nssj
+1y
Helpful tips for flushing and air bleeding your cooling system
I had a few issues with air being trapped in the system causing temp to rise... the following is what ive learned works, minus about 2 pages of what doesnt help:
1st off, make sure your heater inside the cab works, or is bypassed completely. I dont know exactly if or how the heater core gets changed with the heat on. I do know once i hooked up my a/c control panel and had it on, a lot of rust and crap dislodged into my 1 week old coolant. so i had to flush and bleed again from scratch to undo this.
cheap bottle of coolant flush for a few bucks helped get alot of shit out of the coolant so it would run clear.
useful flushing tools:
Lisle 24610 Spill-Free Radiator Funnel Kit
got it from oreillys for about the same as shipped online. makes it alot easier to get air out. even with ass down, nose full up, i think it was still trapping air. the funnel pretty much made it idiot proof and spared alot of mess when the coolant did burp.
got some $3 prestone flush kit at walmart:
turned out helpful. after running coolant flush, being able to T a garden hose in, and watch the whole system rinse til its clear... worth $3 to me.
despite all the fancy shit, and trying to bleed the system with the nose full up and ass down, this truck seems to like to keep air in the system...
do whatever you can to get most the air out by running with the cap off, nose up, and optional funnel.
after that though, what seemed to be the most important:
Make sure your coolant overflow bottle is full, and the hose to it is clear! after bleeding it every way i could, it still seemed to have some air stuck in it.
after bleeding, run the car with radiator cap on til it gets to normal op temp. turn it off and let it cool. when it cools, it vacuums coolant back out of the overflow bottle to replace air.
1st run cap on, the system drained the entire overflow bottle. this is after normal bleeding first. refilled overflow, radiator cap on, run til warm, turn off. 2nd time took about a 3rd of the overflow coolant. temp hasnt gone above midline since.
I dont know where or why it liked trapping air, but after about a week of trial and error with extra tools, the above finally stopped it from heating up too much. always making the overflow bottle full, after each drive, it took longer and longer to try and overheat, til it had swallowed about 1 1/3 overflow bottles worth. keeping the overflow full, so it has coolant to suck back in is important. if it just siphons air back in, you solved nothing...