I have a 92 and I drove last week from my house to visit a friend of mine in las vegas. Its about a 550 mile drive....about half way there I stopped and added half a quart of oil and filled my coolant resevoir. Then when I was there a few days later I looked at noticed that there was some sort of build up inside of the coolant resevoir. The car still runs perfectly and wasnt over heating. When I left I added more coolant again and the car has never over heated or anything. What would cause there to be a bunch of crap inside of the coolant reservoir like that??

 

could be a number of things. need more information like, what color is this buildup? is it just in the reservoir or is it in the radiator as well? could be due to a lack of changing the anti-freeze, oil mixing with the coolant, etc.

 

ya was it oil or what?

 

Build up in the coolant resoviour really means one of two things. Either you put the propolyne glycol (pink, yellow, red) in with the ethelyne glycol (Green) which causes gelling. These two coolants dont mix. OR the other thing as someone stated is that you havent been taking care your cooling system. Pop off ur radiator cap and look inside to see if theres any buildup inside the radiator...which will probably need to be replaced if its bad enough.

How many miles on the car? How long since last cooling system flush? (Should be done every 2 years or 30,000 miles w/ ethelyne glycol) Did you check your oil again to see if its milky at all?

 

When I looked in the reservoir it doesnt really look like there is too much build up anymore....Its more liquidy now....its brownish orange in color. When I took off the radiator cap there was the brownish liquid around the cap but inside of the radiator it looks pure green. The oil seems to be fine. The car doesnt over heat or anything still. When I stopped to put coolant and oil in I used green coolant and before that there was water inside. I also put in about a half a quart of mobil 1 synthetic oil....before I wasnt using synthetic I dont know if that would make a difference or not. There is 144k on the car im not sure when the last coolant flush was I have only owned the car for about six months.

 

Sounds like you have a rust/dirt issue with your cooling system. I would drain all the old stuff out, and flush the system out.

I did this once, not sure if it is the right way, but it seemed to work. First I drained everything out of the system. The I filled the radiator with water, started the car and let it run for a min, as the car was running, I pulled the radiator drain plug back out, Let a bunch drain out, but i kept filling the radiator at the same time. I saw a lot of old stuff drain out, once is seemed like everything was out, i shut the water off, and let the car run for about 15-20 sec. Shut the car off, let all the water drain out. Filled it with a 50/50 mix. Turn the car back on, and did the normal fill and bleed.

Word of caution, if you do something like I did make sure to watch the temprature gauge to not let the car overheat. I had my dad help me doing this so the engine was never witout water.

 

I would just flush out the system like the guy above said. Your going to want to unscrew the petcock on the radiator, pull out the plug which is under the exhaust manifold (Your going to need a breaker bar cuz that thing is on their) and then let it all drain out. Then i would get some distilled water and fill up the radiator, should take about 2 gallons (I think our integras are 7.1 qts). Let it run and then once again pull out the petcock on radiator and block plug and let it all drain out. Then fill up the radiator with a 50/50 mix of green (ethelyne glycol) and distilled water. Then ur good 2 go.