I've dropped the belly pan and I'm going to be doing an oil change as well as a coolant change by the repeated dilution method. Yesterday I finished the brake pads exchange and flush/bleed of the old brake fluid. It actually looked very good so maybe someone beat me to it?

So I've had a look around in the JTIS and I can't find a whole lot of help in there yet. What a gorgeous application ...

I'd like to be able to catch the coolant for a number of reasons so am I going to be able to do that or is it a hopeless mess?

My JTIS doesn't seem to talk much about the intercooler circuit so maybe I missed that or my JTIS isn't good enough. It covers 2003 though. A picture pointing to the drain plug might be nice.

How much stuff do I have to take off to get to the drain plug?

Thanks.

Bob S.

 

The coolant drain is on the bottom right side of the radiator. There is a butterfly screw facing down. There are two ways to get at it. By the book, you have to remove the cover infront of the belly pan which is a pia. In the non-book method, you can reach the valve through the slot in the cover. This will drain in to the cover but 95% of the coolant will then spill out on the left and right side if you have a pan ready to catch this. Will save you quite a bit of time.

 

CCC is correct. But I recommend removing the pan in front of the main under belly one anyway. When changing the coolant you want to check and flush any debris between the radiator and transmission cooler and the P/S cooler and the inter-cooler if you have a STR. Be aware if you have an STR there is another drain plug for the inter-cooler system located at the bottom of the inter-cooler radiator. I pulled both and flushed multiple times with clean water before refilling with the proper coolant.
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Thanks guys. I wasn't figuring on having to take the front lip piece off too but there's no way to get to that plug on mine. It's on the LH side on my car.

Yes I noticed what looked like a very small drain plug on the intercooler radiator but I decided to just pull the elbow hose for the pump instead.

I'll have to go back and check the JTIS again for the filling proceedure for the intercooler system. I know it shares the expansion tank but unless I want to fill this system with a 50/50 mix (which I can't since it's never fully drained) then allowing the coolant and water to mix in the system might end up with an improper mixture because the IC system doesn't exchange coolant with the engines radiator in any regular way so things might not mix properly.

I got 9 quarts of fluid out. It all went into a large pail rather nicely.

One of the disadvantages of using the dillution method but I expect that the block drains are a SOB to get to if they even exist?

Bob S.

 

I don't know but when I drained both systems I only filled the top degas bottle and everything filled up?? No problem getting the inter-cooler system full. I just kept checking the fluid level in the degas bottle as the car went thru normal heating and cooling cycles.

What I do is flush the system with clean water at least 3 times. I start the car and drive it until the thermostat is open. I also run the heat on 90 F with the windows down. Then drain all the water out that I can. I always drain hot as possible so less coolant is trapped by the thermostat closing. The JTIS says 10.4L is the cooling system capacity. So I pour in 5.2L of pure coolant. Fill the rest with water. If you want a 70/30 mixture just change the numbers. You will be very close to a 50/50 mixture. I check the results with my anti-freeze tester to make sure I have enough freeze protection.

Although in South Texas this is not much of an issue as when I lived up North with real winters!
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That's how I do a "normal" cooling system too. But this one has two coolings ystems with seperate pumps but a common expansion tank.

Soooo the mixing is going on in the engine's cooling system but by filling the way you described it will get some straight water or straight coolant depending upon which you put in first into the intercooler system. Maybe it works out fine I just worry that if you're not pouring in straight 50/50 mix or whatever you want into the reservoir some of that is getting sucked into the intercooler system before it get's mixed by the engine's cooling system.

I'm going to fill the intercooler system with a 50/50 mix before I fill the engine's system and then I know what got in there.

Now ... I have to get a new hex wrench for that intercooler fill plug.