Antifeeze advice

[professor229]

Good morning... Quick question. The plan is to flush the 100,000 mile Ranger radiator and then fill with fresh antifreeze. For years I worked on GM vehicles that had issues with antifreeze, especially in the 3.1 liter motors.... the antifreeze ate intake gaskets. Is there any such issue with a Ford 3.0 engine or is there a specific antifreeze I should consider using or one that I should avoid? Thanks....

 

[Curious Hound]

I'm not aware of any issues with that. Stick to a good quality universal antifreeze and mix with distilled water or buy pre-mix. Don't mix green and orange anti-freezes with each other. (From what I've heard, that's bad )

I use the Prestone flush kit that comes with hose fittings. I put the hose tee in one of the heater core hoses. That, with cap off, makes a great place for air to escape while you're filling at the radiator.

 

[19Walt93]

I've never used a flush kit, I just disconnect the heater hoses one at a time to flush the heater core. It's important to pull the block drains as well as opening the radiator petcock to remove the old coolant. It's also important to use either premixed coolant or concentrated coolant and distilled water.
One of my former techs and a former service advisor came from GM dealers. They talked about adding "cooling system pellets" as part of 15k maintenance to prevent the crap quality blocks from leaking coolant. Ford would have issued a TSB or Owner Notification Program- basically a product improvement recall not mandated by the government- and fixed the issue. We replaced a bunch of 351m/400 blocks in the mid 70's for hairline cracks in the lifter valley that allowed coolant to leak. You have a Ford now, relax.