Ford coolant residue question. (1 Viewer)

[advlars]

Hey all. I know this is a toyota forum but coolant is coolant to some degree...

Went to look at a 60k mile 2009 f150 with my Father in law. 5.4 v8 gasser. Former utility fleet vehicle for the electric company.
Pretty sure this motor is specd for motorcraft gold coolant. Looks like a great truck except we found significant residue inside the coolant overflow tank. Seller agreed to let us take it to an independent mechanic but the truck is an 1.5hr away in each direction, so it would save a ton of timeand money if yall have insight.

Id describe the texture of the sludge as a sticky/greasy clay. Coolant was dirty but not milky. see photo. Please advise!

 

[peesalot]

No expert but that looks like oil whip to me. Oil whip would dry and flake off, try wiping some of that with finger and see if its oil ?

 

[advlars]

Yeah, the clear spot on the corner of the tank (Bottom of the photo) is where I wiped a finger. It was a greasy consistency but with some grainyness. It mostly wiped right off the plastic reservoir and also off my hands without being particularly smeary and gross. Smelled more like dirt than oil.

I'm just having trouble figuring out if it's neglectful maintenance (not changed often enough, used non distilled water or some air in the coolant lines) or if it's something like a cracked head

 

[peesalot]

Probably never changed, og coolant.

 

[AgentOrange]

Going with John on this one. This is incorrect maintenance if any was actually ever done. Flush that thing out really good. Radiator, oil cooler, heater core all probably have some brown sludge in them as well.

 

[gasman4u]

I know it's a little late, but there's a Motorcraft spec'd Coolant system cleaner. It comes in an approx. 20 oz container and you can run it through your system. Get all the rust, etc hopefully broken up to some degree and THEN start flushing like hell with water. This is assuming you don't want to take the return lines, etc off and clean each component separately. I used it once on my former truck. It was simple enough and then replaced the distilled water with concentrate to give an approximate 50/50 final mixture.