Flushing and refilling coolant

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Bob - 31 Oct 2006 02:29 GMT

Question for Hyundaitech, or anyone else who knows the answer....

How do you go about draining ALL of the coolant from an '06 Sonata? The
owners manual and the online service manual say open the radiator drain, and
let her rip. That gets you only a little over 2 quarts from a system that's
supposed to be a little over 2 gallons. I wound up having to flush it
multiple times with distilled water until no more green was left.

The answer to the first question to me is: Because the jug that has blue
liquid in it, and says "removes bugs" doesn't go in that hole. This was
after I was told the windshield washer didn't work even though it's full.
Who knows how much made it into the cooling system, or if it would hurt
anything - Methanol and aluminum don't play nice together, and who knows
what the elevated temps would do - but there's none in there now.

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hyundaitech - 31 Oct 2006 19:01 GMT

To my knowledge, Hyundai doesn't have any block drains. My only suggestion
would be to pull the thermostat and install a garden hose. But it sounds
like you've done an even better job than that.

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misterh78 - 02 Nov 2006 13:41 GMT

> To my knowledge, Hyundai doesn't have any block drains. My only suggestion
> would be to pull the thermostat and install a garden hose. But it sounds
> like you've done an even better job than that.

why in the world would you flush coolant in a 2006 MY vehicle?

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Edwin Pawlowski - 02 Nov 2006 16:23 GMT

>> To my knowledge, Hyundai doesn't have any block drains. My only
>> suggestion
>> would be to pull the thermostat and install a garden hose. But it sounds
>> like you've done an even better job than that.
>
> why in the world would you flush coolant in a 2006 MY vehicle?

If you read the entire post, you would have seen that he had an "ooops" when
adding washer fluid.

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Bob - 03 Nov 2006 02:45 GMT

>>> To my knowledge, Hyundai doesn't have any block drains. My only
>>> suggestion
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
> If you read the entire post, you would have seen that he had an "ooops"
> when adding washer fluid.

Actually, I didn't have the "oops"... The washer was reported to be
non-functional even though it was "filled" a few days prior. I tried
flushing it according to the manual because several drive cycles occurred
between the "filling", and I had no idea how much was sucked into the
cooling system, and I have no desire to find out how well washer fluid mixes
work in aluminum engines on a long term basis. The interesting discovery
here is that the manuals are (both the owner's and the online service
manual) are DEAD WRONG when it comes to the procedure for flushing the
cooling system.

Short of yanking the thermostat (as Hyundaitech suggested), and sucking out
the contents of the cooling system , and heater core out with a wet-dry vac,
the only way I could see to do it was to drain the radiator, and refill it
with distilled water. I left the top hose off, kept the radiator full, and
allowed water that made it through after the thermostat opened with the
engine running and the heat on to drain into a clean garbage can. After no
green was in the output water, I fed the system about a gallon and a 1/2 of
new coolant. After a couple of days, I diluted the system down a little to
get the mix to about 60% based on a hydrometer. After all the fun and games,
I filled the water jugs, and the anti freeze bottle with the diluted former
system contents. I've found that used auto parts yards take non-contaminated
antifreeze for free. They sell it to recyclers. They didn't care that it was
watered down.

Hyundaitech.... Maybe you can bring it to someone's attention that the
recommended procedure doesn't work. I can't imagine a pro going through all
this trouble.

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