I plan on doing a flush of my coolant system tomorrow. I'm curious as to the coolant filter on the C8.3. My understanding is there is a valve you can turn to bypass the coolant filter. I purchased a blank as I am converting to Final Charge, but I'm wondering if I can just switch the valve to bypass the filter completely?
On my 99 270 it was accessed by going in the drivers side door and you will see a white filter up and to the back a bit. It has a petcock inline to shut it off right by it. I would put the blank in as you already have it. I would have to trace it to see if you could permanently bypass it. I am not sure on that part.
On our coach, our coolant filter valve is a long narrow cylinder with a single flow hole going crosswise and made out of plastic, which has been known to break sometimes when rotated to turn off. Cummins has a metal replacement valve, which we purchased.
The valve is held down in the hole with the edge a single visible screw head, located on the top of the narrow valve.
We can remove screw, but our plastic valve must have an edge on it somewhere and could not be easily lifted out of its hole. If it broke while lifting out, the broken off bottom would be a problem getting out.
So we ended up leaving the original plastic valve alone. We no longer turn it to change filter.
And nothing ever spills out if we change coolant filter without draining anti-freeze.
So I don't know why the valve needs to be turned. I think nothing spills out because on our coach the coolant filter is located higher than our radiator, so closing the valve may not be necessary in our engine / radiator configuration.
We also use blank filters as our Cummins Permanent Antifreeze always measures the correct DCA.
I'm not sure, but I don't believe that there is a filter bypass valve, just the little valve to close when changing the filter. The blank filter still filters the coolant it just doesn't have the chemical pellets in it.
I changed it out and left the blank in. Thanks Jerry!
Yes, you should leave a filter functional (but one with zero SCA= blank) when converting to any of the coolants that do not require SCA.
You still want the filtration function.