TOUAREG OWNERS I just used this method on my 2017 Wolfsburg Ed. and it worked great. Awesome video. Side note when the thermostat opens the overflow tank will fill up rapidly and spill over so just be ready for that
Question from a 2012 Touareg TDI owner hoping to use this process: do you know if this will both flush old coolant *and* purge/‘bleed’ the system of air bubbles/pockets or would some sort of vacuum bleeder be required to do the latter? Also, did you use 3/4” ID for the drain hose…?
@@jtsherri I'm no expert but from my research I've seen that the cooling systems in 2010s-era jettas, golfs, touregs, and beetles are all basically the same and are all self-regulating/ self-purging, so there's not need to go through the bleeding process that you need to do on other cars.
Well, it kinda of worked your way on my 07 ES. I tried a hose but couldn't stop it from leaking. So Autozone suggested a barbed double-head joiner and actual 3/8" rubber hose. Which didn't leak. When you're running the engine be very attentive to the coolant level. It does surge and suddenly you'll find it's hitting the bottom. You don't want air locking up your systems and burning out your cylinder head. Keep all your bottles open, nearby and ready to go. I flushed with distilled water and then when it came out clean in the bucket I started with the pink. It fill a five gal bucket up so I began to fill empty gallons. They became pink. So I shut off the engine. Drove for 20 minutes and everything sees good. Thumbs up!
Very nice to see this video just to confirm a post I saw from Reddit. The below is the person who claimed to be an VW tech, hope it helps. “VW tech here. We have all sorts of fancy equipment for this BUT I prefer to use the homemade version. Its a lot faster and easier. Get the car running so the heat blows hot. Disconnect the rubber hose from the coolant reservoir bottle and connect it to a long plastic rigid hose (Home Depot $2). Place the other end of the hose in a 5 gallon bucket. With the car running, keep topping off the coolant reservoir bottle as the old coolant is draining into the 5 gallon bucket. Once you see the new coolant start to come out of the hose, you can disconnect the HD hose and reconnect the rubber hose to the reservoir. If your coolant system is really bad, repeat the process after driving for a few hours. Here's the important part --> USE ONLY VW COOLANT. You may also want to clean out the reservoir bottle if the sludge is really bad.”
Cool, thanks for the tip. This method looks both easy and effective, no old coolant left in the engine block. Will do it tomorrow, with a couple of litres of demineralized water first (tap water would work just as fine i guess) Edit: It worked out very well, and no need to block intake pipe on the canister. I placed my car jack as weight on the gas pedal to get a little higher rpm to make the whole process go faster. Approx 1750 rpm. I also drove a few miles up front, with the heater on max
Thanks for the video mate, was straightforward and easy to follow. 👍 I just finished using this method to flush out all of the old G13 coolant from my B8 Passat and replaced it with G12 Evo. I've always wondered if you could do just this and let the system flush itself with the engine running. The only thing I did different was at first I kept topping up the overflow bottle with demineralised water until the return hose ran clear into the bucket (just to make sure the G13 was completely flushed out), then I switched to adding the fresh coolant until the return hose was running a solid pink colour. Worked a treat, thanks again!
I did it this way too. Just distilled water until it ran clear, then added concentrated coolant until a deep pink. Confirmed with a pristine coolant gauge afterwards. Caution, the water will be hot and will deform the plastic distilled water jugs, best use a 5 gal. bucket (or 2).
Great video, thanks for all the tips and comments. My '08 Passat Komfort has never been changed but it only has 48K and information even from VW forums seems to say OEM is practically lifetime or by mileage but I'm changing it anyway, this method looks great never heard of it. The oil is changed every 3500K without fail (turbo) other fluids too but have been on the fence with the variety of coolant recommendations.
Great video I’m gonna try it with my 2004 Touareg. Only thing I gotta say tho is if you want the engine to be hot then you wanna run the ac and not the heater. The heater will cool down the engine and the ac will heat it up. I used to drive tow trucks on the grapevine in ca and seen way too many people heat from running ac and have actually stopped my truck from overheating by turning on the heater. Cars use engine heat for the heater so when you turn it on it sucks heat from the motor it doesn’t add more heat
Very clever! With this technique the cooling system never introduces air into the coolant passages. Whereas the traditional drain/refill method does. Therefore this technique means that there’s no need to worry about burping the system to remove air bubbles. Is that correct?
