Using distilled water in the radiator?

The water in my area has a high calcium, iron, and radium content so its only good for drinking, not for automotive use. I learned the hard way after 3 radiators and 3 heater cores in my last car. So now I flush the radiator twice with tap water then flush once more with distilled water. Its cheap enough. Add the appropriate amount of 100% antifreeze and top off with distilled water. I also used distilled water in the window washer.

I prefer to not use any Supplemental Coolant Additives. I cannot answer your Toyota specific questions.

Wow. I'll have to look at those things I've read in a new light. If I can find them again.

Supplemental!!! (I didnt' even notice it when I myself used "coolant additive"!)

Electric steam irons for ironing clothes.The manufacturers reccomend using distilled water so the holes won't clog up.Similar for auto radiators too. cuhulin

this should answer most of your questions:

in short, yes, distilled/deionized water is the way to go. shops that use hose water either don't know, or worse, /do/ know that it'll shorten the life of your cooling system,

[deionized water is NOT softened water or purified water. softened water can be even worse than ordinary hose water. as p.i.h says, distilled is cheap enough.]

some "long life" coolants use a high sodium hydroxide content, which is not well regarded in some quarters. unless you know the chemistry of the new coolant you're proposing to use, the "safe" option is to use toyota coolant or at least one of the "asian vehicle" formulas.

Wow.

So how much water does it take for the 3rd flush? You fill it up... run the engine???... drain it?

So it's just one more gallon?

My Kia only holds about 2 1/2 gallons total and I am able to get most of it out. Yes, fill run up to temp, drain. It takes me half a day to do the work since I let it cool down with the aid of a floor fan between runs. Its not good to add cold water to a hot engine.

I never have used distilled water in my vehicles.I suppose I better start, it is past time I need to change the antifreeze and water in my

1983 Dodge van. cuhulin

are you sure about that? how does the radiator cool the engine?

I think you should change it at least every 28 years.

I think he's speaking loosely or counting the radiator as part of the engine. It's not good to add cold water to a hot radiator. At least not to add it in large amounts. If some of the radiator metal is hot and other parts cold, the difference in heat expansion can cause bends and leaks, aiui.

But I believe one can pour a stream of cold, probably room temp, water in the radiator neck that mixes with the hot water and doesn't cause problems. At least I've done that a lot of times, with no harm afaik.

Thanks.

Yes, iirc, distilled is hardly any more money than purified, whatever that is.

Back in 2000, their owners manual said nothing about this. I hate webforums, for about 20 reasons, but I've tried to read Solaraguy and Toyotanation, and most of the people there have late model cars. Then i tried to read from 2000 on, but it takes so long. Terrrible format, compared to newsgroups and even compared to emaiil lists.

Oh-oh, I did not explain very well. :) I meant its not good to drain the entire system of water at

200+ degrees then immediately fill with very cold water.

micky wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

That's because you're failing to remove the block drain.

When you do the job properly by removing the block drain so the block will empty as it should.

I do that. But then I make sure it all empties out after by removing the block drain.

2000 is not "new. "New" Toyotas take the pink stuff. Yours takes the red stuff.

Me, I'm cultish: I prefer to use what the engineers want me to use, so I forgo a latte at Starbucks so I can afford the few extra bucks to buy Genuine Toyota red coolant.

you explained yourself perfectly, but i however have apparently failed to get my point across or provoke a "thought" reaction.

the whole point of the cooling system is to dump cold water into the engine. unless your engine is at maximum temperature, and your coolant is at freezing, and your engine is defective because it has some kind of casting flaw, any temperature differential you can create with a bottle of fresh coolant is not going to be a problem. radiators don't have thermal expansion problems because the metal is so thin, there's no temperature gradient worth worrying about. and thermal stress in an engine block is well within the bounds of normal operation.

and even this misses the bigger picture of why this myth arises in the first place - you don't change coolant on a hot engine so you don't get scalded!

micky wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Add mine to yours.

I think one of the great tragedies of the modern Internet is the decline of Usenet.

I hate Web boards. They're full of ads and flashy graphics, and there's no proper threading. Usenet is so much more compact and readable, with much more actual information per inch of screen-space than Web boards.

As far as I'm concerned, the only real drawback to Usenet is its unmoderated environment: In most (if not all) groups there's no way to keep spammers out except by killfiling them after the fact, and deleting their posts from your personal archive.

news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

that is why you see the decline of usenet. isp's make money from driving eyeballs to paying advertisers. there's no advertising on usenet.

information

environment:

"moderation" = censorship. censorship is flat out wrong.

if people can't cope with life unfiltered, then they should pull the plug and go back to an agrarian existence without phones, tv or internet.

killfiling them

blocking spam on usenet is no harder than blocking spam on email.

jim beam wrote in news:j81kn0$vk6$ snipped-for-privacy@speranza.aioe.org:

True.

Unless you're Google. Then you give users a Web-board portal to Usenet, and put your ads there, all the while fooling users into thinking Google controls the groups therein...

Censorship is only wrong if you're shutting people up on property that's not yours, or shutting people up in situations where you have third-party status or lower.

The only organization capable of censorship is the government, since that's the /only/ organization with legal power to interfere in situations where the individuals working for the government are neither first- nor second-parties.

I help moderate a Yahoo group, and I can tell you I do /not/ shut people up, even though it would be perfectly within my rights to do so. We have been remarkably successful in keeping the group spam-free.

Usenet's lack of moderation is a form of anarchy. People tend to be un-fond of anarchy. That's just one reason it has declined in conjunction with the rise of Web-boards.

Tegger wrote in news:Xns9F879B9D240E4tegger@

208.90.168.18:

I correct an error I made above: The first sentence should begin, "Censorship only EXISTS if you're shutting...".

no, it's a form of freedom. freedom to say things that pisses other people off - whether that be political free speech, pointing out fact that might contradict someone's cherished opinions or mere profanity.

anyone that could call it "anarchy" does so because they have their own control issues. and, i suspect, is someone who doesn't really understand what "freedom" entails.