Coolant change with a turkey baster method

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A week ago I did a coolant change to my car for the first time. I bought this car about a year ago and it have an unknown coolant change history. My plan is to follow more or less the manufacturer recommendation in the future. However, the coolant change was a bit too messy for my liking (had to do it by taking the lower radiator hose off), so I’m not too keen to do this job more often than necessary.

I was able to change total of 3.6 liters of coolant (2.8 liters from the radiator and the engine block + 0.8 liters from the overflow tank). The whole coolant capacity in my car is 6.7 liters.

Nissan recommends that the coolant should be changed every 60k km. With my driving that’s every two years. Now, I was wondering if I could stretch the coolant change interval to 90k km by emptying the overflow tank with a turkey baster and filling it to full with new coolant once a year. This would be done between the actual bigger coolant changes.

So, here’s a comparison between the two different methods. I would prefer the latter one.
- Do a proper coolant change of 3.6 liters every two years
- Do a proper coolant change of 3.6 liters every three years and also a smaller 0.8 liter change with a turkey baster once a year

Does the latter method sound like a good plan? Do you see any pitfalls in the latter method?

Code:


Year

0 1 2 3 4 5

Liters changed

3.6 0 3.6 0 3.6 0 = 1.8 liters/year

3.6 0.8 0.8 3.6 0.8 0.8 = 1.7 liters/year
 
Is it an overflow tank or is the expansion tank part of the cooling circuit? If it's just a tank then there is very little flow through it.

There is no drain the radiator? Odd. I'd pull the hose each time--it's only every 2 years. Or just get a mechanic to do it.

Oddly enough, over here in the states, most people never change their coolant--I strongly suspect that, now that you have refreshed the coolant, it'll easily go another 10 years.
 
There's no pressure in the overflow tank, but I'm not sure how it should be called. Reservoir, overflow tank, expansion tank.
 
I would just drain and fill the radiator every other year if your worried about it. What kind of coolant? If its the long life type it wouldnt be needed that often the green coolant would recommend that interval. If the overflow tank doesnt have pressure I wouldn't expect much mixing if you only changed that so I wouldnt add that
 
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Third option: get a vacuum extractor eg Mityvac or just a siphon tube / hand pump and see how far you can send the tube down. You may be able to do the 2 year change with no mess.

Fourth option: Find a longer life compatible coolant. You'll need to do a thorough flush to remove all traces of old coolant but you can then go 5 years or maybe longer.
 
It's Nissan's original L248 coolant, green color. It's a 50/50 premix, as the dealer don't sell concentrate.

The car is 11 years old has 175k km on the clock, so it's probably not too bad situation even if the coolant has never been changed before. The coolant I drained still looked like new. It was still clear and beautiful looking green fluid.

Also, the car works without any problems, and there's no signs of any coolant related problems. So, I'm not too worried about my car. Was just wondering if there would be easier (and more importantly cleaner) way to get the same result as removing the lower radiator hose.

You see, I'm living in a city and I have to do my car maintenance at the parking lot of our row house (terrace house/townhouse). It's a shared parking lot, so it's on a gray area if it is ok to do car maintenance there or not. That's why I try to do all the maintenance so that there won't be any spills of oil/coolant/etc. on the asphalt after I have done my work. Oil change is not a problem, as I always place some cardboard under the car during maintenance and the oil will flow in a controllable way after removal of the drain plug. Also, the coolant change would be a piece of cake if there would be a drain plug at the bottom of the radiator. But there isn't one. So, I must remove the lower radiator hose in order to do the coolant change and then there's some coolant on the asphalt. Not good.

So, I was just wondering on a general level, would the yearly lazy method with the overflow tank work and what's the reason if it wouldn't work. The car is driven about 500 times a year about 40-50 km at a time. So, there's a lot of heat cycles during a year where the engine gets nice and hot. The coolant flow between the overflow tank and the radiator is quite small, but maybe one year could be enough so that all the fluid of the overflow tank would have time to mix thoroughly with the rest of the fluid, and thus replenish corrosion inhibitors circulating in the engine.

What do you think?
 
I think you could probably use the turkey baster method every 9 months and not have to ever disconnect the lower radiator hose.
 
Wow, that's really easy method!

(though I hope you are not suggesting to the other thing to which the thread title suggests unintentionally)
 
There is a drain cock at the bottom of the radiator. It drains about half of the coolant. There is a second drain cock on the cylinder block, which drains the other half. In addition, you need to remove and empty the overflow tank separately.

Whatever you do, don't let any pets or stray animals nearby and clean the floor thoroughly afterwards. Even licking paws wet from a coolant can be fatal for an animal.
 
The cylinder block drain plug is hiding behind exhaust manifold's heat shield. So, I didn't try to open that drain plug as I can't see it, and the bolts that hold the heat shield in place are really rusty and crusty.

I knew that coolant can kill, but I didn't know it's that lethal. Thanks for the tip.

Paying a mechanic to do it is not an option, as I want to do the car maintenance myself. Probably a problem that many of us here at bitog have. And at the end of the day, if pulling the lower radiator hose would be the only possible way to change the coolant I would stick to it.

Using a siphon through the radiator cap hole seems quite interesting method also. I'll take that into consideration the next time the coolant change is due.
 
This is definitely the time of year to do this. I would read the specs that the Nissan coolant meets and source it where you see fit. Its a Nissan, not a Veyron. Granted my old BMWs are way more robust than the newer one. The recommended coolant was blue and cost 30$ at BMW. I just used parts store brand green dumped in after I had back the system with well water. %28es went to the crusher with original hoses on them. YMMV
 
Except you won't get the sediment, scale, rust, sludge and other nasties out that way. It's very possible to drain properly without making a mess.
 
Leave the radiator cap on when you drain it. It'll siphon the coolant from the recovery tank. It'll take longer but still drain.
 
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