I'm going to flush the coolant in my tC. The question is will it be worth it to do it in my garage or to have a shop do it?

If I do it in my garage (5 or 6 rounds of distilled water), that's a ton of water to flush through. Is it also considered hazardous after it's been through the engine?

I'm assuming I can't just reuse the water I just flushed through seeing as it'll have whatever contaminants in there. Is 5 or 6 cycles too many to flush?

Any help is appreciated!

 

still hazmat.

probably more cycles than needed... but moreso the question.. how many miles does your car even have that would make you think you would need one?

 

It's not a matter of I have x problem and think a coolant flush will cure it. I'm just doing preventative maintenance.

I've read intervals ranging from once a year to every 30k miles to don't worry about it until you need to refill the reservoir to whenever the dealership says you need it.

I could probably run quite a while with just topping off the fluids, but the same could probably be said for oil (though I'd rather not chance either one).

Thanks for the tip on the hazmat Squall!

 

Bought the Prestone coolant system cleaner, a 22 oz bottle of . . . stuff. Followed the directions on the bottle. A couple notes on the tC which I was unaware of - there is a cutout on the undertray for the radiator to drain. I wish I'd noticed it before I'd removed the undertray. If you have a low enough drain pan you can probably do the whole thing without jacking the car up (I went ahead and jacked it up because the pan I use won't fit under with my drop). Also, the 7ish quart capacity of the entire coolant system might also include the reservoir. I never drained more than 4 quarts of fluid on either flush.

Hope my mistakes will help someone else out with this task. It's time consuming with the engine having to cool down between flushes, but I'd rather use up time than pay too much for a shop to do it.

 

Our coolant is good for 100,000 miles.