Is it recommended to flush with distilled water until it runs clear or can you just proceed with what you showed in the video? Thanks for this video by the way.. Seems like a really simple and great way to do a full flush.. Way better than draining the radiator boot, which doesn't even clear out all the coolant
You could do it that way but if you're trying to get every drop of old coolant out. Certainly wouldn't add much cost, it would just take a little longer.
Thats exactly what happed to me on my Golf GTI 7.5 2018 it came gushing out of the top of the overflow tank, so i abandoned the job , any suggestions ? would like to here from someone on this please?
Great video, think I have the confidence to tackle this project. 2 Questions: 1.) Will this method also work for the 2017 Jetta TSi ? & 2.) How many gallons of coolant will be needed for a exchange ?
1. Remove the return line when the car is running, if coolant is free flowing out of the return line then this method will work. 2. Check your owner's manual for coolant capacity of the system and then budget a little extra above that since you'll waste some with this cycling process.
How dangerous is this to do/is it worth doing? I bought a 2009 VW CC 2.0 that was generally well-maintained except for some reason they were putting in the yellow/green universal coolant from O’Reillys instead of the pink/purple VW spec. everything is running fine, but I want to try and get at least 50,000 more miles out of it. All I know is I could never properly bleed my BMW once I started having cooling problems with it and it was a never-ending nightmare for years until I finally sold it to the junkyard so I’d like to avoid opening pandora’s box, but I don’t wanna wear it down early. I’mputting in liqui Molly oil, the nuclear green oil this week, upgrading from the mobile one that they were using before
@@andreadebiase3997 Be careful when removing the cap on a hot engine, put a towel over it or get the car hot with the cap off from the start. As for covering the nipple, you don't have too but then you won't be able to add much coolant to the tank as it will flow out of the nipple when it reaches that height so you'll have to keep a closer eye on the fluid level.
Ok. I'm surprised no-one has suggested this yet as far as I can see: Whatever is being pumped from the engine into the coolant reservoir must be getting replaced by coolant through the engine supply line at the bottom of the reservoir, no? So removing that hose from the reservoir and extending it to suck coolant from a bucket containing fresh coolant should suck fresh coolant into the engine at the same rate the old coolant is removed.. Shouldn't it?
That's just duplicating what the reservoir is already doing. The reservoir IS the "bucket". The difference is that with the reservoir gravity is helping in addition to the engine sucking it out of the bottom.
@@KingZoneOne Exactly. But the people who have demonstrated this method on YT have warned that the flow out of reservoir is inconsistent and you have to watch carefully to add new fluid to avoid sucking air. Using a large bucket of coolant would mitigate that. Good call on the gravity.
@@grantmcinnes1176 Unless the bucket is positioned higher than the reservoir I don't think the suction would be strong enough to pull it from a source below the reservoirs level (like on the floor). The pull from the reservoir is so slow and weak anyway I think the risk of it sucking air is pretty low. If you're doing this you should be nearby regardless, and not walk off to do other stuff. I do believe the entire system can be evacuated 100% with a kit that's sold to do it with either an air compressor or shop vac. I would think it has to be done immediately after turning a hot car off while the thermostat is still open.
Not 100% sure but I think so. Just take off the return line off the side of the reservoir with the engine running and if coolant is flows freely out of it then it is identical.
@@R4dek93what 2.0? A CC? The previous owner put in that stupid universal yellow/green Bull crap and now I gotta get the pink stuff in myself, but I’m terribly afraid of causing a malfunction because my old BMW once there started getting to be air in the coolant it was a never-ending nightmare for years until I finally took it to the junkyard. Could never get the hoses back on right new radiator knew everything the hoses would just blow up and shit. I guess I wouldn’t want to take a single thing apart on a closed/pressurize system so I might just keep the universal shit in there, which I think is a really bad idea as well. the local official VW dealership says they refuse to do coolant flushes on older cars which I guess 2009 is an older car now…??
Tried for 30 minutes, got less than half a cup of fluid, seems very slow way of doing a flush. Gotta do heater core after flushing, prolly just push tap water through the heater core hoses, before putting on new heater core.
