- Hi, my name is Randy Clouse.
Here today with Hagerty to do a fluids level check,
on a 69 Camaro.
As always, we're gonna use a towel.
Something clean and dry to put on,
to protect the painted surfaces.
The first thing I'm gonna check is coolant.
And we always want to check coolant,
when it's cold.
The coolant will, as it gets hotter inside,
the system will pressurize.
If we take the radiator cap off with a hot engine,
it's very likely the water could burst out and burn us.
So, always check and feel it's nice and cold.
Radiator caps should push down.
Give it about half a turn.
Cap comes off.
I'm fortunate to have an LED light,
on the end of a flashlight,
which works really good for looking down inside of places.
So, if we look down inside this radiator,
we can see the tubes on the radiator,
and the cleanliness of the radiator.
And that's really important.
As the radiators age we're gonna start seeing
a lot of corrosion and a lot of growth around those tubes.
Those tubes are what passes the coolant through
the radiator to help cool the coolant.
Next we're gonna see,
how low the fluid level is in this.
That's because this particular car
does not have a coolant recovery tank on it.
A bottle in the inner fender.
So it actually runs this low,
so when it gets super hot,
it expands up to the bottom of that radiator cap.
So that's exactly where the level needs to be in this car.
As coolant gets older it can start deteriorating,
and it'll actually start leaving deposits,
inside the radiator.
And where you're gonna see those,
most of the time,
is right at the end of those tubes,
that you're seeing in there.
There'll be little corrosion growths built up around them.
And once those get so bad,
then it's time to replace the radiator,
because it's plugged up
and it can't cool the coolant anymore.
I have a baster.
I use this all the time for different fluids.
In this particular case,
I'm gonna take out enough fluid out of the radiator,
so I can test it.
So coolant comes in many colors.
You can get red coolant, blue coolant, green coolant.
In this case we're running a yellowish colored coolant.
So the product I'm using today,
is called Accustrip.
I've just picked this up at a local auto parts store.
And inside you're gonna find,
they're just strips of paper.
Those of you with pools are used
to doing this.
Taking your PH level tests in you pools.
Or your hot tubs.
But we just stick it in.
Okay, so we're gonna leave it in for 30 seconds or so.
Then we're gonna come up to the bottle.
And the first test we're gonna do,
is this gives us for blue coolant, red coolant,
or other coolants.
Because we know we have a yellow coolant there,
that's obviously gonna fall into other coolants.
So we're gonna follow up it up the scale.
And it looks like,
a good match is somewhere between 60 and 100%.
And that's the percentage of glycol or antifreeze.
So that tests pretty good.
And we're over to,
minus 22 degrees.
So that actually is not too bad.
So let's go to the next test,
which is alkalinity test.
So we're gonna come up the scale.
The good would be a green at the bottom.
And as we come up,
we're up to about a three point two,
I would say, right here on this middle one.
So what it says here now,
is it says to go to step three.
So now we're gonna go to the next level.
We're gonna come up to step three.
And we're gonna find ourselves,
somewhere in the 7.5 to 9 range.
Which is in about the middle of the service.
So this coolant is getting just about
to the end of its life.
It's starting to feel a little bit of PH.
It's starting to see a little bit of alkaline in it.
Probably what I'm gonna do this fall,
is I'm gonna go ahead and change this coolant out.
And put some fresh coolant in.
No sense gambling on bad coolant for the winter.
Especially for sitting.
So by using litmus strips in the coolant,
we can certainly tell the amount of coolant protection,
as far as the temperature goes.
we can test the alkalinity
and the PH level.
I think that's a very thorough way to do a coolant test.
Thanks for watching guys.
If you have any comments,
leave them in the section below.