I received a 2000 Chevy Blazer that has poor heat output. The coolant temp only reached 140 so I replaced the Thermostat. Now the coolant temp reaches 195-200. The heater is still very weak. When the Thermostat was out I could see a lot of scale or deposits . My plan is to drain the old coolant and fill the system with vinegar or water and CLR. Then run it around town until I get good heat . Is my plan sound or a recipe for heartbreak and suffering?
Don't do the whole thing. CLR in the heater core for an hour or so, then a good garden hose flushing.
Ok. Thanks for th advice
I've had luck with running clr and water for a bit then flushing it. Ymmv.
I tried vinegar in the challenge car. Holy crap the stuff that's coming out....
I like the idea of doing the heater core by itself, but I don't think I'd let the vinegar sit in there, better for it to circulate. I'd do it like a tankless water heater descale -- 5 gallon bucket, 2-3 gallons of white vinegar, a pond pump from the hardware store, and a couple pieces of hose. Pump the vinegar through for an hour or so.
What about powdered dishwasher detergent? I heard it somewhere on the internet that it cleans the oily junk out of a cooling system.
The 6.0 Powerstroke guys use it after the wonderful oil cooler inevitably fails.
I'm not sure it would be effective on scale though.
Is there a possibility that it's not scale, but an air bubble? I put a vacuum cleaner on the fill cap of my car and greatly improved my heater performance.
Is it possible the blend door might be messed up?
Update. I opened the petcock on the radiator and stained it. I have about 5 or 6 quarts of white vinegar in the system. After 20 miles around town it is noticeably warmer. I intend to drive to the other side of the county for dinner and see what happens. If I turn the temperature knob to cold it blows cold (35 degrees F outdoors). I might have a mixing valve problem but it ain't my only problem. I did not mention this blazer has 306,450 miles on it. A lady friend that I used to live with bought it new and has maintained it very well. However it has hardly been driven in the past 6 or 7 years. Changing the Thermostat I broke a stud on the Thermostat housing. This is my temporary repair. I tightened it as much as possible by hand then put 4 full turns on it utilizing pliers .
CLR can eat things, be careful. It specifically says not to use it on aluminum.
Vinegar is for french fries. It is far too weak to do any real good. Acids increase surface tension so they don't help wash anything away, and it's not a strong enough acid to eat anything away.
Given your truck's tendency to leak at the intake manifold, I might suspect that someone threw in a few bottles of copper stop leak. That exact thing happened with my Fordzda Branger. A coolant flush revealed what I thought was rust, but it ended up being stop leak. About the only thing you can do for that (if that's what it is) is rig up a closed-circuit solvent bath. Hook up a fuel pump to a bucket of some solvent with a relatively low evap temp like mineral spirits, isopropyl alcohol, etc, and flush the heater core for a couple hours. Flush it out with water for a while, and anything that might be left of the solvent will evaporate with the hot coolant. Alcohol is miscible in water, so it's pretty safe. A petroleum product like Mineral spirits might not play well with some coolants
Stop leak coats the inside of the aluminum in the heater core and stops some of the heat from transferring.
Curtis said:Vinegar is for french fries. It is far too weak to do any real good.
I'm not sure that's true; some people use it for rust removal so it must do something. Heat it up and have it pumped around with lots of flow like you have in a cooling system and I think it might be a pretty effective solvent. You want it to be relatively weak as running a strong acid through your cooling system seems like a recipe for disaster.
In reply to dculberson :
Yes, it can be used as a rust removal thing, but it takes weeks and months, and we're also talking about an aluminum heater core with a pasty adhesive. I don't think vinegar is the solution (pun intended)
If it is stop leak (which we don't know) he needs a solvent, not an acid. Technically speaking, vinegar isn't a solvent, it is an oxidizer.
Using acid in a coolant system seems like setting the house on fire to kill a spider. Too many mixed metals, and by the time the acid does its trick in one part of the system it might have turned other parts into powder.
Update . It seems to be warmer. I did find some Bars Leak in the truck, I don't know if any has ever been used in it. I am beginning to suspect an air pocket in the heater. With the fan and radio off I can hear a gurgle type noise upon acceleration
That is a sure sign of air.
So it depends on what you want to remove. Vinegar works great for descaling (removing calcium carbonate deposits). Ideally there shouldn't be any in there in the first place (that's why you're supposed to use distilled water in the radiator), but if there is then the vinegar will get rid of it fairly quickly without eating through anything else.
It's not going to touch rust in a short period of time, so if that's what's clogging the heater core then it won't help.
Could also be some Dex sludge in the thing as well as the other previously mentioned stuff...
Never tried it on a car, but when my coffee pot gets all black, gooey and the basket won't drip, I put in a little Cream of Tartar and run it. Rinse it well. Looks like new without the chemical attack.
Back Flush the heater core with garden hose?
I used Super Clean on the last oily cooling system I cleaned.
In reply to bentwrench :
You got canoefished
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