Crawler
Full Access Member
I think y’all will be surprised how much crud there is, even after several flushes.
That's what nice about the external cooler: no coolant side to plug at all. My buddy is very particular, did a ton of flushing and made sure it ended up with the correct coolant in it, and a coolant filter. Still had it happen again in another 50K.
Just remember: even with a coolant filter in place, if it goes into bypass for just a short period of time, the coolant side of the factory air to water cooler gets exposed to that debris. Any partial plugging can't really get anything but worse, then the delta starts to increase, and then the expensive stuff breaks.
I was really surprised my buddies truck did it twice as he really flushed it and used all the best parts, including a monitor to keep an eye on the oil and coolant temps.
@bismic1 knows these systems very well and he can weigh in.
My opinion is that the external cooler is nice and does a good job. Unfortunately they are quite expensive. Especially when a guy is not planning on a repair or his truck being down. Unfortunately the bulletproof external cooler is $1745 MAP pricing without the cold weather option.
My experience has been that a truck that has been flushed properly(multiple flushes with driving included in those flushes, not just stationary) and switched to the Red ELC coolant-will have a cooler that lives a long life. A coolant filter doesn’t hurt and is relatively cheap.