Don't use turkey b... Unless it's automotive. I did the the kitchen one for break fluid, it melted a bit and contaminated the whole system, I lost my master cylinder. Men! Always tell people to watch out on tools to be suitable for the job
I don't think putting coolant at ambient temperature to a hot engine is a good idea but each to their own. It's better to change the coolant with engine cold, drive around to get the engine up to temperature then the next day or after the engine is cold again, do one more change.
I understand your concern but don’t think it’s a real problem. Every factory specified coolant flush procedure I’ve ever seen involves putting room temp coolant into a hot engine. Pouring a gallon of coolant into a coolant tank is a lot different than driving through a cold river and shocking the hot block instantly.
@@luso_overland Don't get me wrong you could be right but I still prefer do it my way just to be safe. Pouring 20°c coolant onto a 90°c engine is not for me.
@@guilhermeg345 lol it's coolant it supposed to cool the engine. Like he said you are not freezing the engine rapidly, because you slowly add new fluid to the reservoir so by the time it hit the engine the temp of it is like 80'C (if running temp is 90'C)
Is it that hard to solve your concern ? Just heat up the new coolant (or distilled water) before adding it. You finish quicker, you remove ALL of the old coolant and you don't potentially damage the engine.
Ambient temp coolant will not cause thermal shock to any metal parts in your engine, and this flush only works on this type of car if your thermostat is open (warmed up engine).
Worked great with my Golf mk4 GT TDI.
TOUAREG OWNERS I just used this method on my 2017 Wolfsburg Ed. and it worked great. Awesome video. Side note when the thermostat opens the overflow tank will fill up rapidly and spill over so just be ready for that
Question from a 2012 Touareg TDI owner hoping to use this process: do you know if this will both flush old coolant *and* purge/‘bleed’ the system of air bubbles/pockets or would some sort of vacuum bleeder be required to do the latter?
Also, did you use 3/4” ID for the drain hose…?
@@jtsherri I'm no expert but from my research I've seen that the cooling systems in 2010s-era jettas, golfs, touregs, and beetles are all basically the same and are all self-regulating/ self-purging, so there's not need to go through the bleeding process that you need to do on other cars.
Well, it kinda of worked your way on my 07 ES. I tried a hose but couldn't stop it from leaking. So Autozone suggested a barbed double-head joiner and actual 3/8" rubber hose. Which didn't leak. When you're running the engine be very attentive to the coolant level. It does surge and suddenly you'll find it's hitting the bottom. You don't want air locking up your systems and burning out your cylinder head. Keep all your bottles open, nearby and ready to go. I flushed with distilled water and then when it came out clean in the bucket I started with the pink. It fill a five gal bucket up so I began to fill empty gallons. They became pink. So I shut off the engine. Drove for 20 minutes and everything sees good. Thumbs up!
Very nice to see this video just to confirm a post I saw from Reddit.
The below is the person who claimed to be an VW tech, hope it helps.
“VW tech here. We have all sorts of fancy equipment for this BUT I prefer to use the homemade version. Its a lot faster and easier. Get the car running so the heat blows hot. Disconnect the rubber hose from the coolant reservoir bottle and connect it to a long plastic rigid hose (Home Depot $2). Place the other end of the hose in a 5 gallon bucket. With the car running, keep topping off the coolant reservoir bottle as the old coolant is draining into the 5 gallon bucket. Once you see the new coolant start to come out of the hose, you can disconnect the HD hose and reconnect the rubber hose to the reservoir. If your coolant system is really bad, repeat the process after driving for a few hours. Here's the important part --> USE ONLY VW COOLANT. You may also want to clean out the reservoir bottle if the sludge is really bad.”
Cool, thanks for the tip. This method looks both easy and effective, no old coolant left in the engine block. Will do it tomorrow, with a couple of litres of demineralized water first (tap water would work just as fine i guess)
Edit: It worked out very well, and no need to block intake pipe on the canister. I placed my car jack as weight on the gas pedal to get a little higher rpm to make the whole process go faster. Approx 1750 rpm. I also drove a few miles up front, with the heater on max
Thanks for the video mate, was straightforward and easy to follow. 👍 I just finished using this method to flush out all of the old G13 coolant from my B8 Passat and replaced it with G12 Evo. I've always wondered if you could do just this and let the system flush itself with the engine running. The only thing I did different was at first I kept topping up the overflow bottle with demineralised water until the return hose ran clear into the bucket (just to make sure the G13 was completely flushed out), then I switched to adding the fresh coolant until the return hose was running a solid pink colour. Worked a treat, thanks again!
