Clean your radiators!

[Qmulus]

I am sure that everyone has already heard this, as have I, but today I finally did it. For reference, my car is an '03 with 50k miles. I noticed that even though I just flushed and refilled the cooling system a couple months ago, it seemed to run a bit warm in hot weather. Wow, what a mess I found. I would say that easily 10-15% of the condenser and radiators were completely blocked, and twice that was partially covered. I found leaves, bugs, rocks, part of a bird (yuck), and all manner of garbage packed in them. The surprising part was the amount of junk between the condenser and radiator.

While the job took me over an hour, most of which was spent cleaning everything, I think it was time well spent. I think that while I might not make this an annual service, it probably should be done every 20k or so.

Attached is a picture of one side. The half of a bird was on the other side.

Steve