Serious sludge found in overflow bottle (1 Viewer)

[RavenTai]

Well my two years and a little more were up, time to do a second coolant flush and fill,

After pulling out the overflow and pouring off the coolant I looked in and found a thick mud like deposit at the bottom maybe 1/8-1/4" thick. I stirred it up with a screwdriver, it was not solid or particularly stuck together more just settled, it acts like river silt or wet clay. last time I found just small amounts in a few places like settled right in front of the thermostat and alike and it was grayish green in color, my 80 came with a mix of red and green coolant, this time the sludge is an earthy beige to brown. Color from the red coolant? or is it a different material this time?

Well anyway I put some water in the overflow and shook it up and the stuff came out like chocolate milk, I have it settling in a mason jar overnight.

I have always had some sludge in the radiator cap between the two seals, even if I cleaned it off it came back, I think I know why now the tube in the overflow gets its fluid from the very bottom where all this silt was, every time the engine cools it sucks up a load of this crap, so I cut about 1" off the tube to make it level with the low line, now anything that settles in the overflow will stay there not bothering the water pump or radiator, only downside is that if the level gets very low the radiator is more likely to suck air and will not have access to the last inch of fluid in the overflow bottle but that should not be a problem as I keep a good eye on it.

I am going to have a good size sample of this stuff I need to find a way to test it. Unfortunately I am a light weight in chemistry. going to re read Rich’s separation process. There is a lot of larger black sand like bits in it also,


pics

Original tube
Trimmed tube
Jar full of settling funk

 

[RavenTai]

more pics

1, directly after the first drain, notice the black patches, it does not show well but that is the black grit/sand settles together in low spots

2, after flush for comparison, black sand gone (or at least moved to somewhere else)

3, even after a long hose backflush and a drain and fill with water this particulate is still circulating

 

[instigator]

man you shoulda put that bypass on it . my system really does catch that crap, speaking of which, i need to change the filter . too bad we aint at the big D we'd get you set up in no time.

 

[cpg]

Hi Raven
How are you flushing? Removing each hose flush all directions fill run flush again? You probally have some more junk in there. Maybe run water for a few hours flush allover again let a hose run thru it for a while from differrent directions. I had that in the begining but a few day multiple flush seemed to get most out.

 

[turbocruiser]

man you shoulda put that bypass on it . my system really does catch that crap, speaking of which, i need to change the filter . too bad we aint at the big D we'd get you set up in no time.

Hey, sounds super good, can you link to the thread about this or elaborate here. Thanks.

 

[IdahoDoug]

Raven,

As noted from my HG jobs, I'm fairly certain a significant amount of the grey sludge is head gasket material. Feels the same, and it's the same color, and the outer layer of the gasket where it blocks or limits flow through some of the passages the gasket swells up and deteriorates over time. Where the mixing of coolants plays into it, they may cause a precipitate that's more abrasive to the HG material as it passes through the openings, and accelerate the material removal.

Perhaps the material settled here and there through the block and radiator. Then when you put fresh red in, the stuff eventually becomes mobile from the detergent effect of it and settles disproportionately in the one spot the fluid moves the least - the overflow bottom. Might have been a slow process to get the grey sludge moving and only recently the sludge deposits absorbed enough of the red coolant's detergent to become mobile again. Of course the red dye then also affected it's color.

Theory.

DougM

 

[Riley]

That's interesting Raven - I just flushed my cooling system yesterday and noticed the same thing. 2 years ago I flushed the cooling system and didn't notice this much sludge but yesterday, there was a fair bit on the bottom of the overflow bottle. Does look similar to clay.

I sure hope it's not the HG as Doug suggests....

 

[instigator]

hey turbocruiser, look for the set up that rich did a while back, i dont have a specific link to it or others, i know i posted pics of my setup a while back but dont know weher ther are. i'll search a little to see if i can find them.

 

[e9999]

anybody remembers that photo that Christo (IIRC) posted of the cutup radiator chock full of the stuff a year or 2 ago? I can' t imagine that this much material would come out of the HG. Heck, there must have been more there than the entire mass of the HG....

 

[RavenTai]

Instigator, agreed, I never did make that bracket, wile it was cooling I had it in hand trying to figure out an easy place to mount it, I am going to use the IAC valve heater return line so a nice place would be near the front of the engine bay on the passenger side but there are not many hard points around there,

I briefly considered sandwiching the fan shroud with aluminum sheet and mounting it to the back. But it is too heavy, it would probably break the plastic shroud somewhere else where it was not reinforced. There is a nice bump out in the wheel well curtains there for the steering box on RHD cruiser, there are some holes in the frame there also, it would be out of the way but still easy to get to.


