I have an overheating situation. I drained the radiator which is simple and doesn't need any tool (it's just a plastic finger operated wing nut you can reach without needing to take off any shrouds...you just reach up and get to it). Why can't everything on the car be so well designed? I put the radiator flush in and then filled the remainder with water. In my unabashed total ignorance and haste I didn't realize the overflow bottle is at the top center, so despite the instructions saying to put the flush in the a top hose I did put it into the overflow bottle. The cooling system didn't seem to accept a lot of water as a remainder top it off. The flush instructions say you can run the engine with the flush and water for 10 minutes for a basic cleaning or drive it normally for 3-6 hours for a deep cleaning. I ran it for 15 minutes and 20 minutes at two different parts of the day when I had time. I watched the temp gauge carefully to make sure the engine didn't get hot, and I also had the live OBD-II reader connected for live data. The Coolant Temp never got past the halfway mark, and the actual temperature always stayed at or below 99 degrees celsius, except for one brief period it went to 103 degrees when I was revving and then quickly returned to 100 or 99. Still I am worried the reading is not accurate if it's indeed the case that there isn't enough water in the engine. I don't want to waste the flush, as this is special flush that was used...imported into my region and very expensive. So I bought some local flush, and I will easily drain the existing water-flush combination using the drain petcock wingnut into a container and then fill it from the top hose and then fill it again. In the meantime though, audible siren car alarms are illegal in my region, which is actually good because they don't annoy everyone that way and it spawned the car theft tracking and recovery companies. But this car has 3 legacy alarms. It has 3 which are super annoying! It has the factory alarm which uses the horn. That would start honking randomly 3-12 hours after leaving the car alone, and inevitably between I solved that by taking out the appropriate fuse and relay. It has a backup factory alarm called the a "sounder" which has rechargeable batteries that fail. That is located impossibly under the engine fuse box. I have 10 little cuts on my hands and my temples hurt from the frustration of trying to prise up the fuse box according to others' instructions and how-to pictures in this forum. It is possible to unplug and/or remove it but it's tricky to get the fuse box out, and then there is an aftermarket alarm which is very annoying and I can't find it. That's an interior siren to assure that you damage your hearing. Not one of the alarms works well. I'd like to take all of them out so I don't get a citation because they seem to be activated when I reconnect the battery. It limits the time I can do anything on the car to the middle of the day to minimize the chance I will get reported. The police would easily show up if someone complains, and people complain about everything all the time.

Here are a couple questions after all that:

1) How can I know if system is full of water?

2) Can I conclude that in fact the water pump is pumping if it didn't overheat after running for 20 minutes?

 

If it stayed cool for more than 5 minutes... yes the pump is working.

As for being full... take off the vent screw when filling (at 6:20 in the 2nd vid below).