bottom cooling hose

[fla 9]

Just spent about 45 mins looking at how to access the bottom cooling hose to drain and flush the system. Just cant see how the hell to access it and it is really p#ssing me off. Does it need to be accessed from underneath - I have got aircon with its associated Heat exchanger.

Are the hoses going to the engine block also to be opened for draining? And where is the engine drain screw - diag would help.

Thanks

[Storm 0]

http://the-corrado.net/.archive/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18588

 

Click on the above link and have a look just under the "u" in "Dump" in the first picture. With AC the only way to get to this effectively is from underneath. Their is a screw driver slot however I am going to use a tap wrench on mine from underneath as this has already been chewed by a previous owner. Its very easy to chew the screw slot up. See this pic:

 

 

As to the lower hose, not sure if you have to remove this, if you do it must be done from underneath. You may have to apply a little pressure to get the hose off. The spring clips are a little inaccessable and will be a pain in the ass. Water pump pliers can get in there. The car must be secure on axle stands. :-P Good luck

[fla 9]

Getting seriously p--ded off with this. A simple task that is just doing my head in - i'm sure I'm doing something wrong. Put the car on stands yesterday and had a look from underneath. Whilst I could see the bottom hose from above, the only way to access it was by removing the battery. All i could see from underneath was a plate going right across the chassis, but absolutely no way of getting to the lower hose.

Anyway, I removed the expansion tank cap and pulled the lower hose from the engine block (end connected to the rad was totally inaccessible) and let it drain. Slow. Now the problem is that I want to fill with water and run the engine but of course the battery is out. WTF am I doing wrong? I thought of removing the diffuser-type grille below the bumper but looking through that all I could see was the aircon Heat exchanger so decided against it. In theory its easy to remove the lower hose, in practice, it seems, well, not so simple. Help guys, as I'm getting seriously narked off.

[fla 9]

well chaps?

[Kevin Bacon 5]

So the problem now is you can't get the hose back on, or you can't run the engine because the battery isn't in the car?

 

Personally I never touch the bottom hose. You don't need to unless the coolant is seriously manky and full of corrosion. Just pulling the top hose and the block drain plug and flushing water through from the expansion tank normally does the trick. If you can get to the bottom hose at the thermostat housing end, by all means yank it off there rather than from the bottom of the rad.

 

Get the battery back in, fill it with coolant (via the rad top hose) and run it for a while to get the air out. I'm not too sure what your paticular difficulties are as I've never seen an Auto Corrado with air con so don't know what gubbins are getting in the way..... but it's no walk in the park on the manual either!

[fla 9]

OK cheers for that Kev. Maybe my explantion was not too clear - the problem is the removal of the bottom hose from the rad in order to flush it through. I couldnt do that and ended up removing the same bottom hose from the engine block BUT to do that I had to remove the battery.

Additionally I cant see the drain plug - in fact I cant see the drain line. The Aircon heat exchanger is causing half of the problem i think as its been shoehorned into what is already a tight space. I've looked in ETKA and Bentley and it looks like its right behing the rad grille, but I'll be damned if I cant see it. Any pics from a little further away to see where it should lie?

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Hmmm, strange. I can understand removing the battery to get at the bottom hose on the radiator, but at the block end, removing the coil pack should be the most you'd need to remove, but as I say I'm not sure what your engine looks like.

 

From what you've said, it sounds like you just need to refit the hose and put the battery back in?

 

The drain plug is on the main black plastic transfer pipe on the front of the block. If you look under the car where the oil filter is, look to the left of it and up and you should see the plastic pipe with a 10p sized plastic screw in it. That's the drain plug.

 

I haven't got access to any pics as I'm at work.

[fla 9]

Good tips -cheers. I'll have a look this weekend. Can't really today as it's my son's 4th birthday and he'd kill me if I forgot and played with the C instead!

[fla 9]

Found the drain hole and managed to access it with difficulty and flushed the system through with water. Ran the engine up to about 70C allowed to cool and redrained. Refilled with a nice new mix of G12+ so hopefully things should be OK. Bloody hard to access it because of the aircon. Anyone else with aircon drained the rad?