CPG I had done a fairly complete flush last time, when I set out on this I did not figure I was going to find a whole lot of grey sludge, and had planned accordingly was not going to take the system apart this time figuring I just needed to get out all of the old coolant. Well I was wrong,

Saturday morning,
Go get breakfast/lunch,
Refuse to buy new Prestone flush kit again as I know I have parts of at least 2 kits somewhere in the garage,
Back in driveway opened the heater valve for a wile with engine running,
Shut off engine,
Pull block drain plug, dodge stream of very hot coolant, try to catch most in pan
Burn arm on hot distributor wile getting to radiator drain, catch most in pan.
Wile engine is cooling remove overflow find sludge and clean overflow.
Turn garage upside down looking for parts to prestone kit, find the right 5/8” T and several radiator spout deflectors but no coupler for hose, booty fab several couplers till find one that does not leak cold water on hot exhaust manifold, duct take and a short section of hose. Wrap tape around deflector until it fits snugly in radiator.
Temporarily hook up prestone T to heater return, with engine running flush and for about 30 min after water comes out clean,
Turn off hose to let engine warm up and open thermostat, Turn off engine,
Drain block,
Get “smart” and set rag on distributor,
Still burn arm when rag get knocked off.
remove T,
Let engine cool
Fill with tap water, start engine and top off as air bubbles out (this is where the shot above with the funk bits floating in water was taken), Drive to subway get diner, turning on heater for short blasts to circulate through heater cores,
Get back and this time make rag stay don’t burn arm wile draining radiator, drain block.
Wile engine is cooling visit neighborhood barbeque, hear underworld is out at blockbuster, day dream about getting Kate Beckinsale out of her leather suit,
Fill with 2.5 gallon of distilled water out of about 14 quarts total system size, so about a gallon of hose water left in there, drive to blockbuster find that everybody else had the same idea, underworld is sold out, drive home, drain again don’t burn arm this time, let cool.
There was suppose to be a second distilled water fill & drain here to get more of the tap water out but It was getting late I did not want to let it sit overnight without coolant in its passages, there is about a gallon of water in the system and two sevenths of it is tap water so less than a quart of tap water, consider blowing out lines to get hose water out but it is getting too late to make that much noise.
Fill with 7 quarts of Toyota Red and the rest with distilled water.
Run engine to mix coolant and water, post ugly pics on cruiser web site and go to bed

I guess if you wanted to do a multi-day, flush you could fill it with water & water wetter overnight to prevent corrosion.

I’ll have to catch what is left in there with a filter,

 

[RavenTai]

Hey, sounds super good, can you link to the thread about this or elaborate here. Thanks.

here you go.
Stuff Rich captured with his filter.

Bypass filter install


deep discussion about gray sludge


Doug, I could see the black grit being carbon fiber from the HG, I could also see it being just black casting sand, but what of the gray clay like stuff? I have not seen anything in the gasket that could account for it.

I sure hope this new found sludge is just stuff that got knocked loose by the new coolant, last round I used water wetter, it is supposedly a surfactant, WW & new coolant might explain it. But it could also be that my engine is making this stuff, I sure hope not.

the badly blown 1FZ HG I saw at ULC the rad was packed with funk, it had a black cast to it but it also smelled of fuel, the charcoal color could be partially burnt fuel or could be HG material but I recovered the HG from that one and although the HG was badly deformed it was not missing much if any material, it was all there.

So in that case witch came first the chicken or the egg? Did a large amount of left over casting sand and clay clog the radiator causing an over heat and blown HG? Or did the HG fail and pollute the cooling system? Or was it electrolysis making bits of aluminum causing grey sludge?

I guess the key is to figure out what this funk is, do we have any chemists on the board? got any home tests? Something like put vinegar on it if fizzed it is aluminum if not it is something more inert like clay? Or melt it or weigh it or something? I have a quite accurate high resolution powder scale. But I am at a loss as to how to figure out the volume of something like a pile of clay like stuff that has so many voids.

Riley it is quite interesting that yours did the same.


Eric, here is that radiator pic, agreed hard to picture the HG makign that much of this stuff.

 

[cpg]

good write up Raven. I feel for you with the burnt arm.

 

[cpg]

good write up Raven. I feel for you with the burnt arm.

 

[IdahoDoug]

Yep, that's a lot of sludge - too much for the HG. I noted that the parts of the HG that close off holes were turning into mush that's grey in color and slick in consistency like the grey clay I've also seen a thin layer of in my 93 over the years. So, back to it being a precipitate caused by mixing the green/red from a previous owner, I guess.

DougM

 

[NeverFinis]

I started seeing this brown sludge with red coolant. It doesn't take much to cause it, like overheating, air in the cooling system, pH, and mixing with green coolant

You need a very clean cooling system to run red coolant.

I switched back to green that I change often.

 

[Beowulf]

... day dream about getting Kate Beckinsale out of her leather suit...

And now you're at risk for going blind.

-B-

 

[Rich]

I condensed the coolant filter install information from my previous posting to this new post: https://forum.ih8mud.com/showthread.php?t=96963

 

[RavenTai]

Nice write up Rich

 

[RavenTai]

Well I have collected about a shot glass full of dried “stuff”, riddle time,

Got a small pile of mainly largest sand sized black bits, a small pile of almost pure fine gray stuff and a big pile of the fine black and fine gray mixed together.

The black stuff is heavier, it always settles to the bottom of a column of water first, The black does not shrink as it dries, carbon fiber is pretty light I do not think the black is HG material, maybe I need to grind up up a section of head gasket and see if it sinks in water.

also noticed that the gray as it dries it shrinks and cracks up like a dry lake bed.

So far all I have tired to do with it is burn it, something flashes out of it almost immediately (coolant?) as it warms up but the majority of it is stable up to high temperature, it does not melt, burn, discolor or stick together when heated. So it is not plastic, organic or hydrocarbon based.

So what else can I do to this stuff to figure out what it is?

 

[semlin]

hmm

could exhaust particles/carbon get into the coolant if the h/g was not working? that would account for the volume.