Yeah, that's not happening. First off, I can mix it myself. The 50/50 stuff is a rip off.

 

For peace of mind you can use a block tester to test the head gaskets Its a blue liquid that changes color in the presence of hydrocarbons. You put the tool on the degas bottle with the engine running and wait for the bubbles. Any combustion gases in the cooling system will bubble through the liquid and change the color.

 

Thanks. It looks like I can "rent" that from O-Reilly's too. I might as well do that, even though I think everything is fine. My wife has been driving it for couple days and we took it out of town on Saturday (1 hour each way). It's been driving normal, except that the engine temp never got to normal with out the thermostat, obviously. I bought a new degas bottle last night as the old one was pretty nasty and I think I finally got the system flushed.

What I think caused this whole issue is severe neglect of the cooling system. We bought it about 5.5 years ago, and the cooling system had been neglected by the PO. I drained and added new coolant shortly after buying it, but did not effectively flush the system. The coolant still had a nasty brown color. When I changed the head gaskets I noticed a nasty film/sludge in all the cooling passages. I replaced the coolant again, but I think the job had loosened up all that crap and the coolant still had that nasty brown color. For the last week or so, I've just been running water and Blue Devil radiator flush, draining it every couple days. Last night I opened the radiator drain with the engine running and both heaters on full blast, and just sat there adding more water to the degas bottle until it finally came out clean.

Anyway, it looks like ZEREX G-05 just went on sale at NAPA, $13.99 for concentrate. Guess I'll pick up 3 bottles of that and distilled water tonight. Hopefully one more drain, purge the water from the heater cores, re-install thermostat, fill, and finally be done with this headache.

 

Yep most people neglect the cooling system. Ford has a chemical called VC-9 that works very well to clean out deposits. Its intended for the 6.4 diesel but I used it on my F150 to get rid of minerals that kept building up in my radiator.

 

Dclack. Did this resolve your overheat issue? I had almost the same exact chain of events on my 03 EB.

 

Yes sir. The car ran great until we sold it a year later.

 

Awesome. Thanks for.the quick reply!