Mine had been off-roaded in wet muddy conditions by PO. I took my air compressor and blew a ton of red dust out of it. Looked like a desert sand storm. Others have reported lots of leaves and stuff cluttered up between rad and AC fins.

 

So I just started tearing the radiator out and when I pulled the upper rad hose off fresh antifreeze drained out. Once the top of the tank drained out I could see some milky white fluid was present. What does that mean?

 

Milky white fluid in the radiator?

 

Oil in coolant not good sign. But crusty white stuff on rad tubes is calcium build up (not using distilled water), might be seeing that thru the liquid. And if you had used a rad flush, some gunk could be floating around. And there is always the previous owner applied "stopz leekz" to contend with. When you have rad worked on be sure they test the oil and tranny coolers for free flow (no obstruction) and no cross over to coolant portion of the radiator.

 

It's not like oil though, unless the PO put fairy dust in his oil lol. It's kind of sparkly and a bit grainy. I found a chunk of it, one side was all creamy white and sparkly and the other was black. The chunk was in the upper intake when I took out the thermostat(which was held in with only one bolt). It's about the size of pea, but it's flat.... Sorry no pics yet, I don't have a computer right now, it's at the shop.

 

Calcium crystals, build up in cooling system where regular water or the very worse - well water - was used. Sometimes if you take out the top plug on the D1 radiator you can shine a flashlight in and see this on the ends of the tubes.

A dip in the hot acid tank at the rad shop (they pump it through) will dissolve most of this, and they can rod out the rest.

 

Great news! It had a 195 degree thermostat in it.... Seems a bit warm to me though.. I have heard people run a 180. Is that a good idea? Or stick with the 195?

 

Well I ran the 180 and got about 10 MPG. I did nothing more than switch to 195 and got 12 MPG on my last tank. I want to run another tank through before I confirm this but initial indications are good. The good thing with a D1 is you don't have to wait too long to fill up again for back-to-back comparisons! :-O


The only downside to the 195 for me is that I do get the temp gauge to move up a bit (like 10:00) on the long drive up the mountain to go skiing. It's a 9% grade for about 5 miles. It never moved with the 180 t-stat.


I'm not convinced my gauge or sender is any good though as it is very sensitive. My guage is on the rise before getting out of my driveway and near 'normal' by the end of our road (about a block). And that's after sitting outside all night with temps in the teens.

 

I've run 180 and gotten in the 15 mpg and more range, and I've run a 160. A D2 has only one temp, a 180. That is based on the American way of saying something is "X" temp when it starts to open, fully open is about 15F higher. A D2 starts to open at 180 F. Of course I'm in the flat lands. If you can use a scanner for temp readings much better idea of what is going on, but that requires OBD2 port.

 

Can somebody get rid of the spammer?