Is this something you can do at home with basic tools and no special machines?

Im at over 90,000 miles now and the truck is 15 years old now. I'm the second owner so I'm assuming it was never done before.

I mean not just draining the radiator, but actually flushing it out of the whole block?

My only experience was doing this to my ATV years ago. Pulled the cap off the top of the radiator, took out one bolt on each side of the block and stick a hose in the top of the rad until the water coming out is clear. Is this anything like these trucks?

I'm afraid I'm going to create a hazmat spill and kill my cat and the other couple that come by for food.

Anyone have a link to a good tutorial or anything?

Is this something I should leave to a shop? Any idea what the service would run?

Thanks for reading


Forgot to add: the truck is a 2003 5.4

 

Service at Ford is over a 100 bucks. Not sure how much time they put into actually removing the old stuff and flushing until clear. Biggest issue at home and as you say, is reclaiming and not spilling killing animals around you. It is doable at home though.

 

Hardest part is getting drain plug out of block.

Radiator drain only drains half the coolant.

 

I watched an online flush where a water hose is placed in the degas bottle, and water run thru the running engine with heater on to clear out the full system.

 

Then you are introducing tap water into the system, which is a really bad idea.

 

The point of a flush should be to get rust and sediment out of a low point in the block. Otherwise you just changing the coolant.

No problem using tap water to flush but then you got to drain it all and replace it with distilled water anyway

If you want to just change the coolant all you got to do is drain the radiator and refill with distilled water 5 or 6 times , driving around for awhile to mix each time, and you'll have basically nothing but distilled water in the system eventually do the dilution . then drain the radiator and add pure coolant in to be back to 50%. The radiator hold right at one half of the capacity of the system. Which make the math easy.

Drain refill once you have 25% glycol, twice 12 and a half, 3 -6%, 4-3%, 5 -1 and a half percent. 6-0.75%. then refill . The trace of old glycol don't matter.

 

Its a flush, not long term. You then replace with wither 50/50 Motorcraft or get concentrate and distilled water and replace accordingly.