Its easy to miss the old school stuff, so heres the whys of it... (scuse spelling)

Quote Originally Posted by sierrafery View Post
I respect your tutorial and i think that your trick it's a brilliant one for 300Tdi or others but quoting from your post: , i'm a bit confused or i misunderstood what you meant as AFAIK you can't expect a thermostat to be on the top of a Td5 engine, the Td5's thermostat works in a different way than the 300tdi's... so a priori with my apologies i insist that the method described by me is the best for a Td5
Theres a bolt on ally adaptor on the head of the TD5 above the powersteering/water pump.. ITs not the thermostat but it sure as hell looks like one. IF you were to try and stick your hand down onto the thermostat on a D2 TD5 you'd get a shirt sleeve or finger yanked into the belt or fan.

so instead of taking that risk you can gauge the temps just by putting your hand onto the ally outlet that bolts onto the head. Kinda looks exactly like an old school thermostat housing from an older engine with a top to bottom cross flow radiator that manages the coolant by controling flow to the top side of the radiator (these are actually really cool as the design allows for the cooling system to continue coolant flow by convection)



Quote Originally Posted by sierrafery View Post

also
that's completely useless for the Td5 as the heater matrix is under full flow all the time, the heating is managed by the heater assembly's flap systems which are not affecting the flow whatsoever regardless of the setting ... no offence, i just want to share my own 12 year experience ONLY with Td5
ITs the same on the TDI, the V8's in discos and some others as well,

its not done for the same reason as on older engines where you have heater tap that controls the coolant flow and can leave the heater empty, its done to give you some cooling on the engine and an indication that you have coolant flow in the heater matrix. In everything shed class the loops on the top of the heater are the highest point of the cooling system its easy to not have it filled. With almost all of the landy cooling systems the first thing that drops out of service if the coolant level drops or you aerate it too much is the flow through the heater matrix. For example when a TDI in a D1 is just starting to do a head gasket, you can tell how much coolant you have by leaving the heater on flat out all the time, when the hot air starts to stop being hot and goes to just warm the coolant level is now only 2/3'rds up the thermostat and level with the top of the opening which coincidently (when the vehicle is on level ground with good mounts is exactly the same level as the heater supply pipe down at the back of the head AND the bypass hose on the thermostat housing to the water pump. Guess where all the air winds up first?

The TD5 in both shed class and disco landies have the same issue due to hose routing and heater placement..

There are individual better methods for individual engines in certain vehicles that are better for any number of reasons than the coke bottle bleed BUT assuming there is no other cooling system fault the coke bottle method always works and has a few advantages that other systems do not have.

Being fastest is not always one of them.

The very fastest method of bleeding a tdi or TD5, pull the heater return line off put the water supply on that and back fill the system through the heater with the cap off until water is present at both the header tank and the heater. connect the line again syphon out the header tank until you can add 1-1.5l of concentrated coolant. Dont expose the radiator return line. on a slow day, 2 minutes.

The best way?

remove the line from the thermostat on a TDI the radiator return on the td5. fit your vac brake bleeder to the hose. Put your coolant in a container on the wing/top of the engine connect a line to the spigot and put it under the coolant, start the brake bleeder and allow some coolant to be drawn into the hose to the spigot, clamp the hose, wait until the cooling system is under max vacuum from the bleeder, crimp the bleeder hose and open the the syphon line. wait until the cooling system is filled.

takes about 10 minutes.