roger2

I have a 2003 5.9L engine witrh 145K miles. I assume there isn't any block drain? After reading several detailed procedures to flush out old coolant, I was wondering what problems with my way? This my first diesel which I bought used.

I was going to drain radiator, with gravity draining was complete, I would disconnect heater hose at rear of engine and put <> 40 PSI at that point and force rest of coolant from engine block into radiator with the bottom petcock open. If I put air pressure directly to heater connection on rear of engine block any pressure shouldn't be a problem? Putting h/p on heater core might cause have issues. Would it be wise to replace thermostat at this time?

What is life of a water pump that people are experiencing? I would be using oem parts. It appears not to be to difficult to replace unless I'm missing something?

My primary use is towing my 25 ft 5th wheel.

jhenson

Never tried it that way. If you pressurize the system in any way I would take the thermostat as a failsafe just to keep from messing up the heater core. Not sure what kind of pressure it can handle. When I flush mine I drain as much coolant out as possible then hook up my wholehouse water filter fom Home Depot to the water hose and start the truck and let the hose do the work from there. A good 10-15 mins of flushing does the trick so long as the t-stat opens and allows the fresh water to circulate through the system. After re-draining that I go back with 3gal of distilled water and 3gal of coolant.

I also hear that Prestone makes a pretty decent chemical flush for the system. Hmmm...chemical flush....think I'll stick with my water.

jhenson

Oh, and by the way, my water pump has almost 300k on it so I wouldn't worry too much about the life of it. In the case it does start to go out it's a super simple 2 bolt replacement.

NickBeek

Personally I wouldn't use any more pressure then the system is designed for 16psi I believe. I would also stay away from chemical flushes, and be sure to use distilled water and HOAT coolant. I did mine last summer and if I had to do it over again I would have replaced the thermostat while changing the coolant.

.boB

You're making this harder than it needs to be. Step back, and take a dep breath.

Get a bottle of Prestone radiater flush. Follow the directions.

Drain the radiater. If there's a block drain, you can use it. But that generally makes a big mess, and really isn't necessary.

Refill the radiater with hot water. Leave the cap off, and let the engine run until the thermostat open. Open the petcock, and let water drain out the bottom. As it drains, pour hot water into the filler neck.

When you get clear water draining out the bottom of the radiater, you're done. Add the appropriate amount of coolant, and put the cap back on.

Dr.Dizzle

I believe you wold be best served by following the coolant flush procedure outlined by member AH64ID. Using pressure sounds plausable; however, I do feel that you should be cautious of using an unproven flush method. I have attached the coolant flush link for your review. It would be a good time to replace the thermostat as well. The water pump replacement procedure is very simple;however, I am currently running the OEM pump on my 03 without issue. I also maintain 23 2007 Dodge Ram CTDs as part of my job responsibilities. None of the vehicles (some high mileage)have had a water pump failure.


https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...=coolant+flush

AH64ID

Beat me to it.. Thank You.

D-Roc

I just installed G05 in my 98...opened the drain on the rad and let the bulk of it out, until it stopped. Started her up and left it open using hot water to refill and get as much of the previous green stuff out...making sure to get it close to temp so the t stat opened. Took a while, I wasn't in a hurry and wanted to avoid messing with the hoses in case I damaged one as I was the only one in the shop at the time... but worked out well and now both my rigs have the same coolant...much easier to have one coolant on hand.
Unless the coolant's in bad shape with rust and junk in there, I would avoid chemical flushes...but that's just me.

92'1stGen

I took would suggest reading AH64ID's flush method, it's very thorough and filled with useful information. I'll mention a few tips though. I just changed out my water pump, it had 50k on it when it started leaking. I opened the radiator drain to drain the coolant. After a gallon or two had drained, I remove the heater core hose that goes on the hose connection on the back of the block, to allow the block to vent. This allows you to get as much coolant out of the block as possible. I know that it does in fact work because when I refilled the rad, I kept that same hose off of the block and when I got closer to the top of the rad with coolant, coolant started over flowing out of the pipe that I left the hose off of on the back of the block.

AH64ID

I never thought of that... For the first drain I had the t-stat housing off and it flowed out much quicker.

Jeff in TD

Personally, I generally drain the radiator, then unhook a heater line and just hold a running garden hose up to the end until the water overflowing the radiator and coming out the other side of the heater hose runs clear.

Then I hold the hose on the other end of the heater hose until it runs clear.

Once it has drained, if you have hard water where you are you may want to dump in some distilled water and let it drain out to flush out the tap water.

There is always some water left in there, so I usually fill first with antifreeze equal to 50 or 60% of the cooling system capacity, then dump in the distilled water.

I generally only use flushing chemicals if the cooling system has been neglected.

The best way to flush is a subject where reasonable minds may vary...

92'1stGen

To offer a slight different take on "Jeff in TD"s flushing method, (and I don't think there's anything wrong with your method I think it works fine), but I thought about using a small electrical transfer pump, (such as one that you could hook a garden hose too), a 5 gal. bucket or two, and about 20 gals of distilled water. Hook the pump up with some hoses, and fill one of the 5 gal. buckets with distilled water. Turn the pump on and flush the engine out using the distilled water from the bucket. The only problem with this method may be the volume at which the pump is able to pump the distilled water into the engine compared to that of a garden hose. I wouldn't want to over load the system with too much pressure.

Bark

I have not changed mine yet but had read numerous horror stories on this site about problems with the drain plug on the radiator and have been told that it is better to drain it by removing the lower radiator hose from the radiator. Just repeating what I read on DTR.

Rednecktastic

What's up with the distilled water? I've topped mine off with tap water and HOAT a couple times.



My water pump lasted 66K miles.

92'1stGen

Most tap water contains minerals that are hard on cooling systems, and that in the long run will cause damage. Distilled water doesn't have these and that's why it's recommended to use distilled. That could be why your water pump only lasted 66k, but who knows, mine only went 50k () and I'm on the factory coolant.