That method does not work for me - we are on very hard well water so I do not have the luxury of being able to fill and drain repeatedly. So i try and get all the coolant out (and captured) by draining/sucking/blowing, then refill with coolant and good water.

One added benefit is I don't have as much contaminated waste to deal with. Looks like you have around 30 qts to dispose of.

alistair

On 2012-05-11, at 7:21 AM, Steven Shelton wrote:

> I've been leery of forced flushes since reading the late Mike Soehnlein's concerns at Wesfalia.org (http://www.westfalia.org/community/showthread.php?284-Antifreeze-tech-notes-amp-maintenance-page-1 ) but also wanted to get as much coolant flushed out as possible.  
> 
> I measured the volume drained from both engine block drains (only about 1/2 qt drained from the driver's side after draining the passenger's side).  The specs for my 1.9L say the capacity of the cooling system is 18.4 quarts.  I drained 10.9 quarts, or about 59% of the volume.  I refilled the system and ran the engine to operating temperature, then drained again.  According to my calculations, at this point 83% of the old coolant was drained out.  After repeating the procedure a third time, I'd removed 98% of the old coolant.  Will all the the old coolant ever be drained out?  No, that's mathematically impossible.  But 98% is pretty good and no special tools are required, just a little patience.
> 
> Oh yeah, while I was at it I measured the temperature of the water that drained out.  It averaged about 150 degrees.  This helped me diagnose the low reading on my temperature gauge as the thermostat.
> 
> 
> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 11:55 PM, Alistair Bell <albell@shaw.ca> wrote:
> I understand and sympathize. I had difficulty getting it all out, even using a shop vac (with intermediate 20 l bucket). But I do think I got more out with the shop vac than when I did it without.
> 
> alistair
> 
> On 2012-05-10, at 8:15 PM, Rocket J Squirrel wrote:
> 
> >
> > Clearly, I never drained anywhere near most of the old coolant.
> >
> > I am puzzled. Oh -- the heater valve was open.
>