Coolant Filter Install

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Who can guess ?

And here is a picture of the tee connection feeding the filter inlet.
 
Who can guess ?

Hey Rich,

Great answer to my filter-clogging concerns. You've obviously thought this whole project through.

Sorry for the late reply - I couldn't get past the Podvin thread.

Ed
 
Rich, has this been effective in keeping your radiator free of the sludge? spoke with another user that installed on the first one he cut open was packed full of black grit

I plan on installing one also, going to use the IAC heater line at the thermostat, have not figured out a mount yet
 
it was me that Raven spoke to. i just havnt had the time to do anything about it yet( rebuilding backyard deck) (residing house ) ( worrying about job security) among other things, i still have the filter and most of the stuff that came out. the stuff that came out of the filter doesnt look like the gray sludge from atop the radiator, it has the color of beach sand and has black speckles within it. now all of this entrapment was when i was doing a flush (had dexcool in the system for about 6-7 months) so i cant tell if it was from normaly running and day to day driving or from the flush, but is was an ass load of contaminates that poured out of the filter before i stopped and realized that i was pouring it all out.

now that i have toy red in there i'll change out the filter just before the winter hits. and give a report of what comes out.

to Rich, thanks for the insperation to do this, i really do think its worth the effort

Raven remind me later about the other head unit i have for the filter installation.
 
instigator said:
Raven remind me later about the other head unit i have for the filter installation.


Will do :idea: , the guy at the Newnan Napa had no idea what I was talking about when I asked for one, finding unushual parts here is a PITA
 
Raven, your question prompted me to examine the radiator through the fill opening, replace the filter, and cut open the old filter. When I first installed the filter system there was a small amount of grey crud visible in the top of the radiator located inside the core tubes. There has been perhaps a 50% reduction in the visible sludge, but keep in mind there was only a little to start, as I had removed and flushed the radiator some time prior to installing the system.

I recovered some, but not all of the filtered contents, and it is now settling out. It appears to consist largely of the black grit that most of you have also seen collect in your overflow bottles. After (I guess) 5 - 8 thousand miles, the filter appears to have captured a tablespoon or so of grit. Please note that the black grit is not the same material as the grey sludge. I will need to wait for the material to seperate and settle, and then dry, before I can tell more of its consistency and what it all contains. This is the second filter change I have done. The previous change was done after fewer miles and contained similar material.

In terms of mounting and plumbing, I would suggest that you install as I did. The filter can be accessed from either above or from below for installation and removal. My method of mounting and plumbing can be done without making any modifications to any of the vehicle components and the vehicle can be returned back to stock at any point in time with no additional expense.
 
Instigator, glad you found the filter to be productive. Sounds like your cooling system is or was a bit more contaminated with grit than mine.
 
Rich thanks for the information

That sounds like less than Instigator found, perhaps because you had you radiator professionally flushed first? I have seen it inferred here that most of the sludge in the system lives in the top of the rad

An estimated 50% reduction is very nice, I would have called it money well spent if it just kept it from getting any worse, at this rate you can expect it to eventually be gone

Your mount is very nice but beyond my means I can’t build it myself and can’t afford to have it built I am in the same spot as Instigator ( worrying about job security ) hopefully we will know something soon, I will likely do something with scrap angle iron and existing bolt holes, not sure if I have enough room left on the firewall after the washer bottle relocation, if I am smart I will make a dual mount to hold my bypass filter also (already have the expensive parts just needs installation)

Is there any problem with using the IAC heater line? Is would be very simple, the barbs (~5/16” ? ) are already there on the USPS of the engine, I would just put it in series with the TB by replacing the short line with lines to/from the filter, it will reduce heating of the TB but that is a good thing in my climate, the TB and intake are already very hot
 
I'm not familiar with the IAC heater line, haven't looked at it, and so can't offer much useful insight at this moment. I can share that the typical installation of a bypass coolant filter is in parallel to the heater core.

With respect to the mount, next time you are in the big city, where ever that may be, you might search the local metal scrap yard for a piece of aluminum plate and some aluminum rod. You could do all of the required cutting with a hacksaw or a jigsaw and a drill. Being aluminum, it cuts much easier than steel.

