Today at Atelier Kaz - ex-Honda R&D, F1, Indy/CART engineer

After reconditioned the surface of the housing, new thermostat was installed.

All the hoses in the engine bay replaced….
What a short word for the time consuming several hours task….

New header tank and the cap.
There are several aftermarket ones available but personally, I would stay with the OEM one from the point of internal air separator design.

Over the years, the OEM tank will change its colour and may crack.
If you can’t check your coolant level by looking at the side of the tank, it’s time to replace it.

If you have removed your engine cover, best to apply some sort of protection to the tank (such as Type-R jacket) or install good quality window film from the well known manufactures to the hatch glass.

Cleaning the coolant pipes under the floor.

Unlike the ordinary production cars, the hot coolant enters from the bottom side of the radiator.
This is where the radiator will most likely to start leaking once it gets to a certain age/mileage.
OEM radiator is a consumable.

Removed all of the hoses at the front compartment.
While waiting for the new parts to arrive, decided to take a look at the seized bleeder plug.

What a terrible state of the pipe and bleeder.
Looked like it’s been leaking for many years.

The bleeder itself was completely blocked and also there were lots of heavy corrosion inside the bleeder neck suggesting air pocket inside the pipe.

This made the situation even worse and caused the plug to seize even further.


Getting the air out of the heater core area is quite difficult even if you followed the procedure in the workshop manual.
Small amount of air could stay there forever resulting in the bleeder plug seizure.

I always bleed the air one more time at this bleeder plug after the test driving session.



Won’t be able to finish the front compartment until the arrival of the new parts so soon, it’s time to work on the most time consuming task of replacing the two hoses at the oil cooler.


Kaz