My Coolant Flush Service. ODO 155,579

[Tony Prodigy]

G'day good people,

I finally stopped procrastinating and decided it was time to get the coolant flush job done and dusted. I wanted to take advantage of this long weekend and in doing so, wanted to tick a few jobs off the list.

These consisted of the coolant flush, tensioner and idler pulley inspections and rear brake adjustment

I'll be covering the coolant flush here as it was quite involved. I'll post up a separate post on the other two later.

It was quite a cold start to the morning but nevertheless I went about setting up with the various tools and apparatus I needed for the job.

The aim was to drain the radiator and both banks of the engine. The heater core didn't require any special attention because it sits higher than the drain point of the block and so it would naturally drain out by virtue of the block drain. I did set the heater to high if that helped. Not sure at this stage if the Aurion's have a heater valve which opens on a heating call. If anyone does know, please let me know.

As this is the first coolant flush, this would be the factory fill coolant from new, so despite the 7 year recommended frequency, this coolant was almost 11 years old. Mind you, it wasn't as bad as I thought either. I ended up doing a PH test on the old coolant Vs the new coolant for comparison. Results at the end.

So, here we go....

I jacked the car up, axle stands in position to be able to access the rear engine drain, then started  removing the lower engine cover plastics to get full access to the radiator and front engine drain.

According to the driver's handbook, the coolant capacity is 9.2L. It must be said that you will not recover all 9L worth of coolant from the entire system. That is impossible without fully disassembling the engine and who's crazy enough to do that right ?
I ended up recovering just over 7L. So despite draining the block and radiator, there would still be around 2L left in the block. Admittedly, the engine drain cocks are midway in the block, so it occurred to me that the coolant will only drain down to this level and residual coolant will remain below this. This could account to the 2L of coolant. 1L per side perhaps ??

 

Began by draining the radiator.

 

Here's the Rear Engine Drain.

Hose attached to capture the exact contents.

The front drain was a right Royal Pain to locate and access. It took some time but I managed to get to it. You have to unbolt the dipstick bracket and swivel the tube out of the way to the right to be able to get access to the front block drain. It's nestled right behind the dipstick tube. You will also need to the remove the overflow bottle on the 50 series as it's too cramped to even get your hand in.
You won't be able to see the drain, but you'll need to go in by feel. I attached a 10mm socket to a 1/4" extension and fed it in and managed to locate it on the 10mm drain bolt. Then you can go ahead and attach the ratchet and crack it off. I was also able to collect the coolant into the drain pan for measurement. Attaching the clear hose was impossible as evidenced by all the scratches on my hand, not to mention the skinned knuckles. Arrgh, it was frustrating, so I just let it run out. The pan managed to collect pretty much all of it anyway, so the tube is not compulsory.

I also took the opportunity to give the overflow bottle a good clean before reinstalling it.

Reinstalled and filled to high after the system was bled and engine was hot.

 

 

This is the front drain

              

 

After draining all I could, with all drain points closed, I filled the radiator with approximately 6L of demineralized water and ran the engine to circulate the residual coolant with the water to help neutralize the old coolant and aid in its evacuation. I ran the engine with the bleeder open for around 10 minutes to expel trapped air whilst the fluid circulated. I had to wait until the thermostat opened so the full flow cycle can be achieved and after a few more minutes, I stopped the engine and flushed again as described previously.

Note the colour of the old coolant compared to the new stuff. I filled up two empty clear bottles for comparison. The old coolant turned a reddish colour with no pinkish hue. It was spent.

 

It was now time to add the new Toyota Super Long Life Coolant. I purchased 2 x 5L coolant for the job. After setting up the "No Spill" coolant funnel kit and bleed hose, I began filling the radiator with that Pinky goodness. That took around 7 minutes.
After filling it to the point where the fluid started coming back (@ 6:51) up the bleed hose to the specified level on the funnel, I then began the bleed process with the engine on at 2,500 RPM. 

TIME TO BLEED

Some will say the process should take around 5 minutes to bleed, but the bleed process took around 15 minutes. I suspect that by draining the block, it does tend to add more air in the system hence the longer purge cycle.

The Car Care Nut was right in saying that the 2GR-FE is a stubborn engine. It certainly didn't give it up without a fight. There was a time when nothing was happening for minutes, then slowly, it coughed up some air and this continued for a while. 
There was a false sense of completion, when after what appeared to be a steady stream, which is the tell tale sign it's almost done, well, the steady stream came and then shortly after this, it coughed and spluttered some more. It wasn't done just yet ! I'd advise to wait even after the "steady stream" is witnessed. There may be more to follow.
I thought I'd add some videos to show this in real time so you can see how the engine behaves.

