radiator replacement on a 99 honda CRV LX

[stuart]

hello people. here are a few questions I need to ask. I am about to install a new radiator on my cousins ’99 Honda CRV LX. I need to know if there is a cooling system air bleeder valve on this motor and where is it located, can the radiator come out with the electric fans still bolted to it or do they have to be removed before the radiator is taken out.

I am a retired auto Tec, but I’ve never had the “pleasure” to do this on a vehicle any newer than a 1970’s vehicle, (old school Tec here), you know, or might remember spark plugs, points, condensers, carburetors, virtually anything pre-electronic ignition, pre-fuel injection and pre-computerized vehicles lol. you give me a vehicle that’s between 1950 and 1974 and I can rebuild it from bumper to bumper, but these new cars now a days are a whole other world for me. im doing this as a favor for him and I don’t want to do anything wrong that will create any engine problems for him.

thanks,

stuart, a.k.a. roadwanderer2

Topic

[Michael Sackstein]

there is a bleeder valve on most hondas I believe it’s towards the passenger side over by the headlight. the fans get removed and swapped over to the new radiator after you take it out. just as a tip I might also advise replacing the thermostat, hoses, hose clamps & radiator cap. if you’re on a budget then you can probably just get by with the upper radiator hose since that one tends to fail more than the lower one does. now it’s not absolutely necessary that you replace everything that’s in there but it’s also not a bad idea as it will reduce the chances of anything else going bad in the near future. also while you’re in there it’s a good time to back flush the engine block out with water. that’s very easy to do. you said you were a retired mechanic so it’s really not that much different than any other car. good luck and keep us posted.

[Russell Sawyer]

Bleeding the coolant is best done by using a spill free funnel. Check out this video by ETCG.

[video width=550 height=309 type=youtube]zUpXgAJ1gjU[/video]

Also, here is a video that might help. This isn’t a CRV but it will be close to what you will need to do.

[video width=550 height=309 type=youtube]wR7FENmEbrE[/video]

[stuart]

hi music:

thanks very much for the info and including the rest of what might need to be replaced. when I get the vehicle to my home, I’ll look at everything and ask my cousin what if anything else he wants to replace. once its finished, I’ll post my findings and let y’all know what I find and replaced.

thanks again,

Stuart, a.k.a. roadwanderer2.

[Michael Sackstein]

no problem. on another note, I just got a 2014 CR-V EX last month, leasing it for now and may buy it off lease afterwards depending on how it holds up. they seem like pretty simple vehicles to work on, needless to say you shouldn’t have any problem doing the radiator on that car. Stay dirty and good luck.

[EricTheCarGuy]

I don’t believe that engine has a bleeder valve. It’s not necessary to purge the system however. Bleeder valves are normally there to make filling the system easier. Follow the procedure in the video posted above to purge the air after the work is done. Looks like someone already posted the videos I have on those processes. They cover the basics of what you’ll run into.

Good luck and stop back if you have any issues.

[stuart]

thanks music AND Eric.

btw, I did some research on the 99 CRV and there are 2 important recalls on the 98-99, both have to do with the electrical system. one I found on carcomplaints.com,(#02V120000) and the other one I found on “recalls & problems-motor trend magazine”,(recall id#1728) and also one on safecar.gov NHTSA CAMPAIGN ID NUMBER 99V282000. you might want to check them out, and if you DO have a 98 or a 99 CRV, I would suggest you contact your local Honda dealer and have the recalls fixed.

music, I would hold off on getting another CRV until you find out if there’s any complaints and run a check to see if there’s any recalls on them.

guys, I know its not a car, but this is a pic of my latest “work in progress”……its a 1983 Honda GL1100 Goldwing aspencade with just under 100,000 miles on her. just so you know I can still “turn a wrench” lol.

Stuart, a.k.a. roadwanderer2.

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[stuart]

hey guys:

well, the radiator switch out went ok with the exception of 3 “minor” things. 1st, someone forgot to mention the a/c pipe that runs from the compressor on the bottom left side front of the engine across the top of the radiator to the condenser has to be pushed back towards the motor. this pipe makes removing the radiator almost impossible without bending the pipe back towards the motor about an inch and a half without breaking it off so the radiator AND fans can be removed as one unit. 2nd, angle needle nose pliers makes removing the hose and transmission hose clamps much easer than using a regular pair of pliers. 3rd, after putting the new radiator back into the vehicle,(don’t forget, the a/c pipe is still in the way), the radiