Down to the wire on finishing our car. I drained the coolant following directions I am including. Had a somewhat difficult time finding the drain plug because even though they have put a slot in the bottom cover to get at it, it is somewhat hidden behind some trans fluid pipes that run to radiator for cooling. I ended up taking the shield off the front of the car below the bumper. 3 phillips head screws and I needed a torque bit for the others. After taking off I took note in some posts the drain plug is delicate and found I could use a t-50 torque bit to take the plug out. Removed the expansion tank lid and drained all the coolant. Reinstalled and now only question is to confirm the cross over engine air bleed. I have included pictures I think show it but just want someone to confirm. I am also posting pic of the air bleed by the expansion tank for help with anyone taking this project on. My expansion tank is directly below the windshield on the drivers side. I am including one pic from alldata which is from the bottom looking up. Believe it or not my dealer could not help with the cross over bleeder. Gave me a print out that made no sense. If someone can confirm the crossover bleed as shown in pic is actually it, appreciate. Thanks

 

I just read a post from a tech that you can remove a throttle body hose for a more complete bleed. Would that eliminate having to play with that cross over engine bleed I am hearing breaks if you look at it wrong If I can do that, and it works the air out would be glad to do it. Thanks.

 

I keep thinking you could help yourself by putting your car details in your profile.

 

Will do.

 

Followed reco about taking one of the upper coolant hoses off to bleed the air and worked fine. Everything seems to be working great. Thanks to all for the help with this project.

 

Amadauss - I have the same car and year and the procedure does vary depending whether you have the v6 vs v8.

Yes, if you want to drain via the drain plug then you pretty much need to remove the lower shield and its million screws that keep it in place. A simple hex wrench will do nicely but it is a PITA.

You can loosen an upper hose and get rid of most of the air, but you are still going to have to open up the heater air bleed (located near expansion tank) while the engine is running to get that last bit of air out. Read the JTIS and make sure you follow the procedure to purge the air out of the heater coil:

- Install the expansion tank cap
- Leave heater air bleed open
- Start the engine and set the heater to 90 deg F [both driver and passenger controls]
- Close heater air bleed when a steady stream of colland flows during engine idle.
- Allow the engine to idle for 5 minutes, adding colland t the expansion tank to maintain the COLD FILL MAX level.
- Open the heater air bleed to release any trapped air, close the heater air bleed.
- Increase the engine speed to 1500 rpm for between three and five minutes or until the heater is blowing hot air.
- Return to idle and verify that heater is blowing hot air.
- Turn off engine and allow to cool
- Top off coolant to COLD FILL MAX

Alternative is to buy a venturi-based vacuum adapter and purge the system of air then use the vacuum to suck the new coolant back in.

DO NOT open the engine air bleed valve on the engine crossover pipe as it is fragile, a common failure point and if you break it will cost you about $74+ for the upper hose assembly. I should know because I just did that last weekend.

Good luck.

Scott

 

Thank you for the help and info. Followed proceedure as suggested and everything is great.

 

Just a warning to people coming later to this thread: the above filling & bleeding process does NOT apply to cars after the redesign (2002.5MY). JTIS lists a lengthy and different procedure with warnings.

 

Hi, I have a 1999 S-Type with the 3.0 V6 engine, and it just doesn't seem to have the heater bleed! The crossover bleed broke as (apparently from reading other people's experiences) you would expect, although it seems to be holding at the moment until I can go to Jag tomorrow and order the new part. Anyway, I'm including some high-res pics (see links below!) to see if anyone can point out the obvious of what I'm missing, I mean maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place? The third pic is of the 3 hoses leading into the bulkhead, I assume that one of these at least is for the heater, would removing [specific hose] work to bleed the system, albeit in a more complicated way?

http://www.terrapin-info.co.uk/temp/...00804-1837.jpg
http://www.terrapin-info.co.uk/temp/...00804-1838.jpg
http://www.terrapin-info.co.uk/temp/...00804-1839.jpg

 

Hi,

Did you manage to heater bleed valve. I must have a similar setup to you as I don't see anything there.

