Q about radiator fluid
 

When changing out the timing belt, water pump, and other miscellaneous next week, I am also going to flush my radiator fluid. My father informed me that on the vehicles he has flushed the radiator fluid from, he has refilled the radiator with 50% coolant and 50% distilled water.

Something is making me doubt his application, especially with our cars. Can anyone chime in their opinion(s) on this one?

Thank ya!

The distilled water part may be going a little overboard, but aside from that, I'd do the same thing. Depending on your local water supply, using pure, (or more pure) water might be a good idea. Most people don't worry about it. Typical antifreeze works best when mixed 50/50. Both too rich and too lean will both raise your freezing point and lower your boiling point. There may be some strange antifreeze that works best with a different ratio, but I'm not aware of any.

Normally, I pre-mix all my coolant. I fill my old antifreeze jugs half-full with water, then top it off with antifreeze. Then I fill the rest of the (half-full) antifreeze jug with water. (Then I label them "pre-mix" so I can tell them apart!)

I recommend distilled water because there are no minerals in it. It is much better than the well water I have at the house. :) Where do you get rid of your used coolant?

I have the same well water issue.

And you also covered my next question. Where is generally a good place to dispose of used coolant?

If you have any annoying pets or neighbor's pets, that's one way. (Two birds with one stone.) The other, and much more socially acceptable way, is to take it to an autoparts store. All my local Schucks stores take used automotive fluids free of charge. I don't know what other chains participate in a similar program. Your local waste management facility also should have a disposal station, and around here, it's also free. Both Schucks and the county waste management facility have limits on quantity and charge commercial users a fee.

To the best of my knowledge, ethylene glycol is environmentally fairly innocuous. It is readily filtered by groundwater systems and organically breaks down in pretty short order. I'm probably not supposed to recommend what I'm alluding to, but since most people spill more than they manage to catch anyway...

Oh, and my well water is more pure that most bottled water - but that's rare. Some minerals are bad, other are not. I don't have a complete list of which ones are which, and I sure have no idea which ones you might have in your water. The additives in antifreeze neutralizes a lot of the nasties that would otherwise plague cooling systems. I've never seen a cooling problem that could realistically be attributed to using dirty water.