coolant flush - water ratio and bleeding
I hate for my first post here to be regarding something on which there is already a lot of information, but most of it is slightly inconsistent and I'm a bit nervous I messed something up following several tutorials at once. This is a 2001 Ranger XLT (non-pressurized reserve tank)
What I did was this:
- Opened pet**** and drained radiator
- Ran tap water through it until it came out clear
- Continued running tap water, but with the truck running and the heat on.
- Closed pet**** and filled radiator with water and ran truck until heat blew hot and then drained the radiator again... I repeated this a couple times, the last time with distilled water. I had to rev the engine to get the heat to blow warm, maybe I was just impatient. The radiator cap was off for all of this.
- Drained the radiator again, as well as the reserve tank.
- Poured maybe 3 qts of pure antifreeze in which filled the radiator. I put the cap on, ran the truck/heater and then added more antifreeze. The radiator was full before I had added the full 5.25 qts, so I poured the rest of the antifreeze into the reserve tank and filled that to the line with distilled water.
-- This is where my main concern is - my impression was that the radiator would hold all my antifreeze and then some water... will it be a problem that this is basically pure antifreeze? Presumably it will mix with the water that should be in other parts of the system and be fine? But it seems realistic that more than half of the coolant system capacity is held outside the radiator?
- I ran the truck and heater for about 20 minutes and when it was cool the radiator was still full, though a little was pulled from the reserve tank.
Does it seem like I'm good to go now? I should take the radiator cap off, run the truck/heater for 15 minutes or so, replace whatever spills out with 50/50 coolant and keep an eye on levels for a few days? I'm a bit nervous that I missed something and the engine will overheat while I'm driving around and the guage won't accurately reflect the temperature.
Thanks
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