Greasy Streaks on Your Car or Trucks Windshield Check for Coolant

All right, let's set that over here. Now let's go ahead and start adding some fluid. I'm gonna start with my coolant. Wait a minute, urgh. Oh man, I can't believe I did that. Wrong fluid inside the reservoir, of course. Hey, friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. So, in today's video, what I wanna talk to you about is a super common mistake or even accident that might potentially happen while you're working under your hood and you're trying to add fluids. So now, why does this even happen? Typically it comes down to either you're inexperienced, maybe you just kinda opened up both of them and you didn't really pay attention to which reservoir is which, maybe you were distracted. This is gonna be something that's super common. Typically, when we're working on our trucks or automobiles, we're essentially gonna have a buddy hanging around. We like to talk, we like to chit chat, and of course get a little bit of work done at the same time. Unless, of course, well, you make this little accident right here and then it's really not too big of a deal, it's definitely not the end of the world, but it is something that we need to talk about.

So now, this could play out in a couple different ways. The first way that I wanna talk about though is essentially you went ahead and you added maybe a little bit of coolant or even somehow a little bit of oil to the washer fluid reservoir but you have not actually used the washer fluid pump at this point. The reason why it's super important that we haven't actually used the washer fluid pump at this point is because we don't wanna go ahead and circulate any of the contaminated fluid throughout the rest of our washer fluid system, meaning, the pump, the hoses, or even out of those washer jets that are either coming out of your hood or your cowl. Essentially, we don't want any of that fluid getting onto your windshield. So now, if this has happened to you and you haven't used the pump or even circulated any of the fluid throughout the washer fluid system, this is gonna be a little bit easier overall. You caught it ahead of time, so we can take care of it ahead of time. What I generally like to do is go ahead and empty out the washer fluid reservoir as much as possible. Typically for me, I personally remove it from the actual automobile itself. That makes it easiest for me because that way there I can know that I got every little bit of the contaminant out of the washer fluid.

Now, of course, not everybody wants to go ahead and take out their washer fluid reservoir. There's gonna be different types of washer fluid reservoirs and they might be a little bit harder to get out of the car. Your washer fluid might be located inside of one of your wheel wells behind the plastic. If that's the case, you can go ahead and grab yourself a turkey baster, just make sure it's not the one that you're gonna be using for your thanksgiving dinner or anything the like, and essentially go ahead and put it down inside there and suck out as much of that fluid as possible. Essentially, once you get out as much of the fluid as possible, go ahead and take a garden hose and maybe some sort of degreaser, but you definitely don't wanna use something that's gonna damage the paint. So it has to be car safe. Overall, if you wanted to use a little bit of dish soap with that garden hose, you can go ahead and spray it in there and then of course it's gonna mix around and degrease everything. You're gonna need to go ahead and get all that soap out of there, so, don't use too much soap. You don't wanna have foaminess coming out of your washer fluid lines after you've done all this.

Now, of course, like I said, for me, I would go ahead and remove the washer fluid tank. Before I went ahead and did that though, I would drain it. Essentially, if you were to look at the bottom of the washer fluid reservoir, you're gonna be able to find where the pump is, because what we're gonna wanna do at this point would be to go ahead and remove that washer fluid pump from the tank itself. The reason why I would wanna do this is of course so I can clean up the pump the best I can before any fluid got washed up and in through there, because, of course, if any of the contaminant, whether it was oil or coolant, made its way into that pump, just sucking it out of the reservoir itself probably isn't gonna help me out in the long run.

So now, once you went ahead and you got all this out of there and you made sure that there was no more soapy bubbles or anything like that, you could of course go ahead and put it all back together. Like I said, make sure that you washed out that pump though. You wanna make sure that you don't have any residue inside the pump. This is super important. Just as important as making sure you get it all out of the reservoir. At that point, go ahead and put the pump back into the reservoir, put it all back together, and then of course hook up your lines. Typically, like I said, if you found that you contaminated the fluid ahead of time before you went ahead and used the washer fluid system, this is gonna be the best overall. Just go ahead and put it all back together, fill it up with your favorite type of washer fluid, whatever the type might be, and then go ahead and give it a couple squirts. We're gonna wanna make sure we prime the lines with that pump. Also double check the windshield just to make sure you don't see any rainbows.

