I'm in the process of doing a coolant change. I have drained the original coolant and flushed the system with distilled water 3 times, every time I notice that it only takes 1 to 1.5 gallon of water to fill it back up. Now RAVE says the whole cooling system holds about 3.3 gallons. So now accounting for the water in the system I really should just pour straight coolant in until it's full, right? And even with that I'm still not quite at a 50/50 mix. Just want to run it by the forum to see if I'm missing anything.

Alan

 

How are you draining it?
Are you removing the lower radiator hose and nothing else?
Remove the upper hose too.
You will never get it all out, its inpossible without totally dismantling the whole system.

 

Thanks Spike.
I only removed the lower radiator hose for draining. I agree that there will always be some coolant left in the system and it's going to be an estimation of how much.

What I ended up doing was to pour in about 1.3 gallon of straight coolant + 3/4 bottle of Waterwetter in during my refill. This morning I poured in about 0.2 gallon of distilled water in there since it's low in the expansion tank from cooling down. I think I'm pretty close to the 1.7 gallon of coolant that I need in the system.

 

After you drive it for a week check the freeze point of the coolant with a tester.
BUT you will need to get the tester for the typew of coolant that you used, DexCool uses a different tester than green coolant because it has a different specific gravity and using a "green" tester will give you a false reading.
So, what coolant did you use?

 

I went with your recommendation, Spike, ... or at least most of it. I went with Peak Long Life as I couldn't find the Peak Global Lifetime anywhere around Santa Barbara. Where did you get it? And the Longlife is fine for the cooling system in the Disco, right?
Also knowing that I cannot get all the original coolant out and the Peak says it can be mixed with any other coolant I assume it's an ok approach?

 

And BTW where can I get a tester for the Peak coolant? Thanks.

 

I bought my coolant at Wal-Mart and Meijer (which you dont have).
Yes the coolant that you used will work just fine.
It will mix with the DexCool no prob, and the fact that you already flused the system with like 12 gallons of distilled water I highly doubt that there is much if any DexCool left.
You can get the tester at any autoparts store.
It should read in the -34*F range, dont worry about the boiling point, as long as the freeze point is good then the boiling point will be good also.

 

Well ... my concern was that even with 3 flushes I have run only 3.5 gallons of distilled water through the system since not much came out during each drain (see original post at top of thread). But since Peak can be mixed with DexCool I should be fine.
I looked through the WalMart in Ventura but didn't see the Global Lifetime - I probably ran through the aisle too fast!