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Filling coolant

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Professor X

New member
I drained and flushed the radiator. When I was trying to fill the radiator I could only get a little more than a gallon in. I was running the car, ac on and i has the rad cap off and the thermostat bleeder screw open. But I never got more than a couple of drops out of the bleeder screw. Over the course of a few days I’ve put close to 6 gallons in which is more than spec. It’s also overheated in traffic a couple times. I think that’s where I lost some fluid. Here’s what’s concerning - when Im filling the radiator with the car running and the rad cap off and bleeder screw open the liquid stops going down at some point and starts to “breathe” per se. After a few more minutes the liquid gets foamy or at least bubbly. So it seems like I definitely have air stuck in there but it won’t burp when I’m running the car. Also, just for completeness sake I put some Prestone sealant in with the first gallon of coolant after I flushed everything.
 


6 gallons is twice what the whole system holds. check the oil to be over filled, or a leak.

the t stat could be locked up too.

i like to let it idle rad cap off, ac off. till it warms up and the fans come on, by that point the rad level should have burped as the t stat opened up, top off the rad again.
 
Oil level is good and not milky like I feared.
I’ve been following that method SD, I found your tips on other threads. I’ll leave the ac off next time My concern was the bubbles. What are your thoughts?
 
if you get bubbles, large burping bubbles every time you rev the engine cap off hot and full rad, you likely blew a head gasket.

head gaskets can blow the coolant out the tail pipe too. it dont always make it to the oil pan.
 
You have an air bubble.

Pull the thermostat, it's two 10mm bolts. Lift up thermostat, fill into the intake, put tstat back on and seal it up. Fill rad and start car up. Run the car until you see it hit thermostat temp and it will go down slightly. That's how you will know it's burped of air.
 


Personally, I'm lazy and like to do things easily and quickly. I like the acdelco thermostats with a small bleed hole drilled in them, then I use the lisle no spill funnel, run till hot, loosen bleeder a few times along the way and never have to refill or re- bleed.
 
Remember that’s a big air bubble coming out of a very small bleeder screw so for it squirt then nothing then squirt again is normal when there’s air in the system. But still check the tstat. Check the coolant elbows too make sure nothing is coming out of there. The passenger floor has coolant on it then your heater core went.

I usually have the heat on to help get wire out of the heater core too when I’m burping.
 
you can put the heat on but it dont matter, the heater core gets coolant year round. theres no on/off valve like the old days.

flushing the core if you dont have heat is a option too. theres a load of trapped air.
 


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