I stupidly put windshield washer fluid where the coolant goes

[El_Dude]

I opened the hood, saw the yellow cap on the left, opened it and started to pour windshield washer fluid in it. and that is when i realized the other BRIGHT YELLOW cap that has a windshield washer symbol on it. I quickly pulled back the jug, and said the F word out loud.

I probably poured about 1-2 cups in there. Should I go get it flushed right away? From what I read on Google, most says it'll be fine, but some can turn the coolant into gel.

 

[PoMansRam]

1-2 cups in the overflow bottle you're fine. Assuming this was standard blue w/s washer fluid, it's mostly water and alcohol, which will boil away.

If you filled the overflow bottle, I'd say suck it out with a hand pump, or shop vac or just hose it out with water and replenish with the orange/red liquid gold.

 

[1999 White C5 Coupe]

If it was me - I’d flush and replace the coolant.

On my 2014 Ram - I always thought the engine coolant and windshield washer fluid lids were poorly marked, so I wrote on the engine coolant reservoir lid with permanent black marker (Radiator Fluid) to avoid putting washer fluid in the coolant tank.

I’d bet you’re not the first one to do what you did.

 

[Burla]

did you drive the truck? if not get it out of overflow. dude, I will give you a hint at what windshield wiper fluid is, it is something that cleans off your windshield. Coolant uses film to populate the surface of metal, I wouldn't want to add something that cleans off slime into a system that requires slime to protect metal. But hey, I'm sure more guys will tell you want you want to hear so roll with that?

 

[El_Dude]

i haven't driven it. Not sure how to get it out of the overflow. When I remove the clear plasic guage thing that's in there, its about foot long. Siphon it out?

 

[MADDOG]

Yes, siphon or get a small hand pump.

 

[HEMIMANN]

You may have a hose on the bottom of the overflow tank also - if so, drain from there. Otherwise siphon out - don't get any in your mouth if you don't have a pump. Windshield washer solution typical is a methanol blend. e.g. - "bathtub gin". The kind the mob killed people with, that is.

Probably also has some soap in it as well. Also not good for cooling system.

 

[Burla]

principals of siphon, if you use a clear tube you can suck until you see it breaks the U, once the fluid in the hose is lower then the hose going into the fluid, you have a siphon, once a siphon starts it will empty the tank.

 

[Burla]

The other way it to use a hose, simply put your hose into over flow, turn it on until water comes out then turn off, unhook hose from water spigot, set hose lower then overflow tank, siphon will empty tank.

 

[Burla]

You can repeat this a couple times, really flush it. Now, coolant shouldnt be on the ground, so technically you should do this into a bucket and dispose correctly.

 

[HEMIMANN]

@Burla - you wouldn't know by youthful experience, would ya?

 

[Dodge 1500 4X4]

Buy a turkey baster, and buy a piece of 5/16 fuel line hose and suck it all out of there, or use a 12volt pump to extract it out, when i purchased my truck, on there check fluid levels the Einstein toped off the overflow tank!!!

 

[seabrook]

dont feel bad- i put water in my wifes cayenne power steering reservoir thinking it was the coolant reservoir and she drove it for 2 days lol!!!

yea man dont drive it and suck it out, once you suck it all out refill with coolant can suck it out again then just refill it.

or you could just pull the coolant bottle, wash it out and refill it wil coolant

 

[BadHemi2014]

Mine's a 2014 so might be different, but when I flushed my cooling system I removed the overflow to clean it. On mine, if you remove the grill there's easy access to the overflow, and it's just a bolt or two holding it in place.
Regardless of how you do it, if you empty it, rinse with distilled water and refill, you should be fine. If you haven't driven it that ww fluid hasn't gotten into the rest of the system.

PS you are not the first I know there's a post just like this somewhere on this forum!

 

[BWL]

Syphon, shop vac or just remove the reservoir and dump it out. Fill back to the line and you're done. If you haven't run the truck the fluid will not have gone into the radiator with one exception. If the truck was warmed up when you topped the reservoir then it may have drawn some into the radiator while cooling.

 

[GTyankee]

Personally, i have a suction device that looks very similar to a Grease gun
That would cost too much unless you worked on small engines quite often.

Grab that turkey baster

 

[Jwithing]

Been there, done that. Drove it for a little bit too, so I flushed. Removing the reservoir or siphoning as others have stated is pretty easy.

When I did the flush, I pulled and cleaned the reservoir as well and am glad I did. It was clogged with a gel gunk in the actual plastic tube portion of the reservoir, presumably from the washer fluid mixture. The clog seemed far enough from reaching the engine and no gunk came out during the actual flush, which was over 50k miles ago, so all is good.

 

[Treburkulosis]

This happened when I swapped out my power steering fluid. I went with what the auto parts store said, It was the wrong fluid. I just basted it out with a baster and installed the correct fluid. It will be fine, just get it out of there. A baster is just a couple of bucks.

 

[KC5TGQ]

I opened the hood, saw the yellow cap on the left, opened it and started to pour windshield washer fluid in it. and that is when i realized the other BRIGHT YELLOW cap that has a windshield washer symbol on it. I quickly pulled back the jug, and said the F word out loud.

I probably poured about 1-2 cups in there. Should I go get it flushed right away? From what I read on Google, most says it'll be fine, but some can turn the coolant into gel.

I did the exact same. They need to make the windshield washer cap blue. I bought a cheap hand pump from Autozone and pumped it out.

 

[Treburkulosis]

I did the exact same. They need to make the windshield washer cap blue. I bought a cheap hand pump from Autozone and pumped it out.

They didn't think that one out very well for sure.