Wayne - Thank You

[johnj123]

Wayne,

Just want to say thanks for all your help and the excellent procedures that you've written.

Just changed out the coolant on my wife's 1999 Porsche Boxster. Followed your directions and it was very simple to complete this task. I agree with you that the "life time" coolant as stated by Porsche is not something I'd go by. I purchased the "Porsche" coolant from Pelican and it took me about two hours to complete this job.

I've got a couple of questions concerning the procedure:

1. Only got out about 4 gallons of old coolant which still looked pretty good after 34,000 miles. I was told these cars hold about 6 gallons? I did not disconnect the hoses to the front rad.

2. Per the procedures, I removed the "b1" fuse since my wife's car is an automatic. At this point the tac, fuel and temp display were no-longer working? It was a little hard to tell when the procedures indicated that after the starting and warming up the car at 2500rpms for 10 min's. However I did listen for the fans to come on and cycle which took about 15 min's.

3. After removing the 4 gallons of old coolant, it only took 2 1/2 gallons until I reached the full mark? This morning the car was sitting at the "min" mark and I topped it off. I'll keep an eye on it for the next couple of days, but is this normal.

Once again thanks for all your help and I recommend to everyone that DYI is the way to go!!! Coolant replacement at my local shop would have cost me over $600 in parts and labor.

John

[s_wilwerding]

You probably got out as much coolant as you were going to easily get out - it's pretty tough to get every drop out.

Make sure that you follow the coolant bleeding procedure - open the valve and leave it open for a few days to let air get purged out of the system. That's probably why it's not taking all of the coolant.

[Wayne 962]

Hi there. Thanks for the kudos. If you follow the coolant bleed article exactly as written, it will work fine. Keep watching the tank and top off when you need it. In order to get all of the coolant out of the car, you need to empty the front radiators too. But 4 gallons should be good for replacement purposes. For people reading this in the future, if you're concerned about not getting all of the coolant out, then when you add new coolant, simply mix it a little stronger (60% coolant, 40% water) - that should help...

-Wayne