WATER OR COOLANT - Ford Forums - Mustang Forum, Ford Trucks, Ford Focus and Ford Cars

05-01-2002, 12:29

I have a Ford Falcon EA 1990 -

Should the radiator supply tank be filled up with water or coolant ?

I have been filling it up with water.

jamesk · 05-01-2002, 13:15

coolant obviously. water makes the insides of the engine rust.

Troutman · 05-01-2002, 14:52

If you are interested, I would recommend doing a day-course about the basics of car maintenance..

There are circumstances under which you would fill up with water - but you must have adequate coolant first.

gmanEA · 05-01-2002, 16:19

Cant help but laugh to myself sorry.
I recommend you go down to somewhere like repco and buy the coolant concentrate, is about $5 for 1 Litre bottle. Prestone coolant seems pretty good. Haha or you could buy the premixed coolant which is about $20 for 5 litres, but its still only got about the same amount of coolant but saves you having to put in the water yourself hehe, that i dont recommend.l

lizzard58 · 05-01-2002, 17:00

Coolant is always better, but a word of warning, some coolants will actually destroy the cores of the radiator, go to your local NATRAD store and get their advice.

I use to use the standard of the shelf concentrates, but learnt my lesson the expensive way.

I travel 1500Km a week just to go to work and back plus another couple of hundren Km's traveling around, I developed a leak in the Radiator one day and had to have it fixed, BOY was I surprised when they showed me the damage some coolants can do.

Joe...

jamesk · 05-01-2002, 20:09

there was a big story about it on either a current affair or today tonight where they tested all the different brand coolants. some actually caused faster corrosion. the best one was the stuff you buy from holden but it was over 50 bucks, ive been using castrol after seeing that, it came in third i think.

05-01-2002, 20:27

I know coolant is always better than water.. but hey

I bought two 5L 'FormulaX' coolant bottles at $3.80 each from KMart (EA's use up to 9L of coolants when you completely flush out the radiator system) At the same time I did my g/f's daihatsu charade's radiator system, it only needed 1 litre of coolant! (hard to believe)

Well... I don't know about how good other coolants are... so far I know any coolant is better than pure water!

05-01-2002, 21:32

Please run the recomended ratio of anti boil in your EA ,because you will RUIN YOUR MOTOR ! with water.

COOLANT or in your case water flows through small ducts , or holes all around the motor ,the heat from the motor is transferred to the coolant and released in the radiator , these holes will fill with scale and rust if you run just water ,and the motor will **** up in 100 different ways!.

just a thought.

go the fords!

Troutman · 05-02-2002, 08:26

Well I've been using Nulon brand, for what it's worth. I have read that the cheap stuff is worthless.