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Old 03-19-2023, 10:40 PM
c-bass c-bass is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Canada
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c-bass is on a distinguished road
A week or so after all that deer excitement the temperatures dipped significantly and I was about 30 min into an hour long trip when I realized my feet were really cold the windows were fogging up a little bit and the HVAC fan was blowing about 3/4 of the way up.

Hmm...must be because of the cold right? So I turned the heat up and kept driving.

Another 10 minutes goes by and I don't feel any change. I waved my hand in front of the vent but didn't feel any immediate warmth like I normally would. Hmmm...

So I crank the heat to the max temp and there's still not a noticeable change in temp. Hmmm....

I'm thinking heater core or whatever else is more expensive or difficult to deal with, because why not right?

I get to my destination and after letting the car cool down a bit (which didn't take long in those temperatures) I checked the fluid level in the expansion tank.

Well guess what? Empty!

Now you can scroll back a few pages and clearly see that one of the first things I did was put in a new expansion tank. That's what I did because I was SURE that I put a new one in...right?? Maybe?? I know it's been a while but that did happen right??

Wait...I've been driving the whole time with no coolant??

How much, or lack of, coolant are we talking about??

Why didn't the low coolant light come on??

I didn't find the movie Groundhog Day particularly funny, more frustrating to watch, and so is this!

I only had an emergency bottle of the green coolant so I topped up with that just to get an idea of how empty it was. It was half a gallon low

Not too far into the way home and we started getting heat. Proper heat too not some half ass warm. HEAT!

For the next couple days I monitored the coolant level and it was in fact going down little by little but I couldn't see any noticeable leak.

A few days later when it warmed up I washed everything down and played the find the coolant leak game hoping it wouldn't turn into the new head gasket game.

I would drive around running errands, grocery shopping whatever and pop the hood when I parked staring intently into the engine compartment like a cat waiting for a mouse to pop out from under a door and eventually was rewarded with the faintest trace of coolant around the top seam. Ain't that a bitch!

Luckily I had another brand spanking new Behr (Made in China) expansion tank and cap.

So once again, here I go doing a coolant flush. It took 7 gallons of distilled water to rinse out the blue and green mix and then I filled it back up with some premium blue stuff.

Here's something new I learned which left me incredibly confused.

As I was swapping out the expansion tank I coulnd't for the life of me find the pigtail for the coolant level sensor. (Some of you might be giggling to yourselves already) I know for a FACT that in the Wife's X there is a low coolant light, which would lead me to believe a pigtail to the sensor right?? WRONG!

After doing a little googling I come to find out that vehicles with the high cluster have a low coolant light but the ones with the low cluster don't? WHAT??

Someone please explain to me...HOW/WHY IS THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO??? Why would there be no way to know if the coolant is low?? ON A BMW?!?!?!?! HOW DID THAT MAKE ANY SENSE TO ANYONE?!?!??!?!

So yeah...I learned that...but also found something interesting and much more useful.

I had left the cap off the expansion tank as I went to turn on the heater control in the highest heat and lowest fan position. As soon as I turned the key in to the ACC position coolant started pissing out from the front.

I quickly realized it was because the AUX water pump was cycling water. Something my pile of e46s don't have.

Hmmm...a quick google search came up with nothing but hear me out people...

Why couldn't I use the AUX pump to cycle water through the coolant system and purging air instead of only doing the standard bleeding procedure that I was used to? Well let's give it a try. I briefly owned an N52 engined vehicle that used the electric water pump to bleed itself so this shouldn't be much different right?

A few tries and some wasted coolant later I seemed to have a properly bled cooling system via the electric AUX pump.

I don't think I'm that clever so did I just not search with the right keywords or did I stumble across a cheat code to bleed an M54 in an E53?

So, brand new expansion tank and cap, filled back up with coolant and off we go.

Place your bets people. Do we find another leak? Yes or no?
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