Flushing the coolant, weird color coming out

Chythar · Jan 6, 2009

I'm flushing the coolant on the Cobra right now, and the coolant coming out is a dark brown. It's not rusty water, that has an orange tinge to it. This is a dark brown and smells sorta like coffee. Wouldn't drink it tho.

The donor cobra spent its life in Texas. Is it possible the owner filled the radiator with dirty tap water? It would suck if this was all rust.

I've emptied and refilled the radiator with water about 5 times now, and the drained water is thinning out some. But there's still a lot in the engine. Anyone ever see anything like this?

ScratchinFerTra · Jan 6, 2009

That is what flushes look like in most cases. I doubt there is anything out of the ordinary.
Stan

BlownFiveLiter · Jan 6, 2009

More than likely, it's just rust. Might have a small amount of oil in it, too? Never know if it saw new headgaskets, or something before you owned it.

Edit: And what happened to the cat chomping the pumpkin avatar? I used to LOL when I saw it.

Chythar · Jan 6, 2009

StangGT1995 said:
More than likely, it's just rust. Might have a small amount of oil in it, too? Never know if it saw new headgaskets, or something before you owned it.

Edit: And what happened to the cat chomping the pumpkin avatar? I used to LOL when I saw it.

Doubtful it had new headgaskets, but that's possible. The donor Cobra only has 52,000 miles on it.

As for the avatar, I just felt like a change. If you like the icon that much, I can send the full uncropped image to you.

Still flushing the coolant, one radiator at a time. The stuff is thinning out, finally. A web search for "brown coolant" supports ScratchinFerTra suggestion, badly neglected coolant. Fits with what I know about the donor Cobra, the old oil was kinda sludgy when I drained it.

94-302-vert · Jan 7, 2009

My car was like this... I bought one of the prestone flush kits that you hook to a garden hose... got a TON of crap out and it has looked good since... I vote to jsut get it all buttoned up, put in the prestone kit and then follow the directions to clean it out...

ProKiller · Jan 7, 2009

i would get a good flush kit not just plain water.

vladasap · Jan 7, 2009

i just drained my coolant last night and i was just about to post about this...
i have IDENTICAL issues

so just a good flush will do the trick?
(in my case coolant was replaced just 2-3 months ago when i re-installed the radiator)

GTA_V6_Mustang · Jan 7, 2009

maybe the some genious put dexcool in it AKA HOAT. Just flush the hell out of it.

Bosko5.0 · Jan 7, 2009

Iam 95% sure the previous owner had a coolant leak And they used some stop leak.

Flushing the coolant, weird color coming out

Chythar

Recently finished repairing my rear

ScratchinFerTra

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BlownFiveLiter

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Chythar

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94-302-vert

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