There is room on the firewall for a single filter and the Slee washer bottle relocator. However, and I don't know that this would make a difference to the filter mount, but I mounted my Slee washer bottle mount contrary to Slee's instructions, in order to prevent the bottle from being smashed against the diagnostic connector on the firewall and also to prevent the cruise control cable from chaffing against both the bottle and the vertical portion of the Slee mount that fastens at the foot of the air cleaner. The end result is that my bottle is mounted an inch or so further away from the firewall than it would be if the instructions were followed. I needed to make two simple spacers and not use the spacer Slee provides in order to accomplish this. At the moment, I don't recall if this made any difference to being able to squeeze in the filter where I mounted it. It is definitely close to the washer bottle.
 
these are the filers in the engine bay
 
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just read someplace that using distilled water can promote electolisis(sp)...............wonder if that is ther cause of some of the crap in the coolent?
 
Landpimp said:
just read someplace that using distilled water can promote electolisis(sp)...............wonder if that is ther cause of some of the crap in the coolent?



something similar to was talked about here,

https://forum.ih8mud.com/showthread.php?t=19558

read from post #12 down,

Distilled water is universially recomended in all cars, I have not head of gray sludge outside of Toyota's

if you can post a link up to where you read that info I would like read it.
 
See post 60 (I removed the previous attachment for this post) for a picture of what the coolant filter recently captured. What is depicted is about 60% of total captured. The filter was installed for 5 - 8 thousand miles. This is the second filter changed. The first filter, in use for less miles, had similiar contents. Given the rate of collection, I'm guessing a filter could be left in place for 30K - 60K miles, at least.

The material filtered is not uniform. There is a mixture of different substances that were captured.

I have seen a reduction of the grey sludge visible in the radiator. After 10k or so miles, I'm thinking whatever sludge is going to flush out of the radiator has done so, and that the remaining will be there until I remove and power flush or replace the radiator.
 
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Rich,

How long did it take you to sort all those little tan bits out of the big pile of dark gray bits?

-B-
 
The gray stuff on the right looks similar to that I see stuck to and also floating around near the cap of the radiator, I have not seen the black grit but suspect It is just in other areas where I don’t see it

That is a considerable pile of stuff to have removed from the cooling system, defiantly worth the price of admission

How did you separate the two types? Where they in different area’s of the filter?
 
you know, been wondering for a while now if it would not be worth trying to put some surfactant (read detergent) in there to see if that would suspend the sludge and make it come out easily...
E
 
Redline water wetter is a surfactant and seams fairly safe in the cooling system, I have soem in mine right now
 
The material salvaged from the filter does not look at all like the "grey matter" I have seen . OTOH, it is nice to see that the filter is picking up that trash and holding it.


Did you see any of the "grey matter" as well?

D-
 
Here is how I recovered the stuff from the filter. First I poured the coolant out of the filter into a 1 gallon zip lock bag. Then I cut open the filter, removed the paper and metal filter core, and rinsed the contents of the filter can into the ziplock bag.

Then I cut the paper pleat away from the metal core, and then washed the paper with water into another 1 gallon zip lock bag. When finished I combined contents into a single bag, and hung it up with one corner down. After a day all of the solids settled down into the low corner.

I twisted up and cut off the low corner. In the process of doing this the lightest materials floated up resuspending in the water. I transferred the water into another bag, let the remainder settle out over another day, drained most of the water out of the bag, and poured the bottom remainder through a coffee filter. This produced the small pile of light brown material. It is the portion of filtrate that is most easily suspended in the coolant and therefore is not likely to clog anything; it just goes with the flow.

The big pile contains a lot of different stuff. Much of it is dark and granular, like a fine sand. It also contains a substantial amount of very fine powder some of which is probably dried gray sludge. All mixed together dry, it is not possible to say what is dried sludge and what is not. I can say that the darkest, most sand like material readily settles out, when wet it is not sludgy, and not likely to clog the radiator. It is abrasive, and perhaps has an adverse effect on the life of the water pump. The dark granular material is definitely not the same grey stuff that collects in the top of the radiator.

Attached is another picture. This picture contains the same material from the previous picture, and in addition, contains a dried sample of grey sludge that I had previously flushed from the heater cores. The grey sludge when dry has a greenish tint and is in the upper right side of the picture.

The grey sludge I collected before installing the filter by directly hooking up a garden hose to the heater core outlets, and flushing full force, collecting the output in a 5 gallon bucket. The grey sludge settles out fairly quickly and dries to a very fine powder that is not at all granular.

At this point in time, all I can conclude is that there is a fair amount of "stuff'" in my coolant system that the filter has caught. The radiator still has a small amount of visible grey sludge, which is only visible inside a few of the core tubes, but there is less than when I installed the filter.

Since I don't know whether or not my engine is still producing grey sludge, I can't say one way or another if the filter is keeping the radiator from getting worse. I can only say the radiator is cleaner than before installing the filter and has not gotten worse.
filter3.webp
 

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