I’d be lying if I told you I had never used Bars before to get me out of a jam, but it really isn’t good on the cooling system.
I had a guy give me a 10kw diesel generator on time. He said it would overheat constantly and he was tired of fooling with it. I got it home, did a little investigating, and found out the complete cooling system was completely plugged up. Granted, I have no idea how much stop leak they used, put it plugged up everything. Ended up having to run the engine to get it hot, flush the system, and repeat. A mechanic friend of mine suggested using dish soap mixed with water and it did help. I probably did this 20 or more times before I got it all out. Just a straight flush wouldn’t do much, but if you ran the engine until it got hot, it seemed to break it loose. Thought I was going to have to tear the engine down to get it all out, but I finally got at least most of it all out. I ended up having to just replace the radiator, because without complete disassembly and rodding out it wasn’t coming clean, and it was in pretty bad shape anyway (apparently the reason for all the stop leak added). After that, and seeing the problems it caused, I’ve been very reluctant to use Bars in anything since then.
