So I get a call from my mom, she said she put in windshiled washer fluid and that when she got in the car to clean the windows it still didn't work but she could hear the little motor going, so she turned the car off went back and looked and sure enough it was filled to the top, but she filled the coolant resavior to the top with windshield washer fluid, she said it was really hard to get it to pour in there, anyhow so she only ran it a few minutes is there any harm going to be done?

I emptied the recovery tank to the bottom but when I took off the radiator cap there was a little that was sucked up by the cooling system. I'm thinking it can't be too much worse than adding water plus it's got some anti-freeze component to it but what do you think the long term issues could be. She's only got 36K miles on it. 2005 Civic EX Sedan.

 

I think the best (and probably the only thing) you can do is do a complete cooling system flush, probably more than once and make sure you get all of it out of there, and replace it with new antifreeze. Whatever damage it did has been done.... If it was the blue plain old stuff, it probably wouldn't be as bad as the de-icer, but the water pump would be the major concern.
Flush it out, see what happens from it.

 

What color is the coolant in the newer civics? I know GM uses some orange stuff now instead of it being green. From what I can see into the radiator, it's a bit on the blue side as opposed to being green, mabye that's how it's supposed to look?

 

Its the green stuff

 

OK I'm going to just flush it, I have the helm's manual for the 05 civic, and I'm noticing it just says how to drain it not to flush it, so this might be a stupid question but is the process the same as it used to be? Drain as much as you can, put the heat on high, put the drain plug back in the engine block, and leave the one on the radiator open, and just start runnig fresh water thru the system until it comes out clear, and then drain as much as you can again, and then refill with new coolant?

 

shes lucky the car wasn't hot and she removed the radiator cap

 

I think she filled the overflow tank and not the radiator...

 

i expected to hear your mom dumped antifreeze into her valve cover

 

UPdate:

last night spent a couple hours draining all the coolant which I had thought turned blue but in case you do not know this the 2005 Civic comes with BLUE coolant not GREEN. So in any event, it seems that the small amount she put in the recovery tank wouldn't have done any damage as I siphoned it out.

But then looking into the radiator, I saw it was all blue, and I thought maybe some sort of chemical reaction happend and could have changed the chemcial properties of the coolant. But like I said above, the coolant is not green, it's blue.

It's a shame nobody else knew that I wouldn't have wasted my time with changing the coolant, but hey you learn something new every day right?

P.S. looked in my buddy's 04 Civic and his is actually green in his car, so I guess 05 the color changed. Gotta love it when they change stupid things like that.