So now let's talk about the second thing that might potentially happen. Maybe you weren't the actual one that made the mistake. Maybe you brought your car to somebody that went ahead and filled your fluids for you, that was nice of them. Maybe they made a mistake, or even an accident. They could have been distracted just like any of us, it's a human error. This typically happens and it's very common. Now, of course, maybe this person didn't really wanna go through all the hassle of maybe taking out all the fluid that's inside of there, or even taking care of the mistake they made, or maybe they didn't even realize that they made the mistake. Obviously that wouldn't be a very good thing because when are you gonna find out? Typically it's gonna be when you're driving down the road and essentially you need to go ahead and use that washer fluid to clean off your windshield. This isn't gonna be the best way to figure it out though because essentially, when this happens, the washer fluid is gonna come up onto your windshield, but it's gonna have antifreeze in it, which, of course, has a little bit of a lubricant to it, essentially like an oil base to it, and essentially what that's gonna do is it's gonna make some nice fuzzy rainbows coming across your windshield, and of course, it's gonna make it all blurry looking. At this point, it's gonna be very scary and very dangerous driving down the road, especially if you're driving at night with headlights or glare coming in through the windshield.

So now, if this is the case, the process is gonna be a little bit more in-depth. Essentially, what you wanna do, like I said before, would be to of course get out as much of that fluid inside your reservoir as possible. Me personally, like I said, remove the reservoir from the automobile. Clean it out 100%. At that point though, what I said before was, of course, you could just go ahead and rinse off that pump, make sure you don't have any fluid on it and then essentially you should be good to go after you rinse out the reservoir and put it back together. In this particular scenario though, it's not really the case. Because at this point, you went ahead and you used your washer fluid pump. It pumped it through the lines, up and out the squirters, which, of course, are gonna be spraying it onto your windshield for you so they clean up that windshield. The wiper blades do a little bit of this and they just smeared that coolant all over the place. I already talked to you about what happens if you get coolant on your windshield, so I'm not gonna reiterate, but essentially, it's not good.

All this fluid that's inside the lines is gonna need to be removed though because, of course, if you were to leave any of it in there and just clean out the reservoir, it's still gonna leave a coating inside the lines and of course on your windshield and everything else, including the wiper blades. If you were to leave it on there, you're gonna have an issue with visibility, and of course, it's gonna be very annoying and unsafe overall. So, essentially, what you wanna do is go ahead and flush out the system the best you can. Use, like I said, a mild degreaser, but definitely don't use something like dish soap. Let's imagine that I just went ahead and I cleaned this out and I put in some dish soap and everything looks nice and pretty. While under pressure from the pump, all that's gonna be getting shot up through your lines and out through those nozzles. Now you're gonna have a nice little bubble bath coming shooting at your windshield, which of course probably wouldn't be very good overall either.

So, essentially, if this was the case, you'd wanna just continue flushing it out the best you can, and of course, if you have access to be able to put this fluid into a cup of some sort, that's gonna be the best overall. Theoretically, if you could, you can come up to where the hoses actually meet onto the back side of your nozzle, go ahead and use a pick and try to get those hoses off of there. Take the hoses and put them into a nice collection bucket, and then of course go ahead and run that washer fluid pump with the brand new fresh fluid inside there, whether it's just the water with the light degreaser, or even at this point if you happen to just use washer fluid because you didn't feel like doing that last process. But essentially what we wanna do is try to catch any fluid that might come out of it in case, like I said, it has a contaminant such as oil or even coolant in it. We don't want it getting it on the car or in the environment.

So now you got it all figured out. Good for you. I hope everything's gonna be perfect, but don't forget about cleaning that windshield and especially your wiper blades. Any residue that you leave on your windshield could potentially cause a hazard while you're driving down the road. Maybe you clean up that windshield and it looks amazing but you forgot about your wiper blades. Any residue that's left on those wiper blades is gonna get pushed right back onto that nice clean windshield, and there you go, you're right back to the funny colors or even hazing on your windshield. Now, if you happen to put a little bit of washer fluid inside of your coolant reservoir, that's not necessarily something that you're gonna have to worry about as much as putting coolant inside your washer fluid reservoir.

Obviously, it is something that you're gonna wanna deal with. Essentially, if you were to either go ahead and suck out the majority of this fluid with, like I said, the turkey baster or whatever you might happen to have, or if you wanted to remove the entire reservoir, that's completely up to you, but overall, a tiny bit of washer fluid inside of your coolant shouldn't really cause any harm to the system overall. If you leave a lot of washer fluid inside there, you could potentially change your freeze point or even your boiling point of your coolant, which in turn would actually be an issue. So, of course, if you went ahead, put a little bit in there, you realized it right now, go ahead and just get it out of there and then top it off with your manufacturer-specified coolant.

Okay, friends. So that's pretty much what I've got for you on what happens if you went ahead and put coolant inside your washer fluid reservoir. Obviously, I got a little bit more work to do on my particular application, but for you, I hope that you're not having this issue. If you are, or maybe you've had this issue of your own, or even a story you just wanna talk about, leave it in the comment section below because I always love to hear from you. While you're at it, if you like the video, smash on the like button for me. It would mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell, that way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.