It’s shocking to find that, regardless of how terrible the radiator is, you could clean the vehicle’s radiator using baking soda as it can clean the corroded, rusty, and clogged pores, radiator turning it very smooth and clean.
It’s an old radiator cleaner and flushing technique in the cheapest way, very much effective if you don’t have any specific radiator cleaner chemicals.
If you feel it could damage the radiator of your car, don’t wait to do it, for example, under certain circumstances so that you could not really find or buy any specific chemicals, it’s safest and sound as well as the best.
You need to understand what baking soda is and why it is a helpful cleaning remedy before you move into how to use baking soda as a radiator cleaner, and make sure to add some vinegar for flushing radiator with vinegar along with the baking soda since both cause a chemical process which includes this.
When you mix both vinegar and baking soda, what happens?
Two strong things people seem to love to get for cleaning were vinegar and baking soda. However, according to Brian Sansoni from AmericanCleaning Center, a specialist on all cleaning things, individually both has their own unique sanitizing benefits. Baking soda is indeed a deodorizer naturally and fine abrasive; it’s excellent for scrubbing and odour absorption. In particular, vinegar is excellent at removing the stains of hard water. You combine an acid that is vinegar and a base which is baking soda that produces carbon dioxide gas and salty water when you mix the vinegar and baking soda. The reaction does have an instant ‘clean’ look, but you realize you’re left with the saltwater if you notice deeper. For physically breaking up and carrying away dirt, its agitation of a fizzy reaction by itself may be useful.
Flushing radiator with Vinegar and Baking Soda Chemical Reaction
Baking soda is a sodium bicarbonate.It includes a sodium atom, a molecule of carbon dioxide , one hydrogen atom, an oxygen atom in each baking soda molecule.
Vinegar has acetic acid, with each molecule containing an atom of hydrogen and an ion of acetate.
A hydrogen atom found in acetic acid enters the oxygen and hydrogen atoms of the baking soda when combined to form a water molecule, whereas the acetate ion catches the sodium and produces the sodium acetate salt. A molecule of carbon dioxide, freed from other chemical bonds, now can escape and bubble up like a gas.
How to Clean a Radiator by flushing radiator with Vinegar and Baking Soda?

The sum of Vinegar and baking soda, which will have the best result, remains equal to Six tablespoons each.
- Until removing a thermostat valve, the baking soda may be lodged into the thermostat valve which may cause engine temperature control problems if you do not extract it from the valve, so abandon this approach and use specific cleaning chemicals.
- Apply Six tbsp of the baking soda and some vinegar to a radiator tank in an water filled already and do not add soda into the coolant, and flush the coolant out, and the water instead
- You’re going to see foamy reactions and bubbles like gas now.
- Close the cap of the radiator and turn on the engine and wait for the engine temperature to reach the optimum position where the gauge attains a center point stage.
- Shut the engine off and remove the cap after reaching the optimal temperature, and afterwards flush out the radiator tank by extracting water from pipe and lower main hose.
- It helps your radiator to flush out the water from the radiator and then clean all the debris and rusty without putting it again on a lower hose pipe.
- Before you can see clean water coming out from a radiator, perform this watering process again and again.
- Place a garden hose on the Upper hose/heater hose running into a heater core in last reverse system, and drive water again into the engine under pressure via the heater core and out into where a line was attached to the pump.