If you drain the radiator using the petcock, drain the coolant tank by removing the large hose attached to front lower corner, and take off the water pump - will that drain effectively all the coolant from the 2004 3.0 v6 XType engine block? The previous owner filled mine with standard yellow/green coolant and I want to remove that and put Dex Cool orange back in there. I would like to get all that yellow/green out and even try and flush a few gallons of distilled water in the process. Will that do it?

 

Robin, no need to pull the water pump. Once you drain all that you can from the radiator, that will leave the water pump high and dry. You don't need to pull the hose off of the overflow bottle either. But, you will need to pull the thermostat off (bottom portion of the thermostat housing as there will be a little bit of coolant left there. You may be able to even avoid this by draining out what you can and then leaning the driver's side (for you) up so what is in the tube running under the radiator will have a path to drain out.

What little that would be left after this can easily be removed with a simple fill and drain.

Keep in mind that a lot of the coolants made these days are "color mixable" and even if you have a little bit of the yellow/green left in the system, when you add the orange, it will not cause anything negative to happen. But, you need to make sure that the new coolant is compatible.