Hello, ive noticed that my coolant is no longer red and is just mostly plain water, how would I drain it and put in new coolant?

Undo the drain tap at the bottom of the radiator and let all the old coolant drain out, put a hose in the expansion tank and flush the whole lot through with clean water. Refit the tap and then fill up the system with the correct mixture of Pentosyl G12 and water.

Strictly speaking you should also disconnect the two coolant hoses to the oil cooler on these as old coolant (and muck) can still be in there.

I had to change my coolant when I replaced my thermostat, in my case all the coolant drained out of the rad hoses I'd disconnected to do the stat (luckily as my rad drain tap is seized) and I flushed the system with lots of buckets of water (as I don't have a hose).

Can you like give a diagram to let me know where the drain tap is...

The hoses going to the oil cooler are coming out from the coolant tank right?

Nope, the oil cooler hoses go from the larger diameter coolant hoses near your battery and connect to the oil cooler which is the block shaped thing between the oil filter and the engine block. I didn't disconnect them when I did mine as it was too hard to get some pliers in there to get the single use clips undone.

If you've got a Haynes manual its got photos in there of the oil cooler and hoses

The drain tap is right on the bottom right hand corner of the radiator, where it connects to the rad bottom hose.

Edited 8 September, 201015 yr by chicken_eyebrow

Cant find anything. :( lol

I just had my radiator changed on my Ambiente 1.9TDI, and noticed straight away that the coolant in the reservoir was no longer red. More like transluscent brown. Can anyone tell me why this is the case, and more importantly whether I should be concerned? Perhaps the garage has just topped up will cheap stuff?

Thanks

Hopefully most garages know not to top the coolant up with anything other than whats in there already.

If it's been in there a while it may be a slightly darker colour due to dirt and deposits from inside the rad but brand new G12 should be a vibrant pinky-red colour.