How to flush coolant system?

My first BMW was an '88 316 :-)

The Pierburg carb in this car is junk. Replace it with a Weber, better mpg and more power! Your may have a problem with the automatic choke.

Nedavno John Burns pise:

| The Pierburg carb in this car is junk. Replace it with a Weber, better | mpg and more power! Your may have a problem with the automatic choke.

Maybe, but that is not easy to do where I am. I bought manual for my Pierburg 1B2 (still waiting for it to arrive), and I hope to tune so that it performs as it should.

But my main question was how to flush cooling system on my BMW. Anyone with suggestions?

Nedavno Yvan pise:

| But my main question was how to flush cooling system on my BMW. Anyone | with suggestions?

Hire is what I thought:

- Turn heater knob on dash to hot.

- Drain coolant, and live both radiator and engine block drain plugs open

- Disconnect hoses from the carb (for choke operation), plug one of them, and connect garden hose to other

- After a while plug other carb hose, and connect garden hose to first one

- After a while put a garden hose into radiator

- Close the plugs, and fill the cooling system with distilled water

- Repeat last step few times

- Fill the cooling system with 3.5 liter of 100% coolant (total capacity is 7 liter), and fill it up with distilled water.

And that should be it. Any comments?

This is what I used to do. But it's now illegal to let any coolant or the rinse water run onto the ground and into the storm drain. So now I just pay my mechanic to flush it with that pressurized machine that he uses.

Nedavno Rhaspun pi?e:

| This is what I used to do. But it's now illegal to let any coolant or | the rinse water run onto the ground and into the storm drain. So now I | just pay my mechanic to flush it with that pressurized machine that he | uses.

Unfortunately where I am there are no such laws, and everyone disposes coolant the way he wants including mechanics. Usually it goes down the drain (as far as I knew). I will ask around if I can dispose of coolant safe way.

Thanks for your comment. Its is good to knew that I found the right way to flush, I will do it as soon as I this "Siberian" cold wave goes away.

Do a little research and you might find that coolant is really not an environmental hazard. After a few days it is usually broken down by organisms in the soil or sewer systems. They spray essentially the same stuff on airplanes to de-ice all the time. The environmental effects have been negligible.

I asked the question of a friend at an environmental agency a few years back. The response, after a little research, was just to flush it down the sewer system. True, some places won't allow this, but it may be an over-reaction to the potential dangers. There may also be other additives in newer formulations that may be a problem. This I don't know. The EG is only a short term danger to any animals or humans that might ingest it.

Leonard

You have identified the problem in the second excerpt, but you minimize it. Manufacturers of airplane deicing fluid do not make their recipes public - yes, it's mainly ethylene and propylene glycol, but there's a bunch of other stuff in there too. The airport in Toronto, Canada, has spent millions on a deicing facility that recycles the fluid instead of allowing it to go straight into the groundwater. They would not do this if it was harmless.

The same problem exists in automobile coolant- the recipes are top seekrit and the consumer and municipality has no idea what they're dumping into the sewer, which in most places goes with minimal treatment into the surface water.

Aircraft deicing fluid is VERY TOXIC, Ottawa Canada's airport also spent millions building an aircraft deicing center to recover the fluid, even if the aircraft are deiced on the gate a vacuum truck appears minutes after push back to remove the fluid. If a dog or cat drinks the fluid it will die within 24 hours of kidney failure. DO NOT leave an open container of this fluid in a place where animals can get to it as it will KILL them.