I did it this way too. Just distilled water until it ran clear, then added concentrated coolant until a deep pink. Confirmed with a pristine coolant gauge afterwards. Caution, the water will be hot and will deform the plastic distilled water jugs, best use a 5 gal. bucket (or 2).
Video is gold. Thank you!
Great video, thanks for all the tips and comments. My '08 Passat Komfort has never been changed but it only has 48K and information even from VW forums seems to say OEM is practically lifetime or by mileage but I'm changing it anyway, this method looks great never heard of it. The oil is changed every 3500K without fail (turbo) other fluids too but have been on the fence with the variety of coolant recommendations.
Great video I’m gonna try it with my 2004 Touareg. Only thing I gotta say tho is if you want the engine to be hot then you wanna run the ac and not the heater. The heater will cool down the engine and the ac will heat it up. I used to drive tow trucks on the grapevine in ca and seen way too many people heat from running ac and have actually stopped my truck from overheating by turning on the heater. Cars use engine heat for the heater so when you turn it on it sucks heat from the motor it doesn’t add more heat
Very clever!
With this technique the cooling system never introduces air into the coolant passages. Whereas the traditional drain/refill method does. Therefore this technique means that there’s no need to worry about burping the system to remove air bubbles. Is that correct?
Is it recommended to flush with distilled water until it runs clear or can you just proceed with what you showed in the video? Thanks for this video by the way.. Seems like a really simple and great way to do a full flush.. Way better than draining the radiator boot, which doesn't even clear out all the coolant
You could do it that way but if you're trying to get every drop of old coolant out. Certainly wouldn't add much cost, it would just take a little longer.
🎉🎉thanks for sharing!! Worked great on my 2012 gli
Awesome, glad to hear this is helping people out!
How long did the entire process take? (getting 2 gallons of coolant out of the system) Thanks!
Around 30 mins.
Thats exactly what happed to me on my Golf GTI 7.5 2018 it came gushing out of the top of the overflow tank, so i abandoned the job , any suggestions ? would like to here from someone on this please?
Great video, think I have the confidence to tackle this project.
2 Questions: 1.) Will this method also work for the 2017 Jetta TSi ? & 2.) How many gallons of coolant will be needed for a exchange ?
1. Remove the return line when the car is running, if coolant is free flowing out of the return line then this method will work.
2. Check your owner's manual for coolant capacity of the system and then budget a little extra above that since you'll waste some with this cycling process.
@@luso_overland thank you! Appreciate the extra tips
Cars been running at 2000 rpm for 10 minutes with the heater on full... no coolant is coming out of the return line. Any suggestions?
Oh weird, what is the year make and model?
Thats what I thought, I ran it for a few more minutes to be sure and still nothing. 2013 Jetta TDI
Thanks for the reply by the way
How dangerous is this to do/is it worth doing? I bought a 2009 VW CC 2.0 that was generally well-maintained except for some reason they were putting in the yellow/green universal coolant from O’Reillys instead of the pink/purple VW spec. everything is running fine, but I want to try and get at least 50,000 more miles out of it. All I know is I could never properly bleed my BMW once I started having cooling problems with it and it was a never-ending nightmare for years until I finally sold it to the junkyard so I’d like to avoid opening pandora’s box, but I don’t wanna wear it down early. I’mputting in liqui Molly oil, the nuclear green oil this week, upgrading from the mobile one that they were using before
Did you run the heater while flushing the coolant? Thanks for the video!
Yes
@@luso_overland Awesome, thank you for the tips.
Nice! Any updates, would cranking the heat clear out the heater core?
I believe so, i had the heat on the whole time.
If u do this with a hot engine isn't the coolant under pressure and will it splash all over when open the cap or not really..
Also do u really need to plug that nipple when removing the return hose?
@@andreadebiase3997 Be careful when removing the cap on a hot engine, put a towel over it or get the car hot with the cap off from the start. As for covering the nipple, you don't have too but then you won't be able to add much coolant to the tank as it will flow out of the nipple when it reaches that height so you'll have to keep a closer eye on the fluid level.
