Hi!

Today I was flushing my radiator, probably the first time someone does that to the car as the water was running brown for an whole hour, and after draining the cooling system exactly as mentioned in the service manual (engine tap, radiator tap and drain plug removed) I poured the coolant into the header tank expecting to reach 17 litres (30 pints) as mentioned also in the manual. But somehow only 8 litres fitted the radiator (??) I don't know what I did wrong but there's still some 9 litres of water inside and I don't know where, as there is no mention of other draining plugs or taps. Can someone enlighten me please?

Thanks!

 

Does your heater function? There is some water in the heater core/matrix... I would run the engine to make sure it is moving out of there...

Squeeze the radiator hoses.. do they "crunch"? Maybe some coolant has jelled up in the hoses? If in doubt, drop the bottom hose and see if fluid comes out.

 

As I was flushing the cooling system, I did run the engine at 1000 RPMs as stated in the manual, and I could clearly see water running through the engine tap.
I did notice a lot of "crunchiness" in the large radiator tubes, could the sediments be occupying the remaining 9 litres of volume? That sounds scary...

 

Solved:
Eventually all the coolant got sucked into the cooling system.

 

After 3 years I usually drain my coolant from the radiator and engine
block at the rear of engine, then put some flushing fluid with regular
water in then drive it till it warms up.
After that I drain all out, flush it with a hose on both ends.

If its real bad you might have to do that twice to get out whatever is
plugging it up.
Walter