Every thing I 've read [ Rover Wksp manual/Haynes] quotes a coolant volume of between 5-5.8 litres. Mine has swallowed some where between 2.5-2.8 litres. I've bled the thermostat rail by completely removing the bleed screw and let her tick over with the front up on a hydraulic jack and the bleed adjar; the radiator is getting warm so that indicates the stat is open, or does it? As there is a small bypass hose going from the head that Siamese's with the feed pipe from the expansion/filler bottle and leads to the top of the radiator.

Any body else done this job recently and can comment? Advice [inteligent variety] gratefully received!

The quantity that has gone back in, roughly equates to what I drained out funnily enough

And NO I haven't blown her up just yet; after allowing her to cool down after a short run I have got another litre approx' in so will check again later, about 4 litres gone in now.

best way to bleed a k is to drive it.

keep an eye on your gauge every time it goes just a little above middle pull over and release the cap gently, it took me close to 20 mins of driving from cold to get my cabby happy and it still dropped the level slightly once it had been left over night.

It bleeds better under load, obviously fans on hot and full to face.

Did my K Series SPi recently and like you drained and replaced much less than the specified 5.5 litres. I ran the engine to full temperature in the garage until the fan switched in, revved it up a bit to get the pump going and then topped it up. Need to have the heater on full while replacing coolant and the bleed bolt out on the coolant pipe. Have run it around quite a bit since then and the coolant level remains the same in the header tank.

So far no problems and the temperature gauge is normal.

Cheers,
Hugh

If you drain the Coolant from an car you never get the system completely empty. There will always be coolant left sitting in the heater matrix and other water ways within the engine.
The best way to do a coolant change is:-
1/ Undo the bottom hose and let all the old coolant out.
2/ Flush the entire cooling system using a hosepipe.
3/ Refill the cooling system putting the specified strength of anti freeze in for that vehicle and top up with water.
4/ Run engine up to temp until fan cuts in the specified number of times.
5/ Let the engine cool down and top it up with the specified mix of antifreeze.

The earlier 1.4 K Series have a different hose arrangement to the latter cars. Mine has the plastic inlet manifold. According to the w'k s'p manual there should be a drain tap on the left hand bottom end of the rad, as you face the engine, no such luck on mine! There is no drain point on the block either.

I did the job with the car parked on the drive, so with only limited access to underneath. The old coolant looked like long life stuff of some variety [ it was red] and these cars should run on IAT or Inorganic Acid Technology.

This isn't a simple hours job for the afternoon in the expectation of using the car that evening

There is no way of doing this job while leaving the radiator in situ, due to a lack of a drain tap.

I took the rad out and all the brackets holding the air cleaner housing and rubber induction tract out. Still managed to spill a fair amount of coolant over the fan motor, but that was unavoidable with out removing the fan assay from the rad first and I chose not to risk chewing up the 6mm screw heads buried at the bottom of the rad.

On inspection my front subframe was pretty rusty, probably due to a few[?] coolant flushes washing over it in the past. I took the opportunity to carry out some rust removal, preservation and paint as these front subframes are NLA.

As suggested I flushed the water inlet to the head, the rad and removed the heater bypass hose that runs to the top of the cyl' head [ just about the only convenient hose on the whole system] to flush the heater assy'.

I had been warned at several previous meets regarding the perils of leaving trapped air in the thermostat pipe running around the engine from the bottom hose. This means the thermostat never opens, because the water doesn't reach it.

I initially refilled using a 55/50 ratio of Millers blue antifreeze to BS6580 [1992] to filtered drinking water. I added a quantity of Redline Water 'wetter' additive. This allows for the hose water still in the block.

I made an initial fill via the expansion bottle with the engine off. I then turned the engine over on the starter with the bleed screw right out taking great care not to drop it till fluid bubbled out. The system had taken approx' 2.8 litres at this point. I then took her for a run following 1234Dists advice for about three miles. On cooling I got a further approx' 1 litre in. It was then simply a matter of driving the car with the heater on full blast and plenty of rev's and the water pump does the rest. When all the air has been driven out of the system, then squeezing the top hose pushes coolant back into the expansion bottle!

A couple of tips that may help people in future.

There are no drain taps evident on any production models I've seen

Setting the heater to hot and removing the coolant cap and the bottom radiator hose gets rid of as much coolant as is it easy to do.

Remove the bleed screw BEFORE starting to fill reasonably slowly.

Replace the bleed screw when bubble free coolant comes out of the hole

Then top up as required.

If the jiggle valve in the manifold is stuck you may still get an airlock - these are often removed when the manifold is removed for this reason.