Thanks.

 

I didn't find any heater air bleed. I just basically followed theses instructions, but turned the crossover bleed screw anticlockwise by 90' and ran the car for less than a minute before getting hot air in the cabin. I then remembered to close the crossover bleed screw by rotating 90' clockwise. You can tell when the screw is closed because there are two raised bumps, one on either side of the screw head and they line up with notches in the pipe body when closed.

 

Hi guys first proper post firstly thanks for sharing your experiences although I unfortunately read the bit about the bleed pipe breaking a day to late.

I also have an V6 stype RHD that doesn't have a heater bleed valve so at present the heater only works intermittently. Is a vacuum pump the only way to bleed heater on this model. Now we dont really need the heater up here in Queensland but Im guessing that air in the system is a bad idea

Incidental had to change expansion tank and give radiator flush and since had one of the water pump hoses fail.

 

Hi,

My experience from going through this a few months back is that bleeding was not a problem at all. I bought vacuum tool, but found that I didn't need it in the end after replacing the bleed pipe. Using the screw on the new pipe to bleed the system was easy. If you are having a problem with the cabin heater as I did, then my guess is that you need to replace the heater valve down on the LHS of the radiator looking from the front. It will either have three or five hoses attached depending on the year. Early models like mine (2001) have five. The problem is that the rubber seems to perish on the valves and they get stuck shut and so not allow water to flow freely into the cabin heater matrix. This is an easy job to do, but can be a litle fiddly.

BR,
Alan.

 

The point is that there IS a bleed screw, I believe. Maybe as yet not found by ED......

 

Hi,

Yes there is a bleed screw, but NOT a heater bleed screw, which is what Ed seems to be referring to. The heater bleeds screws are only on the LHD models as far as I understand.

BR,
Alan.

 

Sounds odd but I'm happy to be corrected. Could it be tucked under somewhere maybe?

 

Hi,

The cross over engine air bleed, which is the only one used in RHD versions, is well covered earlier in the thread and should not be a problem to locate. The big issue is that it becomes brittle over time and is prone to failure if you try to use it. The heater bleed is not fitted in RHDs and so not hidden anywhere. At least this is my understanding from reading posts on both COM and UK forums and from going through all of the pain myself.

BR,
Alan.

 

Don't think so followed all the cooling/heating pipes and certainly nothing in the engine bay. seams to be a simpler system on the RHD with only 1 return pipe to the expansion tank.

All seems stable now with the return pipe sealed and holding pressure well. within the fluid levels marked on the tank. but have noticed that heater pipes do come above expansion tank before they go into firewall so air bubbles may still be stuck in the heater pipes.

On the plus side the heater is now my only issue.

thanks for all input

 

The cooling systems on modern cars have become such torture to service compared to what we all did 20 years ago. I have a friend who runs a small manufacturing company. He supplies companies like Snap-On and others with some of their cool system tools that they offer.

We were discussing this the other night and he mentioned that they supply a tool designed to make this job a lot easier. Basically if connects to the filler cap on the over-flow tank and uses ordinary air pressure to run a vacuum pump and this causes the system to both fill with coolant while at the same time removing bubbles & air pockets from the system.

Maybe finding a garage that has this Snap-On tool would save some folks with less hands on experience with these sort of procedures a lot of trouble.

I think this is the one.

SVTSRAD262A, Kit, Cooling System Filler

He and I both owned Maserati Boras and that car also had a cooling system which was a PITA to fill. You had to hike the rear way up in the air to get the bubbles in the main tubes that run fore-aft to roll from the front radiator to the rear expansion tank. It's a mid engined car. That car also had a bubble line from the top of the radiator that ran through the a-pillar and up over the roof of the car to reach the expansion tank. Ah those Italians ...

I guess that was the genesis for the this product.

Maybe this would help some of you out?

I see there's also the humongous $2,500 machines which probably work neat as hell. But I'm not popping for one of those ...