@@andreadebiase3997 I tried it it will push a little bit when u pull hose off burp nothing bad
Ok. I'm surprised no-one has suggested this yet as far as I can see: Whatever is being pumped from the engine into the coolant reservoir must be getting replaced by coolant through the engine supply line at the bottom of the reservoir, no? So removing that hose from the reservoir and extending it to suck coolant from a bucket containing fresh coolant should suck fresh coolant into the engine at the same rate the old coolant is removed.. Shouldn't it?
That's just duplicating what the reservoir is already doing. The reservoir IS the "bucket". The difference is that with the reservoir gravity is helping in addition to the engine sucking it out of the bottom.
@@KingZoneOne Exactly. But the people who have demonstrated this method on YT have warned that the flow out of reservoir is inconsistent and you have to watch carefully to add new fluid to avoid sucking air. Using a large bucket of coolant would mitigate that. Good call on the gravity.
@@grantmcinnes1176 Unless the bucket is positioned higher than the reservoir I don't think the suction would be strong enough to pull it from a source below the reservoirs level (like on the floor). The pull from the reservoir is so slow and weak anyway I think the risk of it sucking air is pretty low. If you're doing this you should be nearby regardless, and not walk off to do other stuff. I do believe the entire system can be evacuated 100% with a kit that's sold to do it with either an air compressor or shop vac. I would think it has to be done immediately after turning a hot car off while the thermostat is still open.
Does this work on the TSI engines?
Not 100% sure but I think so. Just take off the return line off the side of the reservoir with the engine running and if coolant is flows freely out of it then it is identical.
Can confirm, done this on 2.0 TSI and it worked a treat :)
@@R4dek93what 2.0? A CC? The previous owner put in that stupid universal yellow/green Bull crap and now I gotta get the pink stuff in myself, but I’m terribly afraid of causing a malfunction because my old BMW once there started getting to be air in the coolant it was a never-ending nightmare for years until I finally took it to the junkyard. Could never get the hoses back on right new radiator knew everything the hoses would just blow up and shit. I guess I wouldn’t want to take a single thing apart on a closed/pressurize system so I might just keep the universal shit in there, which I think is a really bad idea as well. the local official VW dealership says they refuse to do coolant flushes on older cars which I guess 2009 is an older car now…??
@@AngeloSantelliMusic Mine is a VW Golf GTI MK7 from 2014 and this trick worked great :)
@@AngeloSantelliMusic VW are self bleeding. Don't worry, just put the right coolant in.
Tried for 30 minutes, got less than half a cup of fluid, seems very slow way of doing a flush. Gotta do heater core after flushing, prolly just push tap water through the heater core hoses, before putting on new heater core.
Don't use turkey b... Unless it's automotive. I did the the kitchen one for break fluid, it melted a bit and contaminated the whole system, I lost my master cylinder. Men! Always tell people to watch out on tools to be suitable for the job
Brake fluid is different than coolant. Coolant is not caustic in that way, and will not do that to a turkey baster.
I don't think putting coolant at ambient temperature to a hot engine is a good idea but each to their own. It's better to change the coolant with engine cold, drive around to get the engine up to temperature then the next day or after the engine is cold again, do one more change.
I understand your concern but don’t think it’s a real problem. Every factory specified coolant flush procedure I’ve ever seen involves putting room temp coolant into a hot engine. Pouring a gallon of coolant into a coolant tank is a lot different than driving through a cold river and shocking the hot block instantly.
@@luso_overland Don't get me wrong you could be right but I still prefer do it my way just to be safe. Pouring 20°c coolant onto a 90°c engine is not for me.
@@guilhermeg345 lol it's coolant it supposed to cool the engine. Like he said you are not freezing the engine rapidly, because you slowly add new fluid to the reservoir so by the time it hit the engine the temp of it is like 80'C (if running temp is 90'C)
Is it that hard to solve your concern ? Just heat up the new coolant (or distilled water) before adding it. You finish quicker, you remove ALL of the old coolant and you don't potentially damage the engine.
Ambient temp coolant will not cause thermal shock to any metal parts in your engine, and this flush only works on this type of car if your thermostat is open (warmed up engine).