Quote:
Originally Posted by Pilot
What is the litmus test to know the bleeding process need not be repeated? If you open the radiator cap when the car is cold and it is full to the top and the engine temperature gage goes to about 1/4 scale when it is fully warmed up, am I good to go or...?
|
If there is air in the cooling system of consequence you will usually experience a bouncing idle or erratic temp gauge as steam travels past the gauge sensor. Small amounts of air will not usually cause this to my understanding and still can cause problems, so the act of properly bleeding the system using the maint. hoses and topping off the filler neck (squeezing the hoses on either side of the filler neck as mentioned is a good idea) until car is warm and tstat opens and heater is on full hot (to allow heater valve to open) should show no air bubbles and require no more top offs... thats the best you can do.
if you check this after a while of driving on and off for a period of time and you find there is more air to bleed, then you have a small leak somewhere. I would think its likely that many people have small air leaks in their car.
If the system has a small leak, but its functioning properly, it should replenish this leak from the reservoir bottle and look full, but air will still be introduced into the system and you will see bubbles when you bleed again...
A perfect functioning cooling system would have no air leaks and the reservoir would remain 2/3 full on hot and about 1/3 to 1/2 full on cold
and if you did a periodic bleeding procedure after multiple drives over a span of time you would eventually get to the point where you were so good at it, you would see NO bubbles coming out and be confident that the system was both free from air and had no leaks ....
For me, in the beginning, it was a confidence game... practice makes you the confident expert.... reading the forum just gives you the concept.