Recently had to replace the reservoir to water pump hose resulting in draining the coolant. My car is an 08 with a tiptronic. Question is what is the proper way to bleed the coolant system.

 

Pressurize the system using air and the factory bleed tool.

I've bled my GT3 manually before, it's a massive pain in the rear. There are soo many places for air to hide in the system that it takes forever to get it all out.

 

I checked all forums and I couldn't get details of how to bleed manually, jut bits of advise here and there, hope this helps someone. I just changed my water pump and oil cooler and had to flush the entire system, to refill hassle free you definitely need a vacuum filler to make life easier. In my case I didn't have one so did it manually, it takes time and patience, did this for my 06 997 C2.

1. Filled the coolant till it couldn't take any more and ran the car with the bleeder valve popped up, the fans ran on max and the temperature passed halfway mark, I noticed that the fans were blowing cool air from the radiators which means the coolant had not circulated.
2. Jacked up the rear of the car overnight (someones advise in a post) and left the car, coolant had gone down in the reservoir by morning, I refilled to max and ran the car at 2,500 till it reached temperature with the coolant cap closed bleed valve open and left the car till it cooled. Fans were running a bit better but not as they should.
3. Came back again hours later coolant had gone down and topped off again and ran the car, it took a very long time for the car to get to normal temperature, the fans did not come on, I took the car for a spin cap on valve open.
4.Continued this cycle of running, short drive with cap closed bleeder valve open for two days, this is the third day in the morning now and the fans are running right and blowing hot air from the radiators, coolant has circulated

I will continue this cycle till I see the coolant level is stable in the morning, I have done this before on my previous 997 and it worked just as well no worries.......hope this helps someone.

 

Get a Schwaben Coolant Bleeder tool (or something similar):

https://www.ecstuning.com/b-schwaben...0aAu4mEALw_wcB

I use it on all my cars, it does two things: 1. Makes sure you system is not leaking 2. Fills coolant without air getting in

Ed

 

I’ll add another recommendation for the vacuum filler. I got the OEMTools version from Amazon, but they’re all likely similar enough that it doesn’t matter which you use. You can probably borrow one from AutoZone (or similar) for free too.

Since you likely didn’t drain the coolant from the front radiators also, be sure to let the air run through the vacuum pump for a while to make sure it’s pulled all the bubbles from the system. It may look like there’s a leak since it’s not holding a vacuum otherwise.

 

I used an Airlift II, pretty easy! https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/air...uview-uv550500

 

So I got one of the cooling system Vacuum tools, I used it to refill my system after removing the motor and doing the cooling pipe fix/pin job. Started it up ran it till warm backed it out of the Barn and one of the large coolant pipes popped out of its hole(one of the ones that has the metal end and clip). Ended up I had the clip backwards. Anyway I went back to the vacuum filler and tried to get a vacuum but it keeps sucking up fluid from the reservoir and I don't get a vacuum when it does that, I got it to work for about a half gallon but no more(not much more than that leaked out).

Is there a trick to using this tool when the system is partially to mostly full?

 

It's tricky to get it to work properyly when the system is already above half-full.

When I had an issue like you (hose popped off) I had to end up draining most of the fluid out and re-filling from scratch. Worked great when almost empty.