PART 1.

 PART 2

The SSL is a very pretty pink indeed. 

 

If you're wondering how I managed to keep the revs up, I utilized the jack handle by sandwiching it between the driver's seat and accelerator pedal and as it's an electric seat, I simply edged the seat forward until it pushed the handle enough to get it to the correct rev range.

 

Here are a few pics to show the difference in colour for both old and new coolant.

I also conducted a PH test to see how acidic, if any, the old coolant was.

The first picture shows 11 year old SLL coolant on the left and New SSL coolant on the right.

Note the redness of the old coolant minus it pinkish hue and the new coolant with a somewhat fluro pink look.

The PH test strips also revealed something quite interesting too.
The Old coolant seems to have a PH of 6 and compared to the PH of 7 (which is PH Neutral), so although being very slightly acidic it's not where I'd thought it would be and definitely not acidic enough to have caused any detrimental issues. Not bad for Toyota SSL coolant. I'd be more worried if it had a PH of 5 or less to be honest, so life is good as AMD would say.

Here's a video by Scotty Kilmer about the various types of coolants and one which puts my mind at ease knowing that even though my coolant was 11 years old, the mileage done is way under the maximum recommended. Toyota's SSL Pink is the best coolant you can buy and by design it won't conduct electricity or have a galvanic reaction to aluminum so even if you are late to do the coolant flush, your engine is still safe from long term damage. However, in saying that, I would still recommend doing the coolant service on time for best OCDnesss 😄

 

 

So this concludes the coolant flush service. It took the better part of the day and I then went to work on the rear brakes. 
Hope this was enjoyable and informative.

Cheers everyone 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 13, 2023 by Tony Prodigy
Added Information

[KAA]

TY Tony a very interesting and well written service guide, yes the Ph was amazing after so long in there, looking forward to the other services you performed. Are you changing the serpentine belt while in there mate or just checking it all out. Thanks again you always provide a very thorough report worthy of our TCCN Guru AMD.

Keep Safe Keep Strong

KAA

[Tony Prodigy]

12 hours ago, KAA said:

TY Tony a very interesting and well written service guide, yes the Ph was amazing after so long in there, looking forward to the other services you performed. Are you changing the serpentine belt while in there mate or just checking it all out. Thanks again you always provide a very thorough report worthy of our TCCN Guru AMD.

Keep Safe Keep Strong

KAA

Hey Rob, thanks for your kind words as always mate. I have ordered new pullies and when they go in I will also do the serpentine belt. I have a brand new one that's been soaking in Aerospace 303 in a plastic bag for a few years now. It would be interesting to see how it performs over time in terms of longevity. Mind you, the original belt is still in excellent shape believe it or not. I can see no cracks at all, but good practice would be to do the belt along with the new pullies. 

The thing is with the pullies is that the pulley themselves don't wear, it's the bearings, which are pressed in. I'm going to hang onto the original pullies and try and source new OEM bearings and  press these in and keep as spares.

I managed to regrease the original bearings using an intravenous grease needle which attaches to a grease gun. The Tensioner pulley was dry and after some injecting at various points on the bearing, it took some time for the grease to work it's way through the rollers. It was still protesting after start up for a while, but then settled down and has seemed to do the trick for now. Nevertheless I will still be replacing them for good measure as the bearing has run dry for some time so there has to be some degradation for sure.

I'll post up the pulley job when I do.

Cheers mate  

[Tony Prodigy]

Just a minor update here folks.

I found some newer PH test strips in the garage and did another PH analysis on both old and new SLL coolant to see if there were any inconsistencies.

To my surprise, the new test revealed that the new SLL is slightly alkaline at 8 and the old SLL was right about PH neutral around 7. No electrolysis issues could have arisen with this result, so not bad for 11 year old coolant.

So, in conclusion, using the correct Toyota SLL coolant has its benefits. Scotty Kilmer also rates it as the best coolant in the world so that's good enough for me.

I'm thinking about switching my motorcycles over to Toyota SLL too.

                                                  

[KAA]

Thanks for the update Tony, yes I agree the fluids Toyota use are some of the best in the world, they ensure total quality is using their name.

Thanks Mate

KAA