A coolant flush at proper intervals can save you thousands of dollars in engine and cooling system repairs over the life of your car. Coolant is a fluid most people don’t think about unless they see a puddle on the floor or get the low coolant light. It is a miraculous fluid as it prevents your engine from overheating. Brings hot air into your car on a cold winter day. Keeps everything cool enough for your air conditioning to work in the summer. Keeps gaskets, plastics, rubbers, and metals inside your engine lubricated to prevent corrosion. Coolant won’t freeze in sub zero temperatures or boil until it reaches well above 212 degrees (the boiling point of water). Engine coolant does all this, but after thousands of miles and years of service it degrades and become acidic.
Degraded Coolant
Coolant has corrosion inhibitors which help keep rubbers, plastics, and metals from corroding. Once these inhibitors are depleted after hundreds of drive cycles the coolant will start to deteriorate these rubbers, plastics, and metals. Since your radiator and hoses are made out of plastics and rubbers. The plastic radiator end tanks will crack and leak. Rubber hoses will balloon and leak under pressure. This can be prevented with proper coolant flush intervals. When you replace the old worn fluid with fresh fluid your plastic and rubber cooling components will stay flexible, lubricated, and last tens of thousands of miles over components being run with depleted coolant.
Aside from components of your engine cooling components being damaged you can also incur damage to engine components needing expensive repairs. Your engine needs a great deal of cooling and there are many small passages for coolant and oil particularly in the head(s) on your engine. On many engine designs the oil and coolant passages run parallel to each other or intersect and the only thing separating your engine oil and coolant is a metal or rubber gasket. When coolant gets depleted and turn acidic it will start eating away at this gaskets. When the gaskets lose integrity coolant and oil will start mixing. Oil mixed with coolant look like a chocolate milkshake. If you were to keep driving with this contaminated oil your engine will seize and need a full engine replacement.
Depleted engine coolant can also destroy water pumps. Water pumps are belt or chain driven and use an impeller to move coolant throughout your engine and cooling system. On modern water pumps the impellers are made out of plastic instead of metal and acidic coolant can completely eat away the impellers overheating the engine. Aside from that they can also corrode seal for the water pump bearing causing it to fail.
Clogged Radiators
Old coolant can also cause clogs in your cooling system particularly the radiator. This can be expensive as there are cooling components inside your dash board that can get clogged like the heater core, which can take hours of labor to replace. Aside from needing to replace damaged cooling components from clogs you can also overheat your engine which can lead to warped heads and other very expensive repairs.
All these problems can be prevented by having a simple coolant flush done at the appropriate intervals. The cost of a coolant flush is a small price to pay for peace of mind and will save you thousands of dollars in repair and maintenance fees in the life of your car. On most cars you can easily inspect your coolant by removing your radiator cap when the engine is cold and inspecting the condition of the coolant in your radiator. If you have any question always feel free to Contact Us.
