rust inhibiting coolant?

I just drained my coolant system, and I was a bad boy. I didn't put anything in there to stop rust. I thought I would have drained it a lot sooner, but that's not how it worked out. Needless to say, I drained rust water.

I have a coolant system cleaner I plan on running through it once I get the tractor running again. After I drain that out, what is the best product out there to continue to clean out the system, and keep it free from rust?

I didn't say "anti-freeze" because my tractor won't freeze. It's garage kept, and the coldest it gets is 30 degrees outside. Higher in the garage, obviously.

So what should I get?

Use a good quality anti freeze/water 50-50 mixture. It also helps cooling and will contain rust inhibitors.

Any good quality antifreeze will work, but your not going to find anything thats going to remove the rust. You arew going to have to pull the water jacket cover and clean the scale and loose rust out. For coolant, Im kinda partial to the PEAK brands of coolants, as I know the additives the are/were in it. Ive been running the Sierra in my Ms for some time now.

mike, like red dave said, use 50/50 antifreeze. if you mix your own, use distilled water, not tap water. tap water has lots of minerals in it, but distilled water does not.

Mike, Carquest sells an additive that is a rust inhibitor and it lubes the water pump. There are rad flushes you can buy and run through the engine, then flush. I know you are not in a climate that requires anti freeze but...as the others are telling you half and half anti freeze is a designed coolant that has various rust inhibitors and it transfers heat better than plain water.

First to clean up your rust. I'm assuming that since you have had the water jacket cover off that there are no thick accretions of dirt, rust or sludge in there. Also, IIRC, you had your head done over so it should be clean of anything other than light rust and a little crud that might have circulated up that way.

So . . . get yourself to the supermarket and, up on the top shelf, near the 20-Mule Team Borax, you'll find an Arm and Hammer product called Super Washing Soda. It'll be in a box colored just like their baking soda, but is sodium carbonate instead of bicarbonate. Should be in a box that weighs 3lb 7oz. Then go home and dig out your officially licensed reprint of the IH Owner's Manual. Somewhere in the two or three pages devoted to maintenance of the cooling system, they will give you an amount of this washing soda to mix into fresh water to fill your cooling system.

For my SuperC's 15-qt. system, they call for two pounds. Your system is only two quarts larger, so it won't be much different, but this isn't rocket science. Get yourself a standard kitchen mop bucket, 2 gallons or so, and dump about a quarter of the box of soda into it. Stir it up to make sure it's dissolved and pour it into the radiator. Repeat. In the end you should use between half and two-thirds of the box of soda. Top off with plain water.

Then run it with the cap off until it's hot. I know your motor was a distillate, but I don't remember whether you have functioning shutters or not. If so, close them. If not, put a cut up garbage bag or a sheet of plastic over the grille (the suction of the fan will hold it in place) if you have to to get it to heat up enough to get your gauge up into the Run range and leave it run for a while. The point is to get it hot enough to open the thermostat good and wide and let the stuff circulate for a while. (Energy -- like heat -- accelerates chemical reactions.) When it cools so that the side of the crank case and head are comfortable to touch (they don't have to be stone cold, but you don't want ambient air going into a hot motor), drain it. What was brown before will have reacted with the soda and will now be black, and it will stain concrete, so catch it in pails and dump it down the drain.

Then run a hose down the spout to rinse it some, still catching your drainage.

Refill with plain water and give it another good warm run just like the last one just to stir up and flush out as much as you can of any of the soda that might have settled.

At that point any rust in there will be basically neutralized.

Let cool, drain again, and refill with 50/50 of any good antifreeze (Prestone, Zerex, Peak . . . .) Buy the straight stuff you have to mix yourself -- the premixed-50/50 is some mighty expensive water!

And the distilled water someone mentioned is a good idea. It's the only stuff to use for topping up batteries, too.

The even better part of this is that you'll have laundry powder left over for the bride, and maybe even some distilled water she can use in the iron. That might help make up for all the parts you put through the dishwasher in gettin' this rig cleaned up and runnin'!

(You do know that women having smaller feet than men is an evolutionary development. It lets them stand up closer to the kitchen sink.)

HTH

Once you get it cleaned out your best bet is going to be antifreeze. There are products out there which will provide corrosion protection without the freeze protection but boring old antifreeze is probably cheapest, simplest, and easiest to find. If you want something a little better(?) try and find one rated for diesel service as they often have a better/stronger additive package. Sam

I thought about mentioning the diesel stuff. I think the distinction is that it's got some additive that keeps bubbles from forming on the sleeves from cavitation. I don't know whether the bubble are from cavitation in the pump or from the heating of the sleeves, but the additive has been pretty much standard in diesels for a lot of years. If it's from the pump, I don't know whether these old motors or the pumps on them turn fast enough to cavitate or not. Or maybe they figure the car motors won't run as long a s a diesel and they die before it becomes a problem in them so they skip the additive. If the latter, it might be worth it for a tractor motor.

