How to Drain Engine Coolant

Video Transcript

" Hi! This is Jon on behalf of Expert Village. In this video clip I will be taking you through step 2 in our procedures for flushing the cooling system. The next step is to loosen up this wing nut here, and what that will do is that will start the drain process for the coolant. As your coolant is draining from down below, go ahead and remove your radiator cap, but make sure that your engine is cold when you do this-- and if you have a thermostat, go ahead and take that out as well. The next thing that you need to do is get a garden hose and turn the water on just at a slow rate. What we are going to do is start the engine. As the coolant is leaking out the bottom, we are going to put this hose into our coolant line and we are going to give it continuous flow of clean water. So what we are going to do is have water going into the engine as coolant and water is coming out underneath the engine. Now this is really a two person task, and you are going to want one person inside the car watching the temperature gage to make sure that it doesn't go too high. So just to review what we are going to do is, as the coolant is leaking out the bottom of the engine through that radiator plug, we are going to be putting fresh water into our coolant lines. And during this process, the engine is going to be turned on. Now what you also might want to do is turn your heat on high. That way it opens up the heater core and gets all that coolant flowing through there as well. "