Date:         Sun, 10 Jul 2016 17:57:59 +0000
Reply-To:     Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Poppie Jagersand <poppie.jagersand@YAHOO.CA>
Subject:      Mess free coolant removal from Vanagon D
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Mess free coolant removal from Vanagon D

Many people here use a shop vac to suck the coolant out of the vanagon (rather than having it drain and try to catch it in drain pans under the radiator and engine). I have done that for some years, but still had some coolant left. I just did some work ont he radiator (see other post) and finally figured out how to do it completely mess free.

My steps:
Remove rad bleeder and fan thermoswitch (latter hole is big so gives better flow)
Suck as much as possible from coolant pressure tank. Here a a piece of relatively thick wall 3/8" coolant hose provided a good seal to the tank as well as allowed me to suck from the bottom.
Remove coolant out hose from head. Suck from hose.
Remove coolant hose at pump. Suck from hose.

Refill with water to clean out. Repeat sucking procedure above. (Rinsing with water removes the sticky coolant residue.)

Finally remove hoses at radiator. At this point I did not have a drop of water left in the radiator. The radiator and radiator hoses were dry from the sucking through of lots of air. Made it much more pleasant to work under the van with no dripping.

I haven't figured out how to do quite such a clean job on the 83+ Vanagons yet.

Martin (and '82 Vanagon Westy 1.9 TD in Canada, '85 Westy in Europe)