jeremy, do yourself a favor and go to lowes and get 4 bottles the white jug cleaning vinegar brand [style] pour in 2 bottles and run it all day, drain and come back to tell us what come out, youll be amazed, cheap,easy to get,safe,works, i did and it works, i know your hearing the vc-9 deal and never about this but it worked period, your gonna need to direct backflush the cooler or replace soon.

 

Awesome I will definitely do this as it appears a few people suggested this as well. I do direct oil cooler back flushes every 1,200 miles so I will run the vinegar and see how it works. I will definitely report back.

 

I've never tried the vinegar but ran the Restore Plus (it's the same as VC-9) for 8 hours without any issues.

 

And just a thought cause I'm going to do an oil cooler this weekend


Make sure to flush the heater core kick it on
Then I'm going to set my filter to do 100% of the heater return side but my coolant filter lines are ALL 5/8" but there is dirt hiding in there

I'm thinking to install a bypass for the filter in the event it plugs or it's cold enough I need extra flow that the filter may restrict when I need the heater

I may have a bug or two to work out but any things possible

 

A couple more things to consider, first are the corrosion products you're seeing old stuff that's laying in the skirt of the block or is the engine dissolving from the inside? You didn't mention the block drains but that's where the heaviest particles are going to be. As you found, the heavy stuff isn't going to find its way up into the high mounted filter. Given the number and size of the particles I wouldn't worry about the fumoto valves because the drain hole is smaller. It is possible to get the passenger side drain plug out with an Allen socket and a swivel without dropping the starter and the driver side is very accessible. Check SrMasterTech's coolant flush videos (it's in two parts) on YouTube. Revving the engine with the block drain plugs removed makes significant mechanical leverage against any residue or particles inside the lower block.

No matter what chemicals you use, it's important to get all of it out of the system on the flush. Leaving any residue, wether it's alkaline or acid, can promote corrosion much quicker than you might think. Getting coolant back in there quickly after the flush is important also.

Corrosion is an electrochemical process. It takes electricity flow to occur. Double check and clean up any suspicious cables and ground connections (there are quite a few of them all over the truck) particularly at the batteries, frame, and engine block. Jack (TooManyToys) posted up some great info on what to look for and potential upgrades for our trucks. The thread is here in the 6.0 section of FTE.

It seems to me that there are a few engines and other cast iorn parts out there that just "want" to corrode, I don't know if it's related to the mix of metals in the iron or some other reason but if you get it cleaned out very well, you can't find any difference in potential electrically, and it's still shedding, a sacrificial anode in the coolant system may slow it down enough to allow for a normal lifespan.

 

Ive tried em all over the yrs, the restore is great as the vc-9 if you can get it,this is something you can get in any small town usa cheap seven days a week,i dont know how or why it does what it does, i run it in mine for about 200 miles then drained.Then run just water few times before reinstalling anti freeze.

 

I bought VC-9 today from local ford $$29.91 a QT

Spendy

I read the bottle it said to not exceed 10% capacity with vc-9

2 qts what I use never had any rust issue just casting sand so far


Please post results of the vinegar if you do it I haven't heard much about it till recently

 

Has anyone ever tried CLR to clean up a cooling system? Would probably eat every hose, though.

 

Rusty,if that much rust comes out and he flushes till nothing more seen and adds anti freeze,should it then stop or will it keep flaking deeper and deeper over the yrs.

 

Rusty brought up a really good point about corrosion in the system (tried to rep, can't) that I haven't talked about recently. Over with the 7.3L where I first used a coolant filter I adopted the use of a sacrificial anode. With 7.3L we used to see significant corrosion of the TS housing, so for my application I added the anode. For the 50k miles I had the truck it never had any of the corrosion that others had seen. Some info on that is in my Facebook photo album covering the subject. My 6.0 still retains an anode.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...2926478&type=3

 

I'd like to say it would stop but really it depends on what's going on in the first place. Ironically, antifreeze prevents deep scaling corrosion by promoting a thin layer of fine grained corrosion that builds into a kind of insulating layer over a short time while at the same time keeping the coolant pH neutral to inhibit electrical flow through the surface of the metals. All of that is good stuff but with so many different metals in an engine in contact with each other, the electrical "difference of potential" will always be there and some degree of corrosion will be happening somewhere. As Neil Young said, "Rust never sleeps".

Doing as you suggested, and going over the the electrical connections and putting an anode on there would be my plan.

 

Hope the op comes back to at least tell how the vinegar worked in his situation, im thinking he needs to have his radiator out and cleaned before next winter comes,by then it prob be packed in it like its prob going to do his oil cooler.