I get mine for the Cummins from a local big-truck dealer, Cat brand. It's costlier than the automotive variety, but not as much as I would have thought. Neither one is cheap.

Scott,

I didn't have the head redone. Maybe the previous owner did back in the 80's. What you may be thinking of is when I pulled the valve cover off, and it was pretty clean in there.

I have already pruchased a flush/cleaning product. So I'll run that first using your directions. Then I'll use the washing soda. The problem with washing soda is finding it! It's as rare as hens teeth around here! I've been looking for it so I'd have it for some electrolysis I want to do on a manifold I'm going to get. I'll keep looking, because it shouldn't be this hard to find.

Thanks for the full instructions. I'm copying them to have for later.

In diesels I believe the cavition comes from the greater combustion pressures. As the engine fires the sleeve expands ever so slighty, as it contracts again bubbles will form on the surface of the sleeve. The problem doesn't begin until the sleeve expands again at which point the bubbles implode and if it's not protected by a suitable additive the bubbles will erode the surface of the sleeve until such a time as they chew right through the liner.

Car engine don't usually suffer from these problems as they don't have sleeves and operate at much lower pressures. They do, however, suffer from all sorts of funky chemical reactions due to the use of 'light' metals such as aluminium.

Something that I think a lot of people fail to realise is that antifreeze (like brake fluid) does actually wear out. Although it will still test good (as far a freeze point is concerned) the corrosion inhibitors etc do wear out over time. The advantage of the diesel coolants (especially the extended life coolants) are that they require less frequent changes. Also if you're running a diesel, the use of and ELC means that you no longer require a coolant filter.

Up here I believe the CAT ELC is going for just shy of $10CDN a gallon. It's good for 3000 hours and up to 6000 if you add extender at 3000 hours. Sam

Ya, but,

Those small feet are a disadvantage when it comes to crushing grapes, finding the brake pedal, and tripping waiters in a restaurant. I prefer Ms Bigfoot but with less body hair.

Now you've said it (more like nailed it) I've had the combustion pressure explained to me as the source of the cavitation.

I'm tryin' to grow old gracefully, but CRS ain't makin' it easy.

Thanks!

mike, heres the instructions for flushing the radiator with washing soda.
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I'm glad we can agree on it. That said I don't think that's going to be a great concern of Mike's in that distallate engine

I had to go and do a search on CRS, but it all makes sense now I know where you're coming from, although I've not yet got to the growing old bit. I just started a new job and it entails remembering a lot of numbers, some short term, others for longer and it does make it harder to remember everything else. I now get to the line up at the Co-op and I can for the life of me remember my number (or is that a side effect of the pretty young cashier?) Sam

;8^)

Gotta love that formula!

My great grandparents' filled their cistern from the rain gutters. All the time they lived there, there was one downspout on a wide dormer that they ran down into a big glazed pickle crock. That was MawMaw's soft water for washing her hair.

Thanks Glenn! I'm not sure I can run the tractor through 10 hours of farm work though. In fact, I know I can't! :lol:

Just fill it and run till hot with regular water a couple times then fill with rain or distilled water and run that a day or two. Then drain and refill with 50/50 antifreeze and fresh distilled water and you will be good to go! The distilled water will get a lot of the scale redissolved if it has any. I got a lot of cloudy water ( dissolved scale) drained from my M and H with rain water. If you are going to just run water in it, an auto parts store should have rust inhibitor and water pump lubricant you can put in with the distilled water.

Cavitation is caused by "hot spots" on any metal, and can happen even is gas engines where air is present. Its just more common to see it in diesels because of the slight expansion in the sleeves/cylinders when a diesel fires. The only real way to stop it is to not use water in a diesel cooling system. Evans is the only coolant I know that doesnt use water at all. Evans is real good stuff, but costly, and does exactly what it says it will do. No I dont sell the stuff, just giving some info. I did use it in my Powerstroke with excellent results, but I use Sierra in my tractors simply because I dont know if there would ever be a leak I didnt know about since I dont get to spend everyday with them.

Mike,

I saw your reference to washing soda. Washing soda is just sodium carbonate (probably has a few additives to make it smell nice as well). If you can't find washing soda, go to any pool supply or even the pool section of WalMart and you can buy it there. It's used to increase the water pH. It will work in your e-tank as well as clean the radiator.