Thermocure: Snake Oil or Good Way to Flush?

[SaturnAscends]

Finally getting around to flushing my coolant before the weather warms up. I thought of flushing with a hose and distilled water etc. but I wondered if using thermocure would be a good option so I don't have to idle the truck for an hour and deal with a bunch of waste fluid.

I'm usually wary of "liquid mechanics" but is this an exception? would it be hard on an old cooling system to use this? I'd heard @flintknapper say his HG even let go during a flush, and I wanted to avoid scenarios like that. I'm also considering just taking it to an oil change facility with a non-pressurized machine and just getting it over with.

 

[mct75]

Unless you're trying to fix some problem, I'd just drain it and refill it.

 

[SaturnAscends]

Unless you're trying to fix some problem, I'd just drain it and refill it.

I’m not sure how old the coolant is and/or how much gunk is built up in the system.

 

[SaturnAscends]

Also I’m not sure what kind of coolant this is. Looks kind of orange, hopefully not because it’s rusty. The PO did replace the radiator last year but I’m not sure if they flushed the system at the same time.

I was gonna switch to Prestone green or Peak Asian so I wanted to do a decent flush of whatever’s in there.

 

[flintknapper]

I'm usually wary of "liquid mechanics" but is this an exception? would it be hard on an old cooling system to use this? I'd heard @flintknapper say his HG even let go during a flush, and I wanted to avoid scenarios like that. I'm also considering just taking it to an oil change facility with a non-pressurized machine and just getting it over with.

Yes, mine gave way while doing a flush procedure. But....I can't say that the product itself had anything to do with it .

It might just have been coincidence.....I don't know. I had used the same Prestone product in the past several times with no issues.

I also attenuated the water pressure during the flush cycle so I don't feel as if that was the cause (but could be if a person uses too much pressure).

In my case....I suspect I was simply on the 'cusp' of losing my original head gasket anyway. I had 316K miles on mine. Perhaps the flush I did just pushed it over the edge. Anyway, glad it happened at my shop and not while out on the road.

 

[JunkCrzr89]

I’ve used Thermocure to get rust out of blocks and coolant passages and it’s great. Definitely not snake oil. BUT it is not designed to remove “gunk”, only designed to remove rust.

 

[baldilocks]

Thermocure worked to clean up a very bad rust problem in my 93 cooling system when I bought it several years.