Washer bottle gunge

Finally got around to fixing the washer pump on bother in law's Orion, pulled the pump off etc. to swap it and realised there was no water running out of the tank because it was clogged with a load of algae. I blew most of it out with a hose and waggled a bottle brush around the bottom of the tank hoping to get rid of most of it, then put everything back together.

Can anyone tell me if the stuff is liable to come back and if so, will using screenwash rather than just water makes any difference? I expect the car usually has plain water in the washers.

Put a couple of small catfish in the reservoir - they will eat the algae. Supplement this with a few fish flakes every other day.

If you adopt the catfish approach don't forget to put in a heater they don't take too kindly to screenwash.

Then you've had someone as cheap as a previous car I owned - they'd put bits of bath soap in the bottle... priceless...

Mark S.

Christ, I did that...... once.

You must understand I'd only been driving for a couple of months at the time.

Anyway - I had a _very_ clean and shiny black Cinq. Sporting, had to take my missus and a couple of friends to Pembroke to get a ferry to Ireland. It was late at night, raining, and I'd run out of water in the washer bottle. So I filled it with water and a drop of washing liquid.

Unfortunately, not only was it _very_ bubbly, it also left lovely white streaks all over the car. Took me ages to clear it out, on account of the washer bottle being in the inner front wing.

Now the funny thing is that except in winter, I always use washing up liquid (Fairy Original normally), because _IME_ it clears grime & insects better than screenwash.

It doesn't froth too badly, and it smells nice.

In winter, I use the correct ratio of antifreeze screenwash, because I had one car where I forgot, it froze, and it blew the washer bottle apart at the seams!

Pete.

It hasn't had Halfords sreenwash in it ?. My mate (and his dad) both used halfords stuff, and it seemed to solidify or something, and all gunged up on both cars. The stuff left in the bottle had also gone this way. Right pain to get out he said.

Graham

Screenwash should help. Is the bottle under bonnet or wing ? i.e Can light get to it ? Darken the bottle as much as possible. Once dark you will be able to drop a PIN HEAD worth of household bleach into the water. It just takes a few parts of bleach per million parts of water to kill bio life such as algae. Such a little amount won't effect bodywork of car (bleach =3D salty =3D corrosion and staining). The dark bottle is to pr= event light (ultra violet spectrum) from returning the bleach back into the salt water it was made from (That is the reason why bleach bottles do not pass light and are often blue). For the doubter put bleach into a clear glass jar in sunlight and in a few days you will have salt water and very little bleach. Ship engine cooling systems produce and inject bleach into the coolant (sea water) to kill marine life that blocks up the system, the coolant is pumped safely back into the sea.