If it warms up this week I'm gonna flush the coolant. By the looks of it it hasn't been done for a while. What size tubing will fit over the drain, it's too cold to go look!!

Thanks

Put it off until it gets warmer. If the top and bottom hoses are original, I suggest replacing them also, along with a new thermostat. Just use OEM parts.

The easiest way to drain both the radiator and engine is to pull off the bottom hose at the engine block and let it pour into a large pan/bucket. The plastic drain on the radiator is prone to break.

Klaus
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Proud owner of a 220S. If I had more room, I would have more Volvos.

I bought some coolant today and it came with a small bottle of rad flush fluid. It says to pour directly into rad and to NOT leave it in aluminum rads for more than 10 min. So my question is will this stuff do more harm than good? The coolant is really dirty and I was planning on flushing it with the hose. Any thoughts?

Matt

You can use it if you want, use the top hose to pour it into the radiator and then disconnect the bottom hose before your 10 minutes are up. Followed by copious amounts of water to get that cleaner out.

I, personally wouldn't use it. I would be afraid to what it would do to my aluminum block if any was left behind.

Don't use the garden hose to flush the block, just the radiator. The block will retain a lot of the water and you are left with a lot of unwanted minerals. Use distilled water only.

Jadnim did it correctly. After closing the system, pour in the gallon of antifreeze and then add distilled water to top it off. Squeeze the top radiator hose a few times to help get some of the air out, run the engine for a couple of minutes to mix and purge air from the system. Let it cool off and recheck the level.

Check the level again after a good run and cool down.

Klaus
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Proud owner of a 220S. If I had more room, I would have more Volvos.

I used one of those flushes in my car but I only left it in for ~6/7 minutes to be safe(r).

Be sure to flush it real good with the hose and then with distilled water.

I was suspicious that I hadn't actually been able to get all the water to drain after the flush, so I poured the coolant in unmixed to then mix with the water left in the system.

I forget the actual capacity but I think it was around 8 liters, which would make for a good 50/50 mix if I used the whole bottle of unmixed coolant and then topped off with water after that. It worked out well I think.

I don't know why you're doing this now though - I'd wait till the springtime brings the warm weather no matter how bad the coolant looks.


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1998 V70 AWD->FWD Turbo 200k+

The coolant looks really bad, and there's been times when the car should be warmer than it is. I just bought the thing and it seems that the PO idea of maintenance was i little different from mine. Think it'll be ok to just top up the coolant and wait til spring?

really it depends on how cold it is where you are. If it's cold at all I'd wait till it's warmer out. A few more months won't hurt it.

A stopgap would be to suck all the old coolant out of the reservoir and refill that. You could actually end up changing most of the coolant just by doing that every weekend - though it's probably not the most cost effective way... and you'd probably still want to do a proper flush in warm weather.

Be careful about not mixing coolants that are incompatible. Some coolants don't mix.

If the car is not warming up as it should, you probably have a thermostat going south on you. Not the end of the world. It to can wait till spring if you can live with the heater's output.

Keeping the fluid topped up properly will keep the heater output at it's best till you can change the thermostat.

Depending on the mileage you may want to think about changing the rad hoses as well when you get to this.

Also remember this is just my advice. You get what you pay for :P
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1998 V70 AWD->FWD Turbo 200k+

I would Klaus, but this coolant is filthy! I might go grab a thermostat too. I did my 240 water pump, thermostat and hoses this time last year and it wasn't too bad.

Matt

as someone who's broken the plastic thing and had to deal with all that, I suggest you just drain from the block hose and flush through.