Cooling System maintenance -Rad Flush ,why its a good thing.

[Luna-Sea]

Hey,
So I am getting the Silver Belle (spouse's L400) ready
for sale which also means getting our 92 Pajero back online.
When we purchased it for a pretty good price I noticed the Pajero's
coolant was reddish. I honestly thought it was somewhat tired
heavy duty coolant,(its Red rather than day-glo green) but I was
so so wrong...

2012-03-29_11-58-12_149 (Medium).jpg (97.18 KiB) Viewed 2001 times

So I channeled the spiritual and contorsional energy of
a tiny handed Mitsubishi Tech/J Farsang small paw,
and got the very badly placed rad drain valve open...

got some yuck in a bucket

2012-03-29_12-29-19_630 (Medium).jpg (63.26 KiB) Viewed 2001 times

Then I got the idea to run the crap through a coffee filter for
a better idea of how much crap was actually in the fluid...

2012-03-29_12-36-37_979 (Medium).jpg (80.89 KiB) Viewed 2001 times

more pics of this to come,cant find all the pics right now.

Also was completely horrified by the sediment in the overflow bottle,
there was a half inch of muddy crap that was a complete pain to get out. I used a hose,toothbrushes for the first attack and then a Dilute
batch of CLR ,seemed to really loosen up the crap. Did not melt the bottle like a was wary of..

Here is a pic of some settled crap ,this was after a couple of flushes with water too....

2012-03-29_16-17-15_878 (Medium).jpg (62.52 KiB) Viewed 2001 times

Good to get that crap out,guess I was driving a classic 4D56 timebomb,hopefully will be averting that fate.

I will post more pics to and edit ,
I have done 8 straight water flushes now(yes 8!) with
the thermostat removed.(less restriction but more smoke for
the first while as it takes longer to get to temperature.
Once the drained water gets somewhat less awful I will run a chemical flush and hopefully loosen up any remaining gunk.

This is somewhat embarrassing that I let this happen to one of my
rides but I feel posting it shows the Mitsu/ JDM community at Large the importance of being sure about your cooling system. The waterpump was actually even new when I took ownership,fooling me into thinking the rest of the cooling system was taken care of.
I have not by some frikkin Mitsu miracle cracked the head and
with luck nursing the Pajero back to fighting shape will help that from happening for a long time.

More to come
May my documented stupidity maybe make someone smarter!

Right On!

[bar1135]

That really looks like someone put some of that liquid sealer in there. Mine looked like that when I bought it. I bought it with a cracked head and someone had tried to seal it, but NEVER use that stuff it is a bastard to flush out. Take your Rad to a rad shop they will charge you $200 but they will brush out all the tubes etc. It is not worth messing around, replace all the Thermostat and rad cap etc.