Coolant purge

[Alexjansen]

Hi Volvoers,

I'm thinking about purging the coolant of my S40 1.9D (2003), it hasn't been done for at least 3 years... I'm sure it's an easy task but I'd like to be sure not to make any beginner's mistake. All tips are welcome !
many thanks !

[kieran40]

Make sure you use genuine volvo coolant and distilled water, 50/50 mix, warm engine, heater controls over, undo the bottom hose it will drain out, new clip remember too put the hose back on securely, and fill up any air locks squeeze the hoses and undo the bleed valves. Until right.
Child's play

[Matt86]

With what Kieran said however, I remove the thermo stat and run the hose through it until clean water comes out bottom hose.

Remove top rad hose and do the same to flush the rad out. (Make sure it's the rad and NOT the intercooler)

Then 50/50 mix, and undo the bled valves on top rad hose and heater matrix hose at back of engine bay to bleed air. Let it run for a good hour as you'll need to keep topping it up and keep some spare mix in the boot and check regularly for a few days to ensure it doesn't empty the expansion tank.

[Alexjansen]

Thanks mates !

[clarkey1984]

Distilled water? Whatever for, waters water surely, as is coolant, got the halfords stuff in mine and it's all good, is there much difference then?

[kieran40]

Distilled water doesn't have any crap in it Clarkey, and if you live in a hard water area you get limescale, it's not that much too buy distilled so I use it.

[v40alex]

Depends where you live but if your tap water is anything like mine, think how often you need to descale your kettle. Distilled is not really the correct word (that would be a very expensive thing to fill your car with), de-ionised I think is what Kieran means. It's only a few quid for 5 litres at Euro Car Parts.

[ITSv40]

Agree with Kieran and Matt, both good advice and spot on. The only thing I would add, is reconnect everything and fill with plain water and run the car around the block and drain again. This will make sure you have as much of the old coolant drained as possible.

[bobthecabbage]

Be very careful with the bleeding bungs as they are very fragile. The garage broke mine and had to buy me a new heater matrix pipe!

[clarkey1984]

Originally Posted by bobthecabbage

Be very careful with the bleeding bungs as they are very fragile. The garage broke mine and had to buy me a new heater matrix pipe!

I second that, they get pretty brittle, on my 2.0i I filled the engine up with water through the thermostat housing hole (I was changing the stat as well) and filled the radiator up using the housing and lifting it up so it was higher than the top of the rad, I poured it in until I stopped getting bubbles coming back out of the housing hole on the engine, popped the thermostat in and refitted the housing, that got 99% of the water out, then I let her idle for about 10 minutes with the header tank cap off, engine came up to temp and the heater was boiling hot as it should be, I waited until the fan kicked in, topped the header tank up with about half an inch of water then went for a 5 mile test run, when I got back it needed barely a quarter of an inch more to be bang on he max mark, that was about 3 months ago and it hasn't dropped at all since.