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1996 Vortec, touched redline and died... now no start

J_dude

J_dude

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Southwest Saskatchewan
Just finished up the intake manifold gasket replacement, and I’m flushing the cooling system now. Filling it up, starting the truck, revving it a bit, then drain water and repeat. Accidentally revved to redline and dash lights flickered and she died, now all I get are flickering lights when I turn the key... no click, nothing.
What on earth have I done?! I’ve no idea how revving it high would affect things like that..

Thanks,
Jude
 
jrsavoie said:
Be a good thread to run off the rails.
Click to expand...
You have my permission 🤣🤣

Actually though we could talk about the best way to remove the rest of the sludge in that cooling system, I flushed it all day yesterday and still came out kinda orange, think it’s a DexCool issue...
I’ve given up on it for now as I need to get it out of the shop but I will have to come back and finish the job properly at some point.
dbrannon79 said:
Click to expand...
Wow! What movie is that from?
 
J_dude said:
You have my permission 🤣🤣

Actually though we could talk about the best way to remove the rest of the sludge in that cooling system, I flushed it all day yesterday and still came out kinda orange, think it’s a DexCool issue...
I’ve given up on it for now as I need to get it out of the shop but I will have to come back and finish the job properly at some point.

Wow! What movie is that from?
Click to expand...
The most we have done is a barrel of warmed distilled water, a 12 volt sprayer pump & some Dawn, Joy or other dish soap.

I've never found any flush that didn't have to be flushed out.

Maybe a turkey fryer or something to warm the water.

We T'd stuff off to keep the grunge out of the heater core.

Put a ball valve in the feed, so we could run the engine and drop the nasty stuff.

A bladder tank would help things. Maybe out of a boat or rv.

We don't use our water because our system doesn't clean it good enough for our liking yet.

I keep having to move on, before I get one project done
 
Flushing out the cooling system, it's most likely rust that has built up in there over time. each time the water gets hot, rust will come out. the only way I have found to get it out is to use CLR in there at a high consentration with some water. But the better method would be to pull the radiator out and have it rodded and flushed by a shop too. I'm not sure if the gas engines have any drain plugs on the lower part of the block like the diesel's do. You could try pulling a couple of "easy to get to" freeze plugs in the block below the heads, pull the thermostat housing and start flushing that way while using something to poke and prod up into the block scraping all the rust particles out that has built up in there.
 
You mentioned on the other thread using distilled water to flush it. This may be your issue. How much water are you trying to flush it with and under what pressure?

Flushing entire system when not too bad: remove thermostats, reinstall housing.
Disconnect top radiator hose from the radiator. Stick a garden hose in that radiator location and point the upper radiator hose in an appropriate direction. Turn on the garden hose allowing all the water to free flow so that the system cannot build any pressure. Is it because the garden hose from your house will supply enough pressure to blow a part a radiator or a heater core.

If you have a very contaminated system, flush the engine separately from the radiator and the heater core. For this, I will disconnect the lower radiator hose from the radiator removing the thermostats and reinstalling the thermostat housing. Remove the upper radiator hose from the radiator and place the garden hose in the upper radiator hose the few wraps of duck tape can seal it nicely. Disconnect the heater core hoses. Turn the garden hose on full blast and walk inside the house and have a sandwich.

The idea of flushing is removing as much contamination as possible. The key to it is pumping copious amounts of water through. Once you have ran your local pond empty, shut the garden hose off, drain the water. We should capture some of the water you drain to examine it for clarity. It is only after this is all done, but I will bother spending money on any kind of chemical to add for cleaning.

When cleaning just a cast-iron block, people sometimes connect the upper and lower radiator hoses together with piping. No thermostats as usual. Filling the block before making a final connection of those two and using a mixture with a little bit of acid with the water. Start the engine and let it circulate., Paying attention to the temperature gauge. Now you can carefully drain it, or choose to drink, and I suppose if you need a better teeth whitener, but I don’t think I’d recommend it. Now getting rid of the connector pipe between the two hoses, pump the local swimming pool through it, flushing it all out.

Remember a few things:
you have drain plugs on either side of the block to get out the remnant, which will not all pump out.
It is not a good idea to run mineral water (tap water) as your long-term cooling material, but using it to flush, the system is perfectly fine. Unless you have a 100 gallon water tank full of distilled water that you can pressurize up a little bit – you’re gonna have a hard time flushing anything.
A radiator plugs up and requires a different acid to wash it out then cast-iron. Choose your acid accordingly and flush them separately.

Aluminum= Distilled white vinegar is a great acid to let it soak in a little while. Plenty of Sciency, YouTube videos to show how well it works. And What happens if you let it soak too long. But I always start with flushing with a ton of water from the garden hose then empty that out and add your acid. After the soaking time is done, again, use a garden hose and run water through it like Joe Biden‘s giving it to you for free. Then drain it all out and you don’t add distilled water into a coolant system until everything is done and you’re filling a back up with antifreeze.
 
Thanks for the tips @Will L.!
I was flushing with the garden hose, just rinsed it a couple times with distilled to get the rest of the tap water out of the system before adding my coolant.
Unfortunately I was somewhat limited by the weather being cold so I had to do it in the shop and, not having plumbing in the shop to drain it into, I couldn’t just run it continuously, had to fill, start the truck and run it a bit, then drain into a bucket which I then carried across the yard to the lagoon, then repeat 😆
Obviously not the ideal method but I’m just trying to get this truck outta the shop for now... 🤷🏽‍♂️
 
on all of the equipment here at work they switched to this "better" coolant that is the exact same color as dyed diesel! so now when there's a leak, you really gotta look to see if it's coolant or fuel!! :facepalm:
 
Back in the day I always used a Prestone Flush 'n' Fill kit permanently installed on my vehicles. It had a "Tee" fitting you permanently installed in the heater return hose that had a cap that screwed on, and when removed you could screw a garden hose directly to the "Tee". It had an adapter that replaced the radiator cap and directed the overflow from the radiator out and down from a spigot - I guess so you could either direct the outflow into a floor drain or into a bucket. You just turned on the hose and it would backflush through the heater core, block, heads, waterpump, up through the radiator and out the top. Worked great on my '72 BBC Monte Carlo, my '80's Subarus, my old Dodge pickup. I wonder if Prestone still makes them, or if they just don't work well with cross-flow radiators and modern design cooling systems?
 
Husker6.5 said:
Back in the day I always used a Prestone Flush 'n' Fill kit permanently installed on my vehicles. It had a "Tee" fitting you permanently installed in the heater return hose that had a cap that screwed on, and when removed you could screw a garden hose directly to the "Tee". It had an adapter that replaced the radiator cap and directed the overflow from the radiator out and down from a spigot - I guess so you could either direct the outflow into a floor drain or into a bucket. You just turned on the hose and it would backflush through the heater core, block, heads, waterpump, up through the radiator and out the top. Worked great on my '72 BBC Monte Carlo, my '80's Subarus, my old Dodge pickup. I wonder if Prestone still makes them, or if they just don't work well with cross-flow radiators and modern design cooling systems?
Click to expand...
Yup

 
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