Volks,

After a mere 5 hrs (I'm slow ok...) the coolant change is pretty much 
done. I still have the pushrod tube covers to go back on, and a few 
little things, but ~ 9 liters of LongLife Prestone is now protecting 
those precious heads...

A brief overview of my somewhat clumsy procedure:

1. Placed on sloped driveway. Loosened rad & engine bleeder screws.
Removed pushrod tube covers. 

2. Placed large pan under right head & removed drain plug. Repeat for 
left head. Remove cap on left exp. tank.

3. Remove one heater & one rad hose junction near right side of trans 
& drain. Remove exp tanks & drain. At this point I measured just over 
12 liters of coolant drained, leaving about 5 in the system. 

4. I then clamped a garden hose on the lower hose leading from left 
exp tank, and ran water for several minutes, catching some coolant, 
then flushed clear water.

5. Let drain, loosely reassembled hoses & tanks, and filled as per 
Bentley from left tank. Ran @ 2000 rpm until thermostat opened - made 
clearly evident by geyser of steam/water since I had forgotten to 
replace the rad bleeder. Ran madly to front to catch coolant 
stream...

6. Stopped engine, drained heads, then hoses again, then slowly added 
cold water as before, taking care not to cool engine too fast. Once 
cooled, flushed engine again for a few minutes.

7. Added 5 liters of coolant to left tank, and 4 liters of water to 
rad using funnel & small tubing (slowwww...). Started engine, ran at 
2000 while adding another 4 liters of coolant to left tank before rad 
started to bubble. Was able to add another 1-2 liters of water as 
engine ran for 1/2 hour, fan cycling several times. 

Strangely, opening rad bleeder at this point did not seem to let
either air or coolant out (??). Since temp levels were fine I will
assume this is normal, but check/bleed again after some driving.

One advantage of all that time spent adding water to rad was that the 
fluid loss when bleeding was almost clear water.
Overall, a long and tedious job, and I will probably go 2 years 
before doing this again, hoping the LongLife coolant will carry me 
through, since it claims to last 5 years.

Shawn & Janis Wright
'88 Westy (338k) '85 Jetta TD (375k)
VWnut@smus.bc.ca  :  swright@smus.bc.ca
http://www.islandnet.com/~swright/vw.html
http://www.smus.bc.ca