Hello- I just had a heck of a job draining and replacing the coolant. And I've got a few questions. Do I have to remove the bottom bolts on the exhaust manifolds to drain the coolant? On my bus the two cover plates that cover the pushrod tubes are held in place by the bottom bolts of the exhaust manifolds. These cover plates limit or actually completely restrict access to the drain plugs on each head. My exhaust manifolds are mounted a bit shoddy thanks to the DPO. And the idea of removing those semi-stripped exhaust manifold bolts is frightening to me. Now I have an idea to drill a hole in each of the cover plates to access the coolant drain plugs. Then cap the holes in the cover plate with some sort of rubber plug when the job is through. Would I be crazy to do this? Or has anyone done something similar--or has a better idea how to get to the drain plugs? In this same vien is the "bleeder valve" in the radiator actually supposed to be some type of hollowed out bolt to bleed the system, or just a regular bolt. On my Vanagon it's just a bolt-- And what a pain to refill the system, letting the air bubbles out and re-threading the bolt with the slowly-getting-hotter anti-freeze pumping through. Is there a trick here? Any info will be appreciated. Jeff 83.5 Westy (Just covered 6,000 trouble-free miles from NYC to Wyoming and back. And yes, I'm still wondering why I came back?) |
Please note - During the past 17 years of operation, several gigabytes of
Vanagon mail messages have been archived. Searching the entire collection
will take up to five minutes to complete. Please be patient!
Return to the archives @ gerry.vanagon.com
The vanagon mailing list archives are copyright (c) 1994-2011, and may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the list administrators. Posting messages to this mailing list grants a license to the mailing list administrators to reproduce the message in a compilation, either printed or electronic. All compilations will be not-for-profit, with any excess proceeds going to the Vanagon mailing list.
Any profits from list compilations go exclusively towards the management and operation of the Vanagon mailing list and vanagon mailing list web site.