Bought an '84 Euro 300D Non-Turbo

[milner351]

hheynow - I had a heck of a time getting registered at Schumans - great site but slower response times than other sites I'm used to. Tgatch - you've got some great resources - thanks for sharing.

I also have to do the citrus flush (got it as part of the dieselgiant maintenance kit) sounds like to do the flush and properly "rinse" the system afterwards - will take several days.

Do you see any problem with doing the flush / rinse cycle across a couple days drives to work - like this:

I was thinking I could do the initial drain, refill with tap water and the citrus solution, run it for ~20 minutes on the highway, drain it, refill with tap water, run it, let it sit overnight, drive to and from work, drain and refill with tap water again, let sit overnight - repeat a couple times, then drain, refill with G05 and distilled 50/50....

any problems with this plan?

I still have to find a lower hose for my car.

 

[hheynow]

hheynow - I had a heck of a time getting registered at Schumans - great site but slower response times than other sites I'm used to.

I'm registered and the site is awesome. I had a great welcome introduction by tgatch and the group just loves the photos of my new ride. There are a few there that really know their stuff about my car as well as the vegoil group who have converted theirs. I've already got one of the vegoil gurus phone number and expect to get one on one help with my conversion. Compared to other (stuck up) Mercedes forums Schuman Automotive is as friendly as OB and SDD.

 

[tgatch]

I would not leave the citrus mix in over night...

I did mine in about 16 hours.....

You could drain, run the pure water rinse a couple times and then run the degreaser solution for a day or two... Then run a couple straight water flushes. Then make sure to do the baking soda flush to make sure that there is no residual acid left.. Then a couple water flushes again.

After that I run about a 40/60 mix of coolant to water. Per the manual you are good to 30/70 coolant/water. It get's cool enough here in the winter at times, I prefer a little more antifreeze. If I was in So Cal I'd be running 30/70. Remember that nothing cools better than straight water, so a higher water content will help with heat removal from the block.

I also run Diesel WaterWetter. I noticed a good 5* to 10* temp drop using the WaterWetter

 

[hheynow]

But why tap water is preferred over distilled water still is unclear to me. Not in the flush but once it's clean.

 

[tgatch]

Because it's easy... that's all I could come up with... I'm sure distilled would be fine.

I used distilled in my flush and my anti-freeze.

 

[milner351]

After reading and seeing all the horrible cylinder liner pin hole pictures on the old TDS, I will never look at a cooling system or run tap water in a cooling system again for any length of time.

I guess I missed the baking soda step... I though the tap water flushes would be sufficient to clear out the citric acid.

I'll have to print out that procedure and have it with me when I do the flush.

I'm still trying to track down a new block heater so I can replace that while I'm in there, the one I have is seeping coolant slowly, and it's missing the power cord.

I live in the detroit area - so freezing is a real possibilty here - I'll run the Zerex G05/distilled 50/50.

So far my '95 runs between 80 and 90C with the ac on even on hotter days... my wife said it "looked high" one day she was driving it - but didn't remember how high it got --- I'll feel better after the flush / fill, with new hoses, and thermostat.