Squid Gloves
Greenie N00B Member
07 Speed3 with 182K miles. I'm trying to flush and replace the coolant since I just replaced the stock oil cooler and I have no way of knowing what coolant the previous owner used, but I can't get the coolant to drain properly. With every car I've owned before, I've been able to drain all the coolant via the radiator, cycle a few gallons of distilled water through everything, repeat a couple times and refill the coolant, so I assumed it would be the same process on this car.
I tried draining the coolant from the radiator first with the reservoir cap off, but hardly anything actually came out. Even when I disconnected one of the oil cooler hoses, only about a gallon came out. I added water back into the reservoir and did the bleed procedure and went to drain it, and this time it trickled out a little less than a gallon after about 15 minutes. After the third time doing this, nothing came out of the radiator. So now I'm running probably 80:20 water:coolant, and I can't get it to all dump out so I can run 50:50. What am I doing wrong here?
The car is also driving fine and won't go above halfway on the temp gauge. I drove aggressively around my area for about 5 miles and I couldn't get it to overheat or behave weirdly. I'm in socal so I'm not concerned with freezing temperatures, but I'm still concerned about the fact that I can't fully drain it.
I tried draining the coolant from the radiator first with the reservoir cap off, but hardly anything actually came out. Even when I disconnected one of the oil cooler hoses, only about a gallon came out. I added water back into the reservoir and did the bleed procedure and went to drain it, and this time it trickled out a little less than a gallon after about 15 minutes. After the third time doing this, nothing came out of the radiator. So now I'm running probably 80:20 water:coolant, and I can't get it to all dump out so I can run 50:50. What am I doing wrong here?
The car is also driving fine and won't go above halfway on the temp gauge. I drove aggressively around my area for about 5 miles and I couldn't get it to overheat or behave weirdly. I'm in socal so I'm not concerned with freezing temperatures, but I'm still concerned about the fact that I can't fully drain it.