flush and fill
 

The only way to drain the radiator on a 1st gen is to pull the lower hose? There are no draincocks on the radiator? I have a 79, lower hose is very hard to get off.

i dont know about the sa's, but on my 85 theres a draincock on the bottom the radiator.

Might be a good time to replace the hoses with new ones ..rather than risk damaging the radiator or water pump by wrestling with a stuck hose, remove the clamps then slice off with a knife.

:noyes:

Aftermarket radiators have a drain cock. Stock ones dont.

when i flushed my coolant, i used the coolant plug located on the engine itself...

do u have to worry about air pockets with 12a's?

The coolant drain bolt that FB Drifter is referring to is on the engine block lower than and to the left of the oil neck filler if you are facing the engine from the driver side wheelwell area. It it a good little reach to get to but easy to remove and easier to wrestle than a lower radiator hose. Leave those hoses alone unless they need replacing. I just replaced all of my cooling hoses and some of them are a bear to get to (such as the heater intake and exit hoses and the lower radiator hose-small one) God I hate those band clamps. Over time they just dig into the old swollen rubber hoses and cause cracks and then leaks. I replaced all clamps with the phillips head barrell type. McMaster-Carr has some great clamps online. Do a search. Run a Prestone super radiator cleaner for a while after draining the radiator and refill with distilled water to keep mineral buildup down. I like the low tox coolants by Prestone and Sierra.

Yes, you can get air pockets! Be sure to get rid of them after refilling the system, else you will have cavitation and may ruin an engine. I just start the motor and let it idle with the rad cap off and the heater valve open and add coolant as bubbles surface. Seems to work, but maybe there's a better way.

B

That is right. Also turn on the heater to high and rev the engine to aid coolant circulation and then check the radiator level for a few days to see how much leveling has occured.

Yeah.... I just did the flush and fill thing last week. The book I had said to remove the drain plug below the oil filler AND remove the lower rad house. The plug was easy enuff to get out, but.... the lower rad hose was a bitch, and hardly anything came out. I guess with the car jacked up, it all mostly ran out the unplugged hole. Just my 2 cents.

where is the heater valve? or is the same thing as the heater....

There is no heater valve. Coolant runs thru the core full time. Its just a flapper/diverter door that controls whether air goes thru or past the core.

Thanks, everyone! I will try draining it out of the block and flushing with Prestone power.