Flushing water system ??

[pegliobaglio]

Right chaps ,
Quick question maybe a silly one. I want to change my anti freeze, now I have never done this before I have drained the rad etc before but there is always water/ anti freeze mix left in he header bottle... Now I doubt it would cause much of a problem having 2 different types of anti freeze in the system but surely it's better if it's all the same!
So my question is how do I drain the system so I get all the water out? I had the bleed nipple / screws out and cap off both the rad and bottle when I drained it but still seemed to stay full?!? Any help would be much appreciated !
Thanks
chris:thumbs:

 

[Auss15]

I'd remove the bottom radiator hose, put the car heater to the on position and apart from removing the expansion bottle I would just siphon it out.

 

[pegliobaglio]

Cheers man, I have been removinG the bottom hose to drain the system, maybe I will just remove the air filter and drop the hose off the header bottle too catch the water in a bowl or something .

 

[S15_SAM]

That header bottle is only the expansion/overflow tank, so it doesn't have much to do with filling the system up unless it's under pressure/vacum. So your best bet is to take it off and drain it out and fill it up with fresh stuff to the max mark.

Btw the it's ok to mix orange and pink coolant together! And it's ok to mix blue, green and purple together! But not to mix the different groups. So DO NOT mix orange with green etc etc.

 

[pegliobaglio]

Ah ok dude that was what I was worried about as I had green in here and the new one is orange but don't think it should have mixed empties the header by taking it off and drained the rest of the system first. What can happen if they mix???

 

[pegliobaglio]

Might empty it all and run a load of water through to flush it all out if it could be a problem

 

[spoonman]

All this in the service manual dude, Im sure you can figure out how to flush any coolant out of your rad. If you undo the drain bolt on the block you are sure to get 99% of it out, but its a bit of a pain to get too if you still have your AC bolted on, not too sure on your engine bay setup. If you can get to your thermostat easy enough i would just remove that, put the thermostat cover back on and the hose back on but not the rad end as that's your drain and just flood the system in reverse with the garden hose, going into the outlet to flush out any coolant and as mentioned have you heater on hot to ensure any coolant gets flushed out of that. Then once water is all you have put the hoses back onto your rad and fill it back up with just water, still without your thermostat and chuck some engine block flush cleaner in and run the car for about 10 - 20 min to allow it to clean any crap from the system if you have a slightly rusty system maybe two runs of cleaner and even then you might not be able to clean it all out but you will clean alot of it. Then ensure you flush any of that cleaning chemical out by doing the water flush part again. Follow the service manuals direction for filling your system up with coolant to ensure next to no air bubbles are left in there, you should have a really clean block, heater, throttle body and rad. Make the coolant mixture 50/50 if your car goes through winter and risks freezing the coolant, otherwise 70/30 as the more water in your system the better the cooling ability, the antifreeze chemical on stops rust corrosion and freezing, water does your heat exchanging.

 

[shark79]

make sure you get rid of the air trapped in the engine water jacket