Yeah, the other thing I found was that the coolant gets sucked in when the engine cools and it may take several heat/cool cycles to get the system full.

 

Also, I don't see you mentioning draining the block, remember, the **** only drains the radiator, so that may be cause for some displacement as well.

 

Interesting. Of everything I read I never saw anything about draining the block. Is that a normal part of a flush?

 

Only if you want to drain everything... There are a few plugs on the block by the freeze plugs. Normally.

 

Right now your cooling system is dangerously over-filled with water, you need to drain it asap and get a proper concentration of coolant in your cooling system. I'm not sure where you're located, but it's well below freezing here and if you only added one gallon of coolant your concentration is 23.5% and that's so slow I can't even find a rating for the freeze protection of coolant at that level.

Draining the radiator never drains the entire cooling system on any vehicle, coolant will always be trapped in places such as the bottom of the engine block, behind the water pump, behind the thermostat, or in a heater core due to a heater control valve.

Ford's own literature even states that it is not possible to drain more then 80% of the cooling system total capacity on our trucks. They also state to remove the thermostat before flushing the cooling system and to reinstall it after the flush is complete, this is to prevent clogging of the thermostat during the flush and to aid in draining the flush solution by removing the housing.

 

So I should drain my system again and fill it with only coolant?

 

Yes, but with the proper 50/50 mix or more if you require the lower temp rating depending on climate. 50/50 seems to be the default.

 

Drain the entire system to the best of your ability and flush out as much of the old coolant as you can with water. A good way to do this is to drain the radiator and then fill the system with water and let it run until the thermostat opens and then you can drain it again, this should get the amount of antifreeze in the mixture down to a negligible amount in your case. I'd say to open the block drains as well but as far I can find online our engines don't seem to be equipped with blocks drains, but I haven't physically crawled under my truck to check as there's snow on the ground here.

After everything is drained there will still be some water trapped in the cooling system and if you've flushed it thoroughly it should be just water leftover with only trace amounts of antifreeze. Now fill the cooling system with just concentrated coolant until you've added half the total capacity (2-1/8 gallons in our case (4.25 gallon total capacity)). Now that you have the proper amount of coolant in the cooling system top it off the rest of the way with water and you should have the right mixture.

Don't worry too much about having the amounts exact, you only have to get the mixture into the range of 40-60% so anything between 1.7 and 2.5 gallons of concentrate in the system is ok according to Ford.

 

But you want at least 40%... If you have a bunch of regular bottled water or water from a hose in there cause you were leaking out of a bad freeze plug unknowingly and you run it like that for several months, your radiator will rust out and take the transmission with it...

Ask me how I know...

 

I'm going to let it sit overnight while I'm at work. Tomorrow, if there isn't s change, I'll drain a gallon out of the system and replace it with a 2nd gallon of concentrate. Then fill it up the rest of the way with water.

That should do it, I'd assume.