dannyk
Silver Member
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2001
- Messages
- 179
- Location
- Northern Minnesota
- Tractor
- Kubota and John Deere tractors 20-40HP; skid steer loader
I ordered a 2520 with block heater that I assume was installed by the dealer. Anyway, I noticed that the antifreeze mix was way over 50:50, i.e., completely off scale on my Prestone tester that checks out perfectly well on my other machines. After thinking about this for a while, I realized that what probably happened was that when the block heater was installed, antifreeze was lost and then was replaced by 100% antifreeze rather than 50:50. At least this scenario would account for the faulty mixture in the radiator.
I did run the engine with the bad mix until the 50-hour service. I wonder if I did any damage doing this? When I did the 50-hour service, I just drained the radiator and replaced the fluid with 50:50 ASTM 4985 (Prestone) as specified in the manual. Of course it's still a bit on the concentrated side because I didn't drain the engine block. I think the engine block plug that the manual says to open is where the block heater is installed. I got about 3 quarts of the supposedly 3.6 quarts of fluid.
So I post this mostly as a caution for people to test their antifreeze after a block heater installation, and to see if anyone thinks I should do a complete radiator flush.
Thanks, Danny
I did run the engine with the bad mix until the 50-hour service. I wonder if I did any damage doing this? When I did the 50-hour service, I just drained the radiator and replaced the fluid with 50:50 ASTM 4985 (Prestone) as specified in the manual. Of course it's still a bit on the concentrated side because I didn't drain the engine block. I think the engine block plug that the manual says to open is where the block heater is installed. I got about 3 quarts of the supposedly 3.6 quarts of fluid.
So I post this mostly as a caution for people to test their antifreeze after a block heater installation, and to see if anyone thinks I should do a complete radiator flush.
Thanks, Danny