Quote:
Originally Posted by davids2toys
Interesting thought...since the rad only holds 2 gallons, I am assuming would you do this with the car...?
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No, you do it with the car engine off. The cooling system capacity of our FEs, with the nice big ERA radiator, is right about
four gallons, give or take. What little I remember of fluid dynamics is that the coolant will drain relatively evenly from the bottom to the top. In other words, the mixture that you are pouring in to the top will will disperse "relatively evenly" and the old fluid that is lower will drain out, for the most part, before the fluid at the top. But, let's be really conservative and say of that three gallons that you're pouring in at the top of the system, while simultaneously draining out the bottom, let's say that only two of the gallons makes a complete exchange. In other words, if you had four gallons of crap in your coooling system and you perform the "three gallon simultaneous swap" that you really only end up with two fresh gallons and two left over crap gallons. That also makes the math easier, because you are just reducing each individual component percentage by one half (two over four). How would that play out over the years? If you start with a nice clean system at year 0, this is what each gallon of your system would look like if each year you did a 50% exchange:
Year 0 -- 4 fresh
Year 1 -- 2 fresh, 2 (1 yr old)
Year 2 -- 2 fresh, 1 (1 yr old), 1 (2 yr old)
Year 3 -- 2 fresh, 1 (1 yr old), 1/2 (2 yr old), 1/2 (3 yr old)
Year 4 -- 2 fresh, 1 (1 yr old), 1/2 (2 yr old), 1/4 (3 yr old), 1/4 (4 yr old)
The point being, your system will always be close to 90% fresh (meaning 90% of your coolant has two years or less on it), forever and ever. And that's with just a 50% exchange factor. And no more pesky air bubbles either....
