Coolant Change. Use forscan to get the air out?

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triangles

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 16, 2011
Messages
1,232
Location
Toledo, Ohio
I swear I saw this discussed somewhere on here but cannot find it. I thought you could command the coolant valves/pumps with Forscan. After doing a "warranty flush" on my coolant, I fumbled around with forscan trying to figure out where to command the pumps/diverter valves to purge the air.

Am I getting old and senile or just missing where to do this with forscan.

TIA
 
I think I saw there somewhere here as well. If you are desperate like I was, 2 of the loops will work themselves out because they have degass lines. The heater loop does not have a degass line, so you'd be stuck with air in that line without the ability to change the diverters to make one big loop.

I forget what I did to get the pumps to run...probably just turned the car on. I remember squeezing the coolant lines quickly to promote movement of the air bubbles. But anyway, you are right to just get it into one big loop with Forscan. If you figure it out outside of the forum, please post for an official record. :)
 
Not sure if this helps, but when I was in the process of removing my 1 speed geardrive/ motor assembly for replacement, if 12 Volt power is still connected and you open the driver side door, the water pumps will come on for a couple seconds to cycle coolant through the loop. It was a pretty neat way to drain remaining coolant out.
 
triangles said:
I swear I saw this discussed somewhere on here but cannot find it. I thought you could command the coolant valves/pumps with Forscan. After doing a "warranty flush" on my coolant, I fumbled around with forscan trying to figure out where to command the pumps/diverter valves to purge the air.

Am I getting old and senile or just missing where to do this with forscan.

TIA

It's not intuitive, but you can select to view certain modules and there's an option at the bottom that can be changed to control stuff. I don't have it in front of me right now, but if you look along the bottom of the data view you should find it.

The degas seems to be diverters set to the middle and pumps ramped up near full for a while.
 
1. Connect to the vehicle in Forscan.

2. Click the Oscilloscope button in the left column
3. Click the small gear button at the bottom of the window.
4. Select PCM from the Module drop down.
5. Select the PIDs as seen in the photo.
6. Click the check mark button at the bottom of the window.

7. Click the small gear button at the bottom of the window.
8. Select PCM from the Module drop down.
9. Select Control from the Type drop down.
10. Select the PIDs as seen in the photo.
11. Click the check mark button at the bottom of the window.

12. Click the Dashboard tab.
13. Click the blue play (right triangle) button at the bottom of the window.
14. Click the greyed out (X'ed out) vertical slider bars button at the bottom of the window.
15. In the control window that opens, set the horizontol sliders for the pump speeds and valve positions. After setting a value, there is a time delay to achieve the setting.
16. The dashboard will show what the actual speeds and positions are in real time.

NOTE: If you set a speed to 100% , you have a high probability of causing air entrapment and enrichment. This is because of the pressure drop across the degas lines will cause them to suck, rather than drain. Similarly if you set a valve all the way one way, with a moderate speed. So with all that in mind, try to set the valves to the 0 degrees (center position), and try to keep the pump speeds less than 75%.

The best way to get air out of the cooling system is to use a vacuum coolant bleeder. Using one of those and setting valves to 0 and pump speeds to 50% does a good enough job.

NOTE: Often the pump speeds will not return back to 0, even though you set the sliders to 0. You will have to power cycle the car to reset them back to normal.
 
Heima, Thanks for taking the time to post this with steps. I had gotten as far as your step 13 but couldn't figure out how to change any of the settings. I did a drain and fill on the radiator twice to serve as my "10 year - 150k mile coolant change even though I am just shy of 8 years in and less than 1/3 the miles. I was mostly curious to see the condition of the coolant that came out. Much as I expected it still looked new, although there was some white precipitate in the expansion reservoir. I should probably do something more like a complete drain and fill since I only changed about 6L and the manual says the capacity is 15L. Honestly though I expect my battery to be the death of my FFE before corrosion becomes an issue with the coolant.
 
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