Need advice regarding changing coolant

[tmontague]

Simplest and very effective way of doing it would be as follows:

- remove rad cap (make sure its not hot)
- loosen drain petcock on bottom of rad
- allow coolant to drain out (it will take a while)
- remove overflow tank hose from filler neck and push it down in the engine bay into a drain pan, it will start draining out once the hose is low enough
- reconnect overflow tank hose and close petcock
- refill with toyota long life coolant until fluid is at the top of the filler neck
- then start squeezing upper and lower rad hoses a few times to get more air out
- start the car and let it run for a 1 min.
- add coolant so that the filler neck is full and re install rad cap
- re fill overflow tank an inch or 2 above the hot level (overfill it)
- go for a 30 min drive so that the coolant get up to temp for at least 10 mins.
- recheck you overflow tank level and top up to "hot" level as needed.
- over the next week check the level in the overflow every day or two.

I've always drained my coolant this way on my yaris and I've done this at least 6 times in the past couple years and have always had great results and it wastes less time trying to wait for the thermostat to open which really won't happen unless your ambient temps are hot enough.