The auto shop thing could be a bad idea. There is not much difference between a drain and fill and drain flush and fill as afar as skill is concerned. The Vanagon cooling system has to be properly filled and bled and more than one engine has been destroyed by unknowing folks with the best of intentions. Even completely draining the system is a challenge. I myself don’t do "flushes" as there is no easy way to properly dispose of all that contaminated water. 

Of the most importance though is that you experienced a loss of coolant. This has to be fixed. If you lost enough coolant to activate the low coolant warning you lost about a 1/2 gallon. You have to find out where it leaked out or since it happened while driving there is the possibility it got forced out. You may have bad pressure cap or the cooling fan didn’t work when needed or fear of all fears you have combustion gases getting into the cooling system. In any event you need to find out what went wrong and have it corrected. So why was that radiator replaced? Maybe there was a problem back then that still isn’t corrected. You need to find someone that knows how to troubleshoot this stuff before you need to by an engine. 

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of PB
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013 1:00 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: One more cooling question!

OK!  Back home, all is well, drove 46 miles perfectly fine.  The radiator was new in 2007, only 3,600 miles driven since then!  Yesterday I added distilled water to top off the tank.  I'm sure that some routine preventative radiator service is needed.

QUESTION:  Do I need to *FLUSH* the radiator or just empty and refill it?
 I will need an oil change, but think I can get that done at work by the high school's auto shop.  I'm not sure about trusting them with a flush.
 I'm confident they could handle a drain and refill.

Patti
90 Westy Automatic
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