Coolant help!

[amcarreon]

I'm putting new coolant into my 6.0, I put in 3.5 gallons of coolant and the reservoir was basically full. I went for a drive thinking there may be some air in the system. It was a short drive, but my gauges all went to normal so I figured that would be enough. I come back and was only able to add about a half-gallon of distilled water before the reservoir was full again.. thought maybe still air in the system.. went for a short drive again, and the level barely went down.

What am I doing wrong? I dropped the lower radiator hose to drain all the coolant out, and I poured distilled water into the system and nothing but the water I poured in came out. Really confused here. Do I need to drive it for longer to purge all air out?

[Az07Ford6.0]

Did u get the temps up so the thermostat opened up.

[amcarreon]

I drove until my temps guages were to the middle/"normal" -- I'm about to go drive it for longer I guess. I also had the heat up full blast

[amdriven2liv]

The motor holds about seven gallons. If you drained and filled, 3.5 would be about right.

How did you do the flush? Multiple flushes with distilled needs to be done to get all the old coolant out of the system. Also, taking out the T stat helps with this.

At the last flush, dropping the lower hose, will still leave about 3.5 gallons in the system. And, that 3.5 gallons should be all distilled. Then add the 3.5 gallons of "concentrated" coolant will end up giving you the 50/50 mix.

[amcarreon]

I've done a complete flush once before with VC9 and what I failed to realize this time around is that the motor does hold the other 3.5 gallons. I didn't cycle distilled water through the system multiple times so now I'm worried that I have too much of a concentrated amount of coolant. I think the best bet is for me to just do the flush right this time and go buy new coolant

Feeling pretty dumb right about now!

[novemberdelta]

You can get a coolant tester to see what your coolant is rated for. That will give you an idea of what you have in there for a mixture. They're pretty cheap. Last time I flushed mine it seemed like it took a couple days of driving before the coolant leveled off. I just added a little bit at a time.

[amcarreon]

I bought one of those.. has little beads inside the one I picked up. I'm just worried about my mix being like 70/30. I don't know what kind of harm that could do, but I certainly don't want any more trouble out of my truck lol