Keeping things cool underneath your hood

LAST week we gave a general overview of the functions and importance of your cooling system. This time we’ll discuss how to maintain it properly to ensure your cooling system is doing its job: keeping things cool underneath your hood.

The most basic form of maintenance for your cooling system is to flush out everything inside and replace it with new water/coolant mix. Buying radiator flush, mixing it into your old/existing water/coolant mix, then driving around for 20 minutes to let it mix while slowly removing rust, dirt and other fine particle build-up in your engine, works well. But the best, most ideal form of coolant flushing is via the Lavramon treatment.

The Lavramon cooling system treatment attaches your car’s cooling system to a machine that continually pumps in water mixed with special cleaning chemicals through your engine and radiator, attaching via the top and bottom radiator hoses and intercepting the coolant flow, filtering out all the dirt, rust and other fine particle build-up in your engine and radiator that was dislodged by the high-pressure water and chemicals from the Lavramon device. Currently, there are only two shops to my knowledge with a Lavramon cooling system treatment device: Dallas Service Center in Tomas Morato, Quezon City, near E. Rodriguez Sr. Ave., and DTM / Autotechnika along 32nd Street, Fort Bonifacio Global City, Taguig.

The Lavramon treatment, along with vehicle preparation, can take as long as six hours on a single car so make sure you have nothing to do when you bring your car to have it serviced, or prepare to leave it overnight at the most. I’m a firm believer in the Lavramon cooling system treatment because in my own car, after more than six hours of treatment, we were able to fill up a big cup about 300ml in size full of dirt, mud, crud and other fine particle build-up that was dislodged from the engine and the radiator.

Immediately after, cooling performance improved as displayed by an auxiliary DEFI-brand coolant temperature gauge. From a previous high of 98 degrees Celsius, my cooling system struggles to get past 88-89 degrees Celsius even on a hot and humid day with the a/c on at full blast. It is imperative to have your car receive a Lavramon treatment if it is over 5 years old or 100,000 kilometers in mileage, or if you have used unknown quantities of anything but distilled water on your car over prolonged periods of time, or if you subject your car to heavy use regularly, like motorsports, high-performance driving or off-road driving where engine speeds/RPM is high but vehicle speeds are low, thus taxing your engine and cooling system considerably more so than normal.

The next form of maintenance is to replace the parts. If after a Lavramon treatment, coolant flow is slow on the outlet side of your radiator, then chances are your radiator is irreparably clogged and blocked from the inside. This generally only happens when you leave your radiator exposed to build up for prolonged periods of time. It’s expensive, but worth changing. Also, while doing a Lavramon treatment, inspect the rubber hoses and the areas where they clamp or attach to the radiator and engine for leaks. Pay particular attention to pinhole leaks. If there are any signs of leaks, replace the hoses, as well as the clamps holding the hoses. Check the end tanks of your radiator as well. Most modern cars utilize an aluminum-alloy radiator core with brazed plastic end tanks attached to them. The core usually remains fine through the vehicle’s life but the plastic end-tanks tend to start leaking where they attach to the core, or on the plastic body itself. When you see these leaks, it’s also time to replace them.

Check your thermostat if it is working properly as well. Place your thermostat in a small pan filled with boiling water. If the thermostat opens its valve, then it is working properly. If it doesn’t, it’s time to replace it. If you will be reusing your old, properly working thermostat, make sure to replace the rubber gasket that surrounds the outer body of the thermostat to prevent leaks.

Another oft-ignored part is the radiator cap. After normal use, check to see if the underside of the radiator cap, while still attached to the radiator, is moist, or has coolant residue. If there is residue, then chances are it’s leaking, unable to hold pressure. Replace it immediately.

If you are manually flushing out your old water/coolant mix, when you start to fill in water/coolant and bleed out all the air pockets, a handy tip is to park the car in an incline where the front end and radiator is higher than the rear end. You can also jack up the front end of the car to place your radiator as high up as possible. With the radiator being at the highest point, this ensures that air pockets and bubbles trapped inside your engine and radiator will make their way out. Air pockets and bubbles trapped inside your engine is dangerous as air is a poor conductor of heat unto itself and prevents water/coolant from absorbing heat from your engine.

Additionally, if you have a heater option in your car, crank up the heater to the highest/hottest level possible to fully open up your heater core and allow fresh water/coolant to come in and fill it up. Sometimes overheating is caused by activating the heater function and opening up the heater core, which ends up releasing air pockets trapped inside the heater core and into your engine.

After filling it up and ensuring that there are no more air bubbles, drive it around normally for a day or two, then on the third day, remove your radiator cap to see if more air has been displaced and residing at the top portion of your radiator. Fill with water/coolant as needed. This is called burping your cooling system.

Most water pumps are belt-driven, so once you hear squeaks from the fan belt or auxiliary belt, replace all the belts and their accompanying tensioners immediately. Make sure you find the right size belt and replace the tensioners. A slipping belt will be unable to spin the water pump properly, while old, non-functional tensioners and bearings can cause binding, which prevents the pump from spinning properly as well. Additionally, most modern water pumps have what is called a weep hole underneath the body, which spills directly to the ground. Raise your car up on jack-stands or on a lifter. If your water pump’s weep-hole is wet and spilling water/coolant onto the ground underneath your car, that is a sign of internal leaking and that your water pump needs replacing. Again if you need to replace your water pump, make sure you replace the belts, and ideally your thermostat as well.

The last and simplest means of cooling maintenance is to inspect the fins of your radiator. If you are patient enough, use tweezers to straighten them out. The fins slow down the cooling air passing through the radiator and cool down the coolant tubes where your water/coolant mix passes through inside your radiator. If the fins are bent, they are unable to cool down the tubes effectively. Also, check for mud, dirt and other build-up of debris on the face of your radiator as this prevents flowing air to pass through your radiator core effectively. Clean the surface of the radiator with a soft brush and light-pressure water gently. Since most modern cars have their a/c condenser in front of the radiator, clean up the a/c condenser as well.

People debate about whether to use coolant at all aside from distilled water in your engine. Most experts agree that using a minimum of 20 percent coolant in your engine is necessary as this helps lubricate the moving parts of your water pump. Most manufacturers utilize a 50:50 coolant and distilled water mix from the factory, however. So stay in between the range of 20 and 50 percent coolant, with the rest being the purest, cleanest distilled water inside your engine and radiator. And let me reiterate to only use coolants from a known or trusted brand such as Motul’s Inugel, Toyota’s factory fill Red Coolant concentrate (popular with many amateur racers in the US even when used in different brands of cars), and Japanese performance brands like Billion’s Super Thermo line of coolants, ARC’s own line of coolants and locally, Caltex/Texaco’s Orange Coolant Concentrate.

Believe me, a cooling system working at its best ensures your engine performs at its maximum potential consistently, reliably and ensures longevity as well as maximum fuel efficiency.