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The plastic engine oil bottle and the anti-freeze bottle are the same color and look “EXACTLY” the same; Because of that, I mistakenly poured some oil into my radiator before I realized my mistake. I tried flushing the radiator with a hose and I’ve gotten “most” of it out-but not all. How can I rectify this situation? Thank you.
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As long as you didn’t put too much in, I wouldn’t panic. Drive the car about for a week or two with water in the system and periodically drain and refill till it comes clear. Then fill with 50:50 antifreeze:water and go on your way.
if you got most of the oil flushed out of the system and you didn’t lollygag you should be fine, i wouldn’t fret.
I actually had done just the opposite – poured some coolant into oil. Makes two of us.
You have to do complete engine drain and flush. That being said, hopefully, it’s an older car and you can buy a repair manual for it. Hopefully even more, engine block has drain cocks. Like wife’s RX300 has 2, one per each engine bank.
But truly, if you didn’t start the engine and run it, that oil is still blissfully in radiator only, not in engine block. Basically, then you should worry not about the engine and simply locate all radiator hoses, disconnect them, drain everything, and then flush with garden hose, and maybe add some radiator flush to the water, via say a garden sprayer bottle. Like they use for herbicides.
Truly, coolant has oil in it anyway, to keep water pump lubricated. But you do not want to end up with milkshake coolant, as it simply reduces heat exchange and plugs small passages.
Be careful and do NOT disconnect ac or transmission hoses, plenty of those going into radiator. That’s why $15 or so spent on repair manual is good money.For some silly reason, I could not see all other responses before I posted mine. Then I read them and would like to add this:
Antifreeze formulations used as coolants deploy an assortment of organo-metallic and organic additives. These are used to protect metals in the cooling system from corrosion/cavitation, to control scale, to prevent foaming and to maintain pH. Common examples of additives include various phosphates, sodium borate, molybdate, sodium silicate, potassium sebacate and sodium nitrate. Just like additives in a lubricating oil, these additives will contribute to ranging elemental concentrations of sodium, boron, potassium, silicon and phosphorous in the coolant. As will be discussed in greater detail later, the elemental families from the coolant additive system help serve as markers, like DNA, to identify glycol contamination of lubricating oils.
See, problem is, coolant is “oily” not because it has oil in it, but because of its main compounds plus lubrication additives. Water pump fins spin at very high speed. Regular oil, unfortunately, has very high foaming ability, one of the reasons it is not used in say shock absorbers. When you have water +engine oil, run through fast spinning pump fins, they will beat that mixture up into suspension, well known yellow “milkshake”. You don’t want to have THAT inside your cooling system.
That being said, I am opposed to saying “it’s OK to drive on it for some time”.If you got the bulk of the oil out just refill with fresh coolant, get all the air out of the system and drive it a bit, check, change, and repeat until the coolant is completely free of any oil.
Running cold water through it is not going to dislodge the oil that has attached itself to the interior radiator surfaces.
As it is only in the radiator, mix up a very concentrated solution of hot water and any harsh dishwashing liquid. With the hoses removed, block the top and bottom openings and fill the radiator with the solution and let it sit for 10 minutes or so. Empty it and do it a second time then fill the radiator with clean warm water and let it drain out again. Then hose it out.
This should see most of the oil dislodged from the interior surfaces of the radiator and you won’t be running oil suspended in coolant through your engine once it is all connected and refilled and up to operating temp.
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