Hey Guys, ChrisFix here. Today I'm gonna show you how to flush your Heater Core safely using a Garden Hose.
The reason you would flush your heater core, is because when you have the fan on, the heat on and the engine is warmed up, you're not getting much heat.
It may be a little bit warm or it might just be cold.
So we can see the engine's up to operating temperature, the coolant is nice and warm.
I'm going to put the heat on the vent, the heat is on all the way, and I'm going to put it up all the way
I have an instant read thermometer, I'm going to stick in the vent, and we're going to see how hot this gets
Okay, after a few minutes of this running it's at 125.5 and it's pretty much staying in that spot right there, so now we're going to go and do a heater core flush.
To find the two heater core hoses you just go up to your engine.
Usually on the passenger side or in the middle of the firewall which is this back wall here.
You'll see two hoses going right in to the firewall, in this case you can see here's 1, and 2 they're side by side
and that's what it's typically going to look like.
Now that you've located the heater core hoses, you want to try and find the inlet and outlet hoses.
The inlet hose is coolant going in and the outlet hose is coolant going out.
You want to identify these as we need to "reverse flush", We're going to push the water in through the outlet hose
this is to flush in the opposite direction to which the coolant usually runs
On this Mazda B3000 Ford ranger, the inlet hose is easily identified by the heater control valve which allows coolant to flow into the heater core
so this one on the left is going to be the inlet hose.
and this one here on the right will be the outlet hose
So now that we've identified that we can begin!
Now you want to make sure the engine is cold as you never want to work on the cooling system when the engine is hot.
They make these little flush kits, they're around 5 dollars at the hardware store. I will put a link the description as to where you can get one of these.
I'm not going to use that kit, instead, I will use this adapter from the local hardware store.
So, this will connect to the hose, the threads are the same however so I will use the adapter to adapt the hose to this 5/8ths fiting
This clear hose will connect to the garden hose, it has a 5/8ths internal diameter.
we will need to take off both of these hoses, they have simple hose clamps on here so get your pliers.
The garden hose will go into the outlet side so we will do that first.
Try not to make a mess so get this ready here.
Now we're going to take off our inlet side and install our exhaust hose.
It's the same hose as before, just longer to reach into this bucket.
Remember to always recycle your coolant and antifreeze, and to keep it away from animals as they like to drink it but it will kill them.
Now when the two hoses are on there, nice and tight, we're ready to flush.
Now at the tap you want to be very careful, the heater core is not a high-pressure component and only sees around 10 P.S.I max from the water pump.
So you definitely want to keep the pressure below 10 P.S.I
The clean water will come in.
and the dirty water come out.
You can see it's darker.
It's pretty quick to do this, the heater core isn't very large
Once the bucket fills up, you should have clear water coming out of the hose. I'm going to shut the hose off, this looks really clean.
Everything looks really clear.
There's the dirty fluid that got flushed out of the heater core. You can actually see little pieces floating around.
Now we're going to disconnect the garden hose, and flush out the water that's in the heater core.
So I'm going to get a funnel, and I'm going to fill it up with antifreeze so we remove the water, and maintain our 50/50 mixture
So when we see antifreeze in the outlet hose, we will be done.
Make sure you use the antifreeze recommended in your owners manual.
As you can see, there is now antifreeze in the exhaust hose, that means that our heater core is now correctly filled with 50/50.
Now we're going to disconnect our lines.
Remember to keep track of the inlet and outlet hoses. The one the control valve is on the inlet side.
When connecting them make sure they go right to the base of the fitting and then use the pliers to slide the hose clips back on.
And we're done, that's how you flush a heater core! Now we're going to go for a ride and make sure the heating works.
Okay the engine is at operating temperature, you can see the coolant is nice and hot.
Just got back from a short drive.
I have the heat on all the way, the vent and the fan on, Just like before.
You can see here, it's at 150 degrees and still rising slowly, that's hotter than before where it was at 125 degrees.
So that's an increase of 25 degrees and my heater core wasn't even that dirty! So I hope you guys get the same results.
Let me know how you do with your heater core flush. Hopefully this video was helpful, if it was, remember to give a "Thumbs up".
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and the top tip for this video is; Let's say you turn the hose on and you're not getting much water out. Get yourself some radiator cleaner and run it through the inlet hose.
Let it soak and then attempt to flush it out again.