SnowDrifter
Full Access Member
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2016
- Posts
- 2,439
- Reaction score
- 2,681
correct
The heater hose outlets are right next to the thermostat. Remove those, you'll drain whatever you'd get from the thermostat
For the radiator hose: take the cap off your reservoir, tilt the rad hose up, fill until it dribbles out somewhere. Reconnect, then fill from the reservoir as per normal
If you've never bled air out of a cooling system before, the methodology is this:
- Fill from the upper rad hose (specific to our vehicles this isn't universal)
- top up the reservoir
- Leave the cap off and start the car
- add coolant as needed to the reservoir
- As the engine warms up a bit, give the thing a couple sharp revs
- Verify you have interior heat. Newer vehicles like ours control heat by changing air flow, not coolant flow, so ya don't need to blast it. High heat just makes it take longer to warm up.
- check coolant level again. If air burped out of the heater cores, you'll
- toss the cap back on and either let it idle, or (preferrably) take it for a drive until the thermostat opens. I like to toss the gearbox in "3" to keep the revs up a touch and help ensure any small bubbles in strange spots are pushed out. tbh these rigs don't really depend on a thermostat opening to bleed air so this step isn't needed, but I like to do it as a final validation.
- check level again when you park
- when the vehicle cools down the following morning, you'll probably have to add a splash as everything cools and contracts
For the distilled water flushes, skip the driving / thermostat opening part. Work with a warm engine so you can feel when clean DiH2O has made it to the heater core. But you don't need to go further than that. Fill it, get some air out, blip the throttle till you have heat, drain, go again. Shouldn't take you more than 3 maybe 4 minutes per cycle.
