What do you think of the radiator sealants?

Question

i am talking about the kind that you have to flush your radiator first in order to empty the product in the radiator to seal the leak...do they really work or they just want your money...let's say for a small leak not a huge one either!

Answer 1

they work for awhile. stuff like that is only so you can get back home.

Answer 2

you won't need them

Answer 3

If you do your maintenance, you'll never need'em. A chemical flush will cause alot of problems, mostly it'll eat the water pump's seal.

Answer 4

I hate the stuff, I never use it, last time I used it was when I just got out of high school, I was trying to fix a drip in the cold winter, the crummy stuff didn't stop the drip, but it did travel up to my heater core and plug it up royally. I wasn't getting any heat then so I had to take the hoses all apart and  flush the entire system in separate pieces with a garden hose to get all that crud out. It was very messy and that water was awfully cold in winter. It was alot of work and I will never use it again, it's better to fix the actual problem which I did after learning a tough lesson.  

Answer 5

It will buy you time, but it's not a long term fix. I'd only advise on using it for either a emergency fix to get you back on the road, or if you're between paychecks and can't fix it right now, but will soon.

The stuff's just a band-aide, if you use it and it stops your leak and you consider it fixed it will fail on you in a major way sometime down the road. Maybe a month, a year, hard to say, but it will fail.