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Cleaning Cooling System


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38 minutes ago, JDCrow said:

Yes

Which one did you use?

4 minutes ago, vito.a said:

Yes.  I used it when I switched to Cummins Compleat OAT coolant.  The challenge is rinsing it well.  I think we used 40 gallons of distilled water.  

http://www.irv2.com/forums/f123/changing-green-sca-coolant-for-new-cummins-compleat-oat-389479.html

Which one did you use?

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1 hour ago, gjh2916 said:

Has anyone used Fleetguard Restore or Restore Plus to clean their Cooling System

Being of the….if it ain’t broke,,.., School, as well as a firm believer in preventative maintenance….Maybe the question is “why and will this work”.

There are many of us that are a bit old school and have stuck with the Ethylene Glycol “Green” that came in our MH.  I had mine “replenished” around 25K.  Cummins said that just draining it and not flushing was the recommended action.  I chose to put back in the “green” Cummins Compleat.  I have 67K on it and have the SCA checked each spring when the oil and lube and maintenance is done.  I doubt I do any more….as all looks well.  Maybe have it analyzed.

So the question,,,,,and this is not disparaging those that have upgraded to the newer formulations is…do you need to?  There are many cases of OTR rigs going well over 100K on regular green EG coolant,,,,or more,  

Just a thought…..

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11 minutes ago, gjh2916 said:

Which one did you use?

Which one did you use?

Restore Plus. I was only worried about rust/scale. I did get about a solo cup full of gunk. 

Regular Restore is for Silica, gelling. Ford (motorcraft) gold coolant was a culprit for clogged oil coolers in the 6.0/6.4 and the Restore was awesome at removing the gel, before you installed a new cooler, LOL.

9 minutes ago, Tom Cherry said:

Being of the….if it ain’t broke,,.., School, as well as a firm believer in preventative maintenance….Maybe the question is “why and will this work”.

There are many of us that are a bit old school and have stuck with the Ethylene Glycol “Green” that came in our MH.  I had mine “replenished” around 25K.  Cummins said that just draining it and not flushing was the recommended action.  I chose to put back in the “green” Cummins Compleat.  I have 67K on it and have the SCA checked each spring when the oil and lube and maintenance is done.  I doubt I do any more….as all looks well.  Maybe have it analyzed.

So the question,,,,,and this is not disparaging those that have upgraded to the newer formulations is…do you need to?  There are many cases of OTR rigs going well over 100K on regular green EG coolant,,,,or more,  

Just a thought…..

For me it was to ditch the SCA all together. I do my own maintenance and it was one less test, one less filter to carry/order/install.  

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We first drained the original coolant, then refilled with tap water from the garden hose and drained again.
We then poured in the Cummins Restore Plus flush agent and refilled with tap water from a hose. If you have any oil contamination, use Cummins Restore (1 gal for each 10 gal capacity) and if you want to clean out corrosion and scale use Cummins Restore Plus 1 gal for each 10 gal capacity. We ran the engine until warm and then went to recycle the old coolant. We let the Restore sit in the system while it cooled for the next hour.

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18 minutes ago, JDCrow said:

Restore Plus. I was only worried about rust/scale. I did get about a solo cup full of gunk. 

Regular Restore is for Silica, gelling. Ford (motorcraft) gold coolant was a culprit for clogged oil coolers in the 6.0/6.4 and the Restore was awesome at removing the gel, before you installed a new cooler, LOL.

For me it was to ditch the SCA all together. I do my own maintenance and it was one less test, one less filter to carry/order/install.  

I'm starting to develop a overheating problem, trying everything before pulling radiator. Tested coolant with 3 way test strips results 0/F equals 1.6 in green normal scale.

Thermal valve is working properly. Was going to change thermostat and flush system.

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2 hours ago, gjh2916 said:

Has anyone used Fleetguard Restore or Restore Plus to clean their Cooling System

1 minute ago, jacwjames said:

Towards the end it has recommendations on the of the product you are interested in.  Cummins actually discourages the use unless you have contamination or an overheating problem. 

Recently changed out my coolant with Fleetguard ES Compleat EG Concentrate.  I considered doing a flush with the Restore or Restore Plus, but after I shared the coolant test results with a tech with Fleetguard, they recommended that I do not do either, and just flush the system with tap water and then distilled water.  Reason was that there was no indication in my coolant sample results that I had scaling, gelling or corrosion.

You may consider getting an analysis done of your coolant fluid first before deciding to do either.

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57 minutes ago, Bill R said:

You may consider getting an analysis done of your coolant fluid first before deciding to do either.

Back in 2015 I started to question my ability to interpret the strip tests I was using on my cooling.  I even contacted the local Cummins shop about a system flush and change.  The Cummins manager suggested I sent in a coolant sample for analysis, which I did.  The results came back great, looked like new so I didn't do a coolant change at that point. 

But about 3 months after that my radiator was damaged by road debris and I had to have a new radiator installed, luckily my insurance covered it less my deductible.

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17 hours ago, jacwjames said:

Back in 2015 I started to question my ability to interpret the strip tests I was using on my cooling.  I even contacted the local Cummins shop about a system flush and change.  The Cummins manager suggested I sent in a coolant sample for analysis, which I did.  The results came back great, looked like new so I didn't do a coolant change at that point. 

But about 3 months after that my radiator was damaged by road debris and I had to have a new radiator installed, luckily my insurance covered it less my deductible.

Jim where did you send coolant to get analysis

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3 hours ago, gjh2916 said:

Jim where did you send coolant to get analysis

I've used JG Lubrication.  There are others, Blackstone is one.  I buy 3 kits at a time. 

The kit includes a small bottle, vacuum tube, and the labels.  I have a large syringe that I can pull the sample with.  I pull the sample, fill out the label, send it in and usually have results in ~4 days.  You have to register with the website and they'll email you the results with comments and recommendations.

https://jglubricantservices.com/online_store.html

I've done coolant analysis once, transmission twice, and engine at least 3 times.   When we were building our house the RV did not get used much so I decided to do oil samples instead of annual oil analysis.  This is not conventional thinking but for me I'm comfortable with it knowing that I've stayed up on everything and have been proactive about fixing "stufff".

In my past life we did oil analysis on all large equipment.  We were doing the oil services on the 200 hour intervals ( this would essentially every 11 days on the main pieces of equipment since they ran 23/7/365 @18 hours a day).   So oil sampling was well worth it. 

One of the things we looked for in oil analysis was silica (dirt), which meant the air filter system was compromised, it we caught quick enough we save and engine, if not it would dusted.  Other things were metals. 

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