brown coolant

[big cherokee]

so i pulled the cap off my coolant bottle yesterday and found that my coolant is brown and has small chunks of crap in it. still is watery like coolant

vehicle never over heats,starts good,my oil lever is good and its not watered down.

have you guys seen build up in the cooling systems before or does this most
likely mean the worst case.

a blown headgasket

if so how hard is it really to do a headgasket on the 4.0.

im gonna flush the system and see if it gets nasty again.

 

[Milner]

Could just be from some one putting stop leak in it....Bars is sort of brown and sludgey.

 

[Todd Adams]

Can you say RUST? One of the reasons you need to change the antifreeze periodically is to renew the rust inhibitors as well as the lubricating properties for the pump. I had a Land Cruiser years ago that it took 4 or 5 flushes to get all the rust out after I bought it.

 

[big cherokee]

oh man you guys are making my day. im gonna flush it saturday and get all that crap out the thing. thanks for the help

im pretty dang sure its rust since there are small clumps of it to.

 

[CJJ92yj]

Is it Dexcool antifreeze? I know that stuff has a tendency to turn brown and almost sludgish. It is supposed to be pink!

 

[JoeT]

Use 4x the normal amount of radiator flush. NAPA has some great stuff that's like rock salt. I've found that 2 bottles of that mixed with 2 bottles of radiator flush works reaaally good. I'd stick a power washer hose into any hose or opening and flush that sucker good.

 

[Shawn]

You should flush evey two years...

 

[big cherokee]

yah i know on the flush intervals i just bought this thing like 3 months or so
ago and the kid beat the crap out of it.

yah im gonna flush it like mad and get some good anitfreeze in it then it should be good to go.


thanks for the help guys.

 

[RockMonkey]

I betcha once you flush it and have good antifreeze in it, you'll find out that it leaks, and the crap you just flushed out was the radiator seal crap that somebody had put in to stop the leak.