Coolant change without flush

[eberlestock]

I have an 03 F350 with 260,000 kilomoters or about 160 miles for my american brothers. I recently installed gauges and see a 9-11 degree delta on my two critical temps. As far as I know the truck is running stock oil cooler and EGR. I am worried that doing a full coolant flush may clog my cooler. I am thinking of just doing a coolant CHANGE with a straight water flush and then topping up with cat elc. I will add a coolant filter at this time. Does this seem worthwhile??

[NYC F-350]

No. The reason is that the existing coolant chemically coats the walls of your cooling system to aid in preventing cavitation. That film will degrade over time (along with the rest of the coolant) and should be removed. Rust scale will start to form as this coating 'wears' and that should also be addressed with the second chemical flushing process. (The vc-9 rust scale remover)

[eberlestock]

So, I guess there is really no way around replacing the cooler after the flush, assuming it clogs up?

[SD_PowerStroker]

I was under the impression that many people have experienced oil cooler clogging after flushing with restore followed by restore+ or VC-9. Long story short, what I got out of several posts on the subject was to avoid the flush if the delta's were not too far apart. Did I misunderstand, or is that solid advice?

[NYC F-350]

Yes, there have been many that have clogged their coolers by the flushing activities. If the deltas are reasonably close, sure, avoid it. But if you have the Ford Gold in there and you have say 75-100K miles on that coolant, and GO BACK to that coolant, you can probably get away with just distilled water flushing. Keep in mind that you will have to check the nitrites in your NEW coolant as well as periodically check it and maintain the proper levels. Just because the coolant is new, DO NOT assume that the nitrites are sufficiently charged. Be prepared to be surprised at what the test shows.
When your delta is in the range where you are considering changing your oil cooler, then do the full chemical flushing.
Basically if you run the same coolant, you will not have to chemically flush it, but change the style of coolant and you have to chemically flush.

[NYC F-350]

The other way to do it (and probably the best way) Is to do the ENTIRE flushing process and the reverse flushing process as outlined in the link in my signature line.
Doing the whole flush can keep the cooler open and you can then switch to the ELC coolant of your choice.

[eberlestock]

I guess that means one less thing on the to do list. Thanks for the info.

[caissiel]

I did a flushing on mine last fall and dirt realy drained out off my engine cooling system. I have a feeling that it further dammaged my oil cooler. A lot of goo was left in the hoses and i never cleaned the degas tank at the time.
I replaced the coolant with Final Charge by teak and it cleaned everything that was in the system, the hoses are dry and the tank is completely clean. The filter never picked up any solids so it is now completely deluted in the new coolant. I have a feeling that the EC-1 coolant absorbed the goo from all over and now freely circulates in the system. I keep checking my degas tank and its clean and transparent. Of course I will need to flush earlier but I am very satisfied witht the cleaning the ELC did to my cooling system. And Final Charge can absorb 25% of coolant impurities so I feel confident that its what I have.

I am going to try to salvage one of my friends 6.0L in the next few weeks and see if my theory is right, anyway if there is no improvement after a while we are going to change the cooler anyway but I feel confident the same will happen to his truck as mine without a plugged cooler due to the gunk flushed out with chemicals.

I did a lower mileage 6.0L for an other friend and he wanted to stay away from the chemical flush and it was a success as his deltas never changed. It was at 5 and stayed at 5. His degas tank was very dirty with deposits and he cleaned it before the refill with ELC. He used Zerex HD ELC coolant.