Drained....

Then refilled!

Today has been spent mostly dealing with the coolant system on an R56 MINI. I did actually prepare everything. The old hoses were removed on New Years Eve, with a fair bit of swearing and wondering why I don't (or didn't) own a set of hose clip pliers. A couple of hours removing the air filter box, coolant expansion tank, remaining coolant and finding bodywork hose clips on the floor the coolant system was cleared out.

The MINI was left in the workshop, and the hoses were ordered from the local BMW dealers. On the way back from the dealers, I thought it would be a wise idea to actually buy some hose clip pliers. Job done thanks to Halfords.

After picking up the replacement hoses today, and two 5 litre bottles of coolant, it was time to play rebuild the MINI. Well, with no help from the forums (yet), as the instructions I found only covered the R50 and R53 MINI engines, through a bit of trial and error, I finally managed to refit the hoses and started bleeding the system slowly. With the ignition on, the heater set to maximum heat and fan on setting one, the first stage of filling the coolant system was done, slowly mind you! The engine was started, and left for a few minutes (remembering to refit the coolant expansion tank cap), and no heat was coming out of the vents! Ok, I need to do the final bleed of the system. Engine off, twenty minutes of searching through the interwebs MINI forums and finally I found a picture of the sort of area where the thermostat bleed valve would be hiding. Yes, they do hide it well, behind some wiring, right on top of the thermostat, in a small gap you can just fit a long screw driver in!Slowly the screw was turned, and finally I heard the nice noise of hissing and then looked to see coolant coming out of the bleed screw! Success! Screw tightened up, coolant topped up to the required level and engine started....

Hot air finally came out of the vents, no leaks noticed from any hoses, so finally the job was completed. In total it took approximately 3 hours to complete. Not bad for someone when last confronted with a complete coolant system bleed, I owned an Alfa Romeo that just had a total loss coolant system!

The MINI is back on the road!