Coolant drain and fill

I figure out this is info worth posting here.

To completely drain and fill on 2gen Tacoma you need 3 gallon jugs of Super Long Life Coolant from Toyota. This is 50/50 diluted and its good up to -34f when its new.
To completely drain radiator you need one gallon jug of coolant from Toyota.
Just did drain and fill for radiator.
Its easy to do.
1. Park your truck with nose up.
2. take off front skid plate.
3. locate drain valve on the radiator. (its on driver side of radiator.
4. Open top radiator cap
5. Open drain valve
6. Close valve as soon the main flow finishes unless you feel Ok with purging air from heater core.
7. Once coolant is out, poor fresh one in. Fill reservoir to the the full line.
8. Close radiator cap.
9 Start truck set heat to max and let it warm up to full temp. Once it does shutdown and wait for it too cool down.
10 If cool ant in reservoir gets low fill to full line again and start truck again.
Repeat until coolant stays at full mark in reservoir.

 

Thanks, I will be doing this in a couple of days but I'm going to use Zerex Asian Vehicle Coolant instead.

 

Stick with the Toyota coolant unless you are doing a COMPLETE system drain and flush with deionized water.

There are a number of formulations out there, and incompatibilities can result in serious problems including gelling of the coolant. This is a problem that has plagued GM owners. Toyota coolant is a very similar formula to Dexcool, but it is different enough that gelling and gasket-eating has not been a widespread reported problem.

 

When I do my coolant flushes, I also flush the coolant from the motor as well. I never understood if your coolant is dirty, why a person would only drain their radiator but leave dirty coolant in the engine block.

 

Agree to drain coolant from motor if it is dirty. But 6 year old truck should not have dirty coolant. Mine was not, so drain and fill. I don't flush my coolant , I do complete drain and fill only on vehicle I bought with 100k plus miles that had never coolant replaced.
Normally I do drain and refill every 5-6 years( regardless of miles.)
5-6 years interval is the same for brake fluid.

 

Guys Im confused. Please clarify...

Isn't that the purpose of flushing? When you run distilled through the system until it's clear, that gets everything out including the old coolant in the block.

 

Yes, that's true but more work and costs more. Maybe all that is needed is a drain and refill. It all depends on the severity. If the original coolant is only old but still looks ok then maybe a drain refill is good enough. A drain refill does replace most of it.

 

With new coolants and engines you don't want to do "flush" unless you are really in need one (example your head gasket exploded and engine filled with oil/coolant mixture.) Flushing will do more damage then good. Coolants leaves coating inside the engine that protects from rust, lubricates and prevents dirt sticking to walls. Flush will remove coating and new coolant will have to build up the protection.
Even Toyota manuall tells you to "flush" with coolant only which is drain and fill, drain and fill, drain and fill until clear.
If you want to clean dirt from coolant line you can remove bottom part of radiator and all the debris will be there. But whole process of resealing radiator is not worth it, I would rather swap radiator for new one.

 

Are you just draining and filling the radiator? Because there are two other coolant drains on the left and right sides of the engine. When I did my '06 I drained from all 3 and then refilled.

 

Thanks for the info!

 

just the radiator which is almost half of the coolant. No need to drain Engine unless you know what you doing, have plenty of time to do it right and you have significant mileage on the old coolant.
Whole thing took maybe 45 minutes top. With drain and refill engine it would have been couple hours to purge air out of the system before you start the truck. Its right thing to do, but if time is not there and coolant is not very bad then radiator drain and fill will do the trick. IMHO

 

you collect the used stuff? or just let it go?

i hate handling the used stuff. hate it.

 

3 times a year we have collection of Hazard Materials so things like coolant, brake fluid ends up there. Next one is this weekend so I am doing all the changes this week so I can ditch my stuff at collection time.

 

Just put the old stuff into your empty bottles. Look up your local hazardous waste website and drop it off at a monthly event along with your oil. Easy!

 

My truck was about two years old with around 20k miles. Drained the entire cooling system, including draining the engine on the left and right side. Also, take a close look at how the coolant line is connected to the heater core by the firewall, this can trap coolant.

Once drained, I filled the entire system with DI water and no coolant, then ran it until for several minutes. Drained it complete again. Refilled with Zerex and DI water @ 50/50.

FWIW, a lot of crap came out of the oem coolant into the clean catch bottles. The Zerex is cheaper, easier to obtain and while not pink it is an approved coolant.

Also, my truck has always had a lingering coolant stink after shutdown. The wifes Corrolla suffers from this also. With the Zerex, the linger smell and slow loss of coolant is far less to the point of basically a non issue.

The one remaining oem fluid in my truck is the brake fluid. That will be flushed and replaced with new very soon.

Each change away from oem has made the truck improved.

PK

 

It's not a matter of "dirty"... it's a matter of the coolant losing effectiveness as it ages.

Now, most of us do not need freeze protection down to -34, and if our thermostat and the rest of the cooling system is up to snuff, we don't even need boil protection above 210 degrees.


So while draining and refilling does remove some "gunk", it is primarily "freshening" the coolant.
Done annually, it is more than adequate to maintain adequate protection and keep clean coolant in the system, considering that the vast majority of vehicles on the road have NEVER had their coolant replaced.

 

Change interval is 10 Years/100K for first change and 5 years/50K from there out.

 

Yup.

So if you do a radiator drain/refill once a year for the $20 it'll cost, it's something you never have to worry about.

 

The Zerex Asian Vehicle coolant is pink. I changed my brake fluid and power steering fluid also. Brake Fluid was Valvoline Synthetic Dot 3 & 4. For power steering fluid I used Valvoline Max Life Dex/Merc ATF.

 

My bad, I was thinking Zerex, brain farted, what I used was really Peak Global.

PK