Went to get a radiator flush today and the guy at the mobil one care center told me that he couldn't clean my cooling system because it has "pond water" in it Never heard of that before said I need to go to the dealer and have them do a complete flush where they burp the system and it takes 3-4 hours and costs about 4-500 dollars for it. Anyone else had this problem.

 

sounds like an idiot to me.

 

I second that.

 

Pond water=the green stuff maybe?

 

thats what I thought. The radiator cap is pretty gummed up with orange sludge. So you guys think a regular flush will work.

 

Sounds more like lake water than pond water to me?

When I worked for GM, we had this awesome coolant flush machine. You would screw the hose on the radiator cap, or resivoir cap and connect an air hose to the machine. The machine would use vacuum to suck out all of the old coolant. You could actually see the hoses get sucked flat. Then you would flip a switch, and the vacuum in the system would pull in new coolant from the machine.

 

400-500 for a coolant flush ? Guy has no idea, he probably just didn't want to deal with the little job.

 

I vote for that he is an idiot as well. Good for nothing lazy piece of ...

 

Another vote for the idiocy.

 

I completely agree with the idiot. Even the most basic shops like Jiffy Lube (where I was once employed) and mom and pops like Bob's Mufflers will do this.

The "machine" can be as easy as a 5 gallon bucket on a pedastal with new coolant, that has a hole in the bottom that connects to a hose, that connects to your radiator. The upper hose is taken off and connected to another hose (or simply pointed down in to a catch tank).

Your car is then turned on and when the thermostat kicks open, out pumps the old stuff, and in to the radiator goes the new stuff.

Any shop should charge between $50-$70 for a green flush, and $80-90 for Dexcool.

If you go to O'Reilly's and get a big yellow plastic pan, and then get some pvc pipe to vent the old fluid from your upper radiator hose (disconnect it at the radiator), you can actually do this procedure yourself by adding collant to the rad cap when it gets low or drops down. It might be messy, but it'd be super cheap.

Johnny

Oh yeah, turn your heater on so it gets the heater core as well!!

 

I bought a car in CA on ebay, went to pick it up and was going to drive it home and the radiator fluid looked like mud and was about as thick...it was a beater '79 TA...anyway, took it to the nearest jiffy lube and they flushed it out no problem. Drove it right from the Jiffy lube 1400 miles back home So that guy was an idiot....
On a side note, once my wifes car over heated going to a concert, we made it there with fluid spewing out.....after the concert we walked out with any kind of drink that we could get out the door with (since there was no water source anywhere near this place) and filled the radiator with Sprite, some water, a little beer, and what water/ice was left in an ice chest....made it all the way home 50+ miles it overheated due to the electric fans dying, so once we were on the freeway it was ok...... so filling it with pond water isn't out of the question depending on the circumstances.

 

I didn't mean actual pond water. That is just what they call it. Its like rust colored water and has chunks of gummed up attifreeze in it.

 

It sounds like it was overdosed sometime with the stop leak tablets.

 

While working as a Service Manager for a national tire chain store, I had a customer come back shortly after having her '03 Impala coolant flushed (on one of the badass computerized machines). She had gone to the dealership because there were some air bubbles in the heater core that hadn't been fully bled out. The dealer had told her $500 to remove the heater core and bleed the system. Not replace the heater core, just remove it and put the same one back in. Somehow they had convinced her that she needed to get this done as we couldn't do it and taking out the heater core was the only way to get that pesky air bubble out. She was pretty pissed.

Once I pointed out to her that removing the heater core, and putting it back in wouldn't bleed the system or the air bubble, she calmed down. So we reflushed it, rebled it, got the damn air bubble out of the heater core, and wham bam thank you ma'am she said "you saved me $500" but in reality there's just some crooked people out there. Some of them happen to work in the auto industry.

Mook, sounds like the guy at Mobil didn't know what he was doing. I took my T/A to the Mobil down the street one day cause I was in a hurry and overdue by a couple hundred miles for my oil change. The guy there told me I should get my tranny fluid flushed. I have an M6. That's the first I've ever heard of flushing a manual transmission. I asked him how he planned on doing that, he couldn't really give me a good answer. But they didn't screw up my oil change luckily.

Abe