As you can see in my sig, my truck is currently not registered, it's parked being refurbished. Up until late November, just after Thanksgiving, I was starting the truck once a week. Then the radiator went. I got a brand new replacement and removed the old rad almost immediately, but I popped a bolt head in the process. Long story short, I still don't have the new rad in. I've been trying for months now to get that bolt out, but I've only worked sporadically because I don't have a garage () and I live on the east coast where its so cold I might as will be living in Siberia.

My question is, what will or has already happened to my truck by not starting it, and how big a push should I make through the cold to drill the bolt out (an extremely tedious process, I've broken four bits already), get the rad back in and the truck started again? Could it, by any chance, wait until it's warmer? Thanks!

 

I bet you'll be all right waiting. I've let cars sit through all or most of the winter several times and never needed more than a jump afterward to get started again (assuming the gas was relatively fresh when you parked it). You might disconnect the battery. . .

 

Battery is disconnected and in the house to keep it warm. I'm gonna replace it in the spring anyway. I added a preservative to the gas to keep it from going bad. Thanks for the reply!

 

And watch out for nest building mice.

 

The fuel stabilizer is a good idea, but did you run the engine for 10 or 15 minutes to get the stuff through the system too? If it just in your tank, your fuel lines and system could still get gummy. Don't worry about it right now because it takes a while for fuel to varnish, but if it sits for 6 months or more, you could have some issues. If you ran the stuff through the system you'll be fine for years.

Is your old radiator on still? If not, you don't want air getting in the cooling system because that means rust.

 

LOL! Didn't think about mice. It's parked on a paved driveway, would mice be a problem there? And yeah, I put in the stabilizer many months ago and continued to start it once a week, and let it run for about 10 minutes a shot, so I would say the preservative is well within the fuel lines.

The problem is that the rad has not been in the truck since it went bad in November. I'm guessing that's a bit of a problem. The other thing is that I did not completely drain the cooling system, so there is still coolant in the top end, anyway. I only drained enough to take the rad out. Is that good or bad? I should probably flush the system anyway when I get the new rad in, huh?

BTW, thanks for everyone's help!

 

Yes, definitely flush the system when you put the new rad in. The thing that I would be concerned with is that's it's not air tight w/o the radiator on there and it will start to rust inside the engine unless you plug it off.

 

Is there anything I can do about that besides a flush?

 

Not really, just replace the radiator when you can and then flush the cooling system. If the truck has been sitting for more than six months then i would recomend that you drain the gas tank and refill it with fresh gas. There is a drain plug on the bottom of the gas tank, so its not hard to do.