it for over 10 years now.

 

Yes,several times. Works better than any flush you can buy. Cascade is about the only thing that will clean up a system that had HOAT/OAT type antifreeze (G-05,prestone,dexcool) that turned into that famous brown mud. The proper method at GM dealerships is to use a acid followed with a neutralizer.

 

How much CLR did you use when you flushed?

 

....