Coolant smells like fish

[Jay]

I just flushed my cooling system (used a radiator flush fluid, and followed the proper flushing procedure) and replaced it with a fresh mix of 20/80 coolant/distilled water, after a month of use I checked my radiator to see if everything looks good, and it does but I smelled the coolant and it smells like fish. Is this normal? I don’t find any leaks at the bottom of the engine.

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[college man]

[quote=”Pope_Jay” post=157408]I just flushed my cooling system (used a radiator flush fluid, and followed the proper flushing procedure) and replaced it with a fresh mix of 20/80 coolant/distilled water, after a month of use I checked my radiator to see if everything looks good, and it does but I smelled the coolant and it smells like fish. Is this normal? I don’t find any leaks at the bottom of the engine.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk[/quote]

If the smell is there after the flush then the contamination was pretty severe from
the lack of change. Usually the recommended mixture is 50/50.

[Jay]

[quote=”college man” post=157428][quote=”Pope_Jay” post=157408]I just flushed my cooling system (used a radiator flush fluid, and followed the proper flushing procedure) and replaced it with a fresh mix of 20/80 coolant/distilled water, after a month of use I checked my radiator to see if everything looks good, and it does but I smelled the coolant and it smells like fish. Is this normal? I don’t find any leaks at the bottom of the engine.

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk[/quote]

If the smell is there after the flush then the contamination was pretty severe from
the lack of change. Usually the recommended mixture is 50/50.[/quote]
Reason why I’m doing 20/80 is because we live in a tropical country (Philippines). I religiously have my truck serviced by Nissan and coolant is always changed every 40k kms. It was changed recently 80k kms and now it’s at 95k kms. So does that mean that Nissan didn’t change my coolant at all?

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[Darko]

You need to mix with more antifreze. Function of antifreze is not only to save engine from ice and cold weather, it also brings up boiling point of water so protect your engine from owerheating (that is important for area from where you are). It have more function like protect from corrosion and more…

[Paul]

The corrosion inhibitor package may be responsible for the smell. For example, tolyltriazole is a corrosion inhibitor for copper, and impurities become volatile after a few heat cycles (Link 1, Link 2).

[EricTheCarGuy]

Hard to say. It could be normal, or perhaps the water you used had a high sulfur content or something. If the vehicle is cooling correctly then I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

I haven’t run into this so I can only guess.

[Jay]

[quote=”EricTheCarGuy” post=157476]Hard to say. It could be normal, or perhaps the water you used had a high sulfur content or something. If the vehicle is cooling correctly then I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

I haven’t run into this so I can only guess.[/quote]
Hey Eric, since I got you here, allow me to thank you for all the videos you’ve made. It helped me a lot with my truck and saved me a lot too!

Anyhow, the water that I used is distilled water. I’d love to do the funnel method when it comes to topping up the rad with water/coolant but we don’t have that kind funnel in the Philippines. So I just squeeze the top hose to burp the air out.

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[Author]

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