Cruiser565

Hey everyone,

So it turns out my coolant expansion reservoir has a pinhole leak in it and blew out a good amount of coolant on my way home from church this morning. I have done a pretty thorough search of this forum and have found a great DIY for the replacement procedure, but I have one important question... after I get the new tank in place, do I need a complete coolant flush/bleed or do I just follow the venting/filling procedure as follows:

(50% BMW antifreeze and 50% distilled water, 15 US qt) and venting system at the same time.
-Switch ignition ON without starting engine.
-Set blower fan to low and temperature for driver and passenger side to full warm. Set seat heat to MAX if available.
-Fill expansion tank slowly until Max level.
-Leave cap open and run engine at idle for 1 minute.
-Adjust level to MAX and close cap.
-Run engine to operating temperature.
-Shutdown engine and after engine has cooled, recheck coolant level.

Also, and this maybe dumb, but can someone tell me how to loosen the BMW hose clamps... they don't appear to be like any other hose clamp I have ever worked on before.

Thanks for all the help!!!!


Will

turboawd

no need to flush.
just do as stated above, but i dont know why you have to turn on the seat heaters??

Cruiser565

Yeah... I saw that one too. The only thing I could think of was some of the 7's have the ventilated heated and cooled seats, so maybe the instructions were universal. Thanks!

zinchuk77

i did this on my car afew weeks ago. it took about 20 minutes. Hose clamps are attached by a little pin on each clamp. you need to pull them out with needle nose pliers carefully so they dont fall down the engine. once you remove them , the hoses will come off the reservoir tank. very easy. i did not follow this procedure you have, just tapped off the coolant level. maybe i need to recheck the level now. good luck

zinchuk77

i did this on my car afew weeks ago. it took about 20 minutes. Hose clamps are attached by a little pin on each clamp. you need to pull them out with needle nose pliers carefully so they dont fall down the engine. once you remove them , the hoses will come off the reservoir tank. very easy. i did not follow this procedure you have, just tapped off the coolant level. maybe i need to recheck the level now. good luck

Cruiser565

Thanks!... yeah, I knocked this out on Monday in about 30 minutes total time, waayyy easier than I expected it to be, but fairly messy. I thought those pins went all the way around and was amazed when the first one came off in about 5 seconds. Anyway, thanks again for the assistance and to anyone else, DON'T pay the $350 the dealer/indy wants, DIY for $100 is the way to go!

Will