Any advice on a best practice to flush the entire coolant system that fell victim to an ATF leak into the radiator (AKA strawberry shake)? I created another thread about the transmission replacement and such due the ATF leak, but I first need to flush out the entire coolant system and clean it (as best I can) of the ATF oil. I have removed the radiator, thermostat and flush garden hose water between the two in/out lets hoses from the radiator. But is that flushing water through the whole system or just through the aluminum water passage the thermostat feeds into???

I plan to run the engine and flush soap/water through the system, then just water until its all clear. But looking for the best in/outlet for fresh water. Thoughts?

 

^
Not sure if you want to go to this extent; however, Eric O uses the below type of device to flush heater cores?
Though, I guess it would be better to incorporate some kind of detergent reservoir for what you have in mind with the ATF engine block decon.



Good Luck!

Here's another device / method where he uses CLR for heater cores:

 

Thanks Zeta! I was planning to just cram the garden hose whatever hose is best but this is good to know if my hack job doesn't work as planned.

 

make sure you flush heater core too!

For trans it might not be toast, have you tried draining and flushing via pumping out of lines and adding fresh atf? The longer it sits with strawberry milkshake in trans the worse it will be.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty sure its shot. This happened a year ago. My nephew was driving it at the time and the Trans Temp light would come while driving. This happened for a while. Then I took it for a day and the same thing but I kept driving until it started slipping. I nursed it home and drained the ATF and black plastic bits came out. I put new fluid in and its been parked for a year. After flushing the radiator I put it in gear and it engaged so I was able to brake the rotors free of the pads so I feel very lucky because I can at least move it into the garage easily.

 

It is known that oil dissolves with soap. Therefore, if you want to remove oil from a water-type system, use soap (or dishwashing liquid) and plenty of water.

 

That is exactly what I did. After flushing out with the usual garden hose I used the method from Zeta's second video. I have an old fish tank pump so I put in a 2 gallon bucket of water with dawn dish soap and circulated in . I changed out water ever so often and used different access inlets to push the water in. After that, I flushed with hot water from the sink (soften water), then finally drained that and pushed through distilled water to push out sink water. There were still a few bits of pink goo that I could push out with compressed air, but I felt that was as good as I was going to get it. I intend to move it into the garage today to begin dropping the engine/trans together. Wish me luck.....