Toyota Trucks: How do I purge the air from the cooling system?

Hopefully, I am wrong. However, I'll keep it short and simple. Get a test kit
to check for exhaust gases in the coolant system. Unless you just recently did
some work on your truck where you could have gotten a lot of air in the system,
I don't think that is the problem. I'm betting you have a headgasket going bad.
Autozone or a similar auto parts store should be able to provide you with a
kit. Don't wait too long. The air in the coolant and the funky idle (likely the
result of crossover from one cylinder to another) seem to be the relatively
early signs of headgasket failure which the 22r series motors are notorious
for. If it goes too long, you could wind up seriously overheating the motor
causing damage to the head and oil sealing rings.

Chris

Thanks for your response. Actually I just had the motor rebuilt and have only put 200 miles on it. So I don't think I have a blown head gasket. The guy who rebuilt said he can get the air out but, I was wanting to do it myself I just didn't know how.

Ok. It could just be airlocked then. You can even just pull the a coolant hose
at the highest point, usually somewhere around the heater in the engine
compartment and pour coolant down it or use a vacuum set up.
Hopefully, that is all it is, but I think generally in an airlocked motor the
motor will overheat usually pretty quickly after assembly and not affect the
idle. Ask him if he used new headbolts or if he reused the old ones. I believe
the old bolts are torque to yeild bolts and if reused them the head probably
didn't get torqued properly and there already is a problem with the headgasket.
It is also possible the headgasket was not correctly installed or received some
damage during the install.
Did you have the head retorqued after a break in period? Some headgaskets take
as many as 3 times until the head is properly torqued. One during first
assembly, one after having been warmed up and one later on after the truck has
a a couple hundred miles on it.
I hope you are right about there just being air in the system, but this sounds
really familiar. Fingers crossed.

fivestarJ wrote:
 


Let it idle up and down, as long as its setting level, it will purge
itself of the air. Unless you have a headgasket leak which is injecting
air into the cooling system.