Unfortunately, this will not give you a complete change. A large amount of the old coolant would definitely be replaced with new coolant, however, you will need to verify afterward the freeze point and I would adjust the coolant change interval by about 25%. Really, I would just find out the rough price of having the dealership do it vs. myself and then decide if the percentage difference is really worth the effort.

 

And not draining the radiator leaves whatever sediment is there to continue to circulate through the system.

 

Welcome to the group. While you would end up replacing a good portion of coolant that way, even if you drained and refilled the recovery tank a dozen times, you would never get it all. And, as Sandstone said, you'd still be leaving any accumulated gunk in the bottom of the radiator. Since it only takes about 15 minutes to remove the front bumper cover, you wouldn't be saving much in the way of time anyway, so it's best to just do it properly.

 

Thanks to all. Dealer wants $175 plus antifreeze at their price. I'll just go for it and remove the bumper. Tried to avoid it as I have a bumper push bull bar I would have to take off.

 

Because of today's high quality coolants, many people think that just doing a radiator drain and fill (about 1/2 the total capacity +/-) every few years is fine. The other option is a complete system exchange that involves a lot more time and work.

Removing the bumper and using the radiator draincock essentially is the first method. You would have to do multiple drain and fills with distilled water to approach a complete system change.

I wonder if this would achieve the radiator drain and fill easier: remove the upper radiator hose at the radiator and let the hose fluid drain out. Insert a vinyl hose into the upper radiator outlet and snake it down the radiator side to the bottom. Siphon all the radiator fluid out the hose and also drain the overflow tank. Replace with 50/50 coolant and be done.

This would eliminate bumper removal and achieve the same 1/2 coolant change. The downside might be the difficulty of removing the upper hose, possibly breaking the plastic tank outlet. I might give this a shot in a few weeks. It would have to be super easy to consider this vs. the bumper removal.

Pat radiator: