Oil in coolant

My turn to do these and they will not budge! Any other tips on getting these out before I take a bit more brute force to it? Im struggling to find a suitable puller with enough length to get to the bottom.

 

Go to your local 'O' riley' 'auto zone' type store and they lend tools for free. Borrow a slide hammer pilot bearing puller. The hammer effect is much better than the steady pressure way of prying.

 

Got it. Managed to fudge up a puller of sorts. Unfortunately if I asked any shop around here to borrow a tool, they'd look at me like I had two heads! I wanted to buy a slide hammer but I wasn't sure the attachments would be suitable for this job. Anyway, for anyone interested this is my contraption....

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and after all that, there wasn't much wrong with them..grrr! Not sure I'd fancy doing this with the engine in the car though.

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Same boat as GT Jones here. O rings arrived un-labelled and there seems such a subtle difference in the ring size its difficult to know which is which. It appears one is very slightly larger diameter by about 0.5mm but which one???

I'm tempted to get another set but ordered separately

 

Had the same thing and I'm quite sure I got 4 of the same sizes of o-rings with different part numbers. One should be size 20.5 and the other should be 21.5mm

 

Which one went on the bottom and which one on the top?

 

The top one is bigger, notice the step in size in the picture posted.

 

That would make sense, although because it does to me, it doesn't always to these cars!

The step is greater than the difference in size than on the O ring, that's what threw me. Thanks

 

Look like it’s now my turn to tackle this... I had a couple of hours of panic yesterday after discovering milky sludge at the top of the radiator. Many thanks to all that have contributed to this thread - I think this ranks as one of the most useful threads on F-Chat!

For those that have done this job, how did you flush the oily crud from the coolant system? I was planning on a few cycles of filling with fresh coolant, running the car to operating temp, dumping the coolant, repeat a few times. Will this be necessary? How have others done this?

Parts have been ordered and will tackle next weekend,

Ruben

 

'Cascade' dishwasher soap with water. Dish washer soap works well and does not foam up to much and cuts the oil well. Cascade seems to work the best.

 

Thanks Fritz - did you really put soap into your car’s cooling system?!?

Ruben

 

I did and the other mechanics at the shops I worked at did. It is common practice.

 

Wow, you learn something new every day! Any suggestions as to how to proceed to go about this please? Did you only use water? How many times did you flush?

Thanks in advance!

Ruben

 

Put about a half a cup of the dish washing soap into the radiator, fill with water, cap back on and run to operating temperature with the heater on to make sure it gets cleaned also. After the engine runs for about 15 min. at operating temp. dump and repeat the procedure till you only have clean water coming out when you drain the cooling system.
Of course only do this after the oil leak into the cooling system was repaired.

 

Thanks Fritz - much appreciated!

Ruben

 

It has been said in here before but it bears repeating: The o rings needed are two different part numbers and two different sizes that are almost impossible to differentiate with the human eye so make very, very sure to keep track of which o ring is which and where each is supposed to go! Ask me how I know that this is critical!

 

An update: I’m chickening out on tackling what seems like will be an incredibly messy job of flushing out the oily cooling system multiple times (I have no real easy way to collect/contain the dirty fluids and then dispose of them properly), so I’m opting for taking it to my local shop to have them do it.

Kind of bummed about it since the mechanical piece seems super easy and I was looking forward to tackling it. If anyone has any good tips or suggestions that could make the flushing easy, please share - I’m happy to be swayed.

Thanks for all the info/tips so far!

Ruben

 

One way might be to open the drain petcock on the radiator, insert a hose in the filler and start the car. Keep an eye on the fill rate so it's not too little and shut it down when the water coming out is clean .Drain anything left, button it up and fill with coolant and bleed system . That should get out most of the gunk . I'm not a mechanic so take that into consideration!

 

Hi,
here are the dimensions of the two different O-rings: (see pic)
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