Getting ready to do some fluid drains/fills

welcome! i'm not a diy'er, but i admire your skill and fortitude. all the best!

 

It is best if car is level during all drain and refills in order to get proper fill levels. I put mine up on jack stands and then completed all drains and refills. Then I was able to complete everything either under the car or above as needed. It is also easier to catch all of the fluid drains with the car up on stands since this car has very little clearance underneath.

 

The engine coolant change I don't think you need to raise the car. With the Inverter coolant change you would need to raise it, and likely remove the engine undershield completely, to get decent access to the inverter coolant drain bolt, and likely make for a cleaner drain, avoid splashing. The only one you need the car to be raised and level for is the transaxle fluid change.

I can see the logic of combining services, especially when they involve raising the car the car and removing the engine undershield. The two I would do together is oil change and transaxle fluid change. With both it's a good idea to have the car warmed up. But with coolant changes you want the car cold, or well cooled down. Also, coolant changes are somewhat labour intensive, I'd be inclined to just take on one coolant change per day.

 

I would never worry about coolant flowing well, lol. There's definite cautions to not drain coolant when it's hot. I'm sure you'll be fine with a short drive. The only time you need to raise the whole car is for the transaxle fluid, and front end only for the inverter coolant change is fine. Myself, I would just take on one of the coolant changes per day.

 

If it was me I wouldn't bother jacking the car up on all 4 corners to make it level. Thats alot of work. Just measure exactly how much came out and replace it. Plus a little more. Just jack the front up as high as you can.

Replaced the fluid in my G2 3 times no issues.

And don't warm the car up. The bolts are going to be on there wicked tight warmer makes them much tighter. Only work on a cold car.
The fluid is 10 weight it doesn't need to be warmed up to flow.

If me I wouldn't dump all the engine coolant. Modern cars are difficult to air bleed. Just dump the rad only. No airlock issues. Then go back and dump the rad again a month later. Thats more than half the fluid in the system. Works real good. there's no temp gauge in our cars you'll never know if you created an airlock and the engine is overheating. Use Toyota SLLC.

I would definitely take advantage of the front end being up in the air to address the ac system. You can clean the e-coil under the dash.
Buy a can of cleaner that Comes with the rubber attachment that fits the condensate tube. Dealer parts or amazon that sells Kool It.
Keeps the e-coil box clean of mold and the drip tube clear. Nothing worse than a clogged drip tube that dumps nasty condensate onto the floor. Car smells real nice after you clean the box. Dealer charges $125 for this srervice. If you smoke in the car don't bother.

 

As someone who will be undertaking all 3 of these fluid changes in 3 weekends, my plan was the following:

1) Park the car in the spot I plan to perform work (garage for me) the night prior.
2) Jack rear of car up, then put dunnage under the wheels ( I have excess 4"x4" and 2"x6" pieces left over from the wife's garden boxes) that I have screwed together.
3) Remove jack from rear then jack the front.
4) Repeat the dunnage process for front wheels.
5) Drain all fluids.
6) Replace all drain plugs ( reinsert pet cock for engine coolant).
7) Fill transmission fluid then reinstall fill plug.
8) Lower car to ground
9) Fill both coolants as you can see levels under the hood in the reservoirs.
10) Perform maintenance mode for inverter coolant fill and air removal.

I will do this all in a day, but the prep work will be done prior to ensure this goes as smooth as possible( gaskets, fluid purchase, etc) .

Good luck to the OP but not sure why you would need to do maintenance mode or get into the car if you do the above in that order with the car in the air.

 

Don't drain all the fluids at the same time. Do one at a time. Get one system done and move on. The term dunnage is used in shipping to secure stuff in ships hold.
Just block up the front. Do the trans first. Then dump the Inverter fluid. Bleed that out. Save the engine coolant for last and if me I would not open the engine plug. Just do the rad. The Prius is very easy on engine coolant but very hard on Invert coolant.

 

By doing them all at once I meant while the car is up, not having several streams going at once.....

By draining only the radiator, what do you mean? The drain for the engine coolant is at the radiator pet cock valve( or this is the easiest way).

When I changed out the egr cooler, I used this pet cock and got out the 5 quarts you would expect and the reservoir showed empty. So how else would you drain it as this is by far the lowest spot in the system? Or why use a different spot and only change some of the fluid? The coolant is cheap and if you are bothering to do it at all, why not do a complete swap?

 

No your ok I thought oi were opening the engine coolant not the rad. Just dump the rad.

Why not do a complete swap? Because this is a modern car and sometimes its very difficult to get all the air out.
With no engine temp gauge you'll never know you have an air pocket and could possibly overheat the engine but if you want dump the whole system.

 

The engine coolant can be easily drained without jacking up the car, but you probably want to jack the car to drain the inverter.

If you want to do both, jack the car, drain the inverter fluid, put the bolt back in, fill and bleed, then do the engine coolant. If you want to be really nuts about it, lower the jack while draining the inverter to get all the fluid out, then raise the car again to put the bolt back on. I wouldn't bother with that. If you do, be safe, don't cut corners, and use the jack stands each time.

It's easy to bleed these systems. Just gently squeeze the hoses for a while while the pump is circulating the coolant.

The NutzAboutBolts videos make it easy. Just watch them and you'll be fine.
My tips:
1) Don't confuse the inverter drain bolt with the transaxle drain bolt. They look the same.
2) Be careful adding inverter coolant. It doesn't take much and if you're using a funnel, it's easy to overfill. (I know this because...)
3) When you drain the transaxle, loosen the transaxle fill bolt before you loosen the transaxle drain bolt. Because if you drain the transaxle and then, for some unlikely reason, you can't open the fill bolt... you're up a creek.

 

Lost me there. If you drain the radiator, virtually all the fluid will drain out of the system.

I know that there are cars with sealed cooling systems which are difficult to bleed air out of, but Prius Gen III is pretty easy to bleed all the air out. It doesn't have (or need) any bleeder valves in the system.

As with any sealed cooling system, you gently squeeze all of the hoses as the coolant, and you will feel the bubbles come out. Squeezing the large lower hose seems to get most of the air out.

 

There are a lot of us trying to get the nerve up to do that brake fluid flush.

I think what we're waiting for is somebody to try it using tools that are available to mortals. I have a small air compressor, and Harbor Freight sells a vacuum tool for about $60. The cheaper tools look scary to me, like I'll wind up with brake fluid all over the place.

 

I'm thinking to use just a syringe with tube extension to baste out fluid from the reservoir, and a simple tube and bottle setup at the bleed bolts. I do have some bleed bolt push-on adaptors.

Sometime..., maybe when I'm swapping to snow tires. It's been 3 year since last, the dealership did it in conjunction with the brake master cylinder recall. They say they did, and there's four brake fluid "units" on the invoice.

 

Good job!

Any difficulty getting trapped air out of the engine cooling system? Did you finish filling with the engine (or at least the pump, somehow) running?

Refilling the transmission is easy with the hose-&-funnel method, if you're careful to go slowly at the end to minimize messy overflow.

I didn't have any trouble with the transmission plugs, using a pipe on a common hex key ("Allen") wrench.

 

Try removing a crankshaft main pulley bolt someday. Over 200 ft lb of torque on some. 1/2" breaker with six feet of steel pipe, then you have to figure out how to keep the engine block from just flipping over.