#Best radiator stop leak free#

Using stop leak in this case may fix the seep and cause you to avoid replacing your water pump, but this may invite risk of greater failure as a result. Second, some components such as water pumps are designed to start seeping coolant as they are nearing failure as a warning sign to replace them before they fail catastrophically and put your entire engine at risk. First, using stop leak will possibly make it harder for a mechanic to diagnose where a coolant leak exists. There are a couple more things that we should note. Furthermore, we highly recommend that you do a complete coolant flush when you replace to component to make sure you get as much of the stop leak out of your cooling system as possible. We recommend waiting no longer than one week. You should plan to replace the leaking component as soon as possible after filling your radiator with stop leak. That said, if you do choose to use a bit of radiator stop leak, this does not absolve you of the necessity to replace the faulty component. In these instances, it is acceptable to use stop leak. Perhaps you are stuck on the side of the road and out of cell phone service, or you need to limp your car to a mechanic because you can’t afford a tow. Our rule of thumb is to only use stop leak when you have absolutely no other options. So now that you know when not to use stop leak, we can discuss when you should use it. Using stop leak does carry risks, so you must make sure that you take these into account. In short, you should not use stop leak if you are in a position to repair your car the conventional way.

#Best radiator stop leak free#

Furthermore, stop leak is rarely a permanent solution and while its use may grant you a few miles of leak free driving, you can reasonably expect that your leak will reappear over time in many cases. It also tends to gunk up your coolant system pretty quickly. Stop leak plugs indiscriminately and as such can sometimes plug things that it shouldn’t such as cooling jackets or channels, potentially causing more overheating issues and engine failures in the future. It doesn’t know whether a hole is supposed to be there or whether it is the source of a leak. It acts on your entire coolant system and affects every component. That said, the drawback to using stop leak is that it does not discriminate. It works by plugging small holes in your cooling system. To use coolant stop leak, you simply take a bottle (or tablet in some cases) and pour it into your radiator fill neck (please note, if your car has been running immediately prior, you need to allow some time for it to cool down before opening your radiator cap or you risk being splashed with boiling coolant which will quickly put you in the ER) and then run your car for a few minutes. Stop leak works a little bit differently. Leaky antifreeze problems are also usually easily diagnosable as the source of the leak usually makes itself readily apparent. This is the absolute safest way to fix cooling problems on your car because it isolates the offending component and as such is unlikely to affect any other component. First of all, there is only one right way to fix problems with your cooling system and that is to remove and replace the part that has failed. So before we get too deep into this article, we want to take a second to discuss when you should not use stop leak, or at least make you aware of the drawbacks of doing so.

When You Should Not Use Radiator Stop Leak To get your car out of this predicament, sometimes it makes sense to use radiator stop leak. You pop your hood and take a look…bad news.

Before you know it, that puff of smoke becomes a cloud, and then that cloud continues to grow until starts to feel more like you have an erupting volcano under your hood rather than an engine. Soon after comes the initial ominous puff of white smoke from under the hood, followed by that whiff of sweet smelling antifreeze.

It usually starts when we notice that our temperature gauge starts to climb despite normal driving and weather. Click here to see examples of radiator stop leak.We all know that unfortunate feeling of having to pull your car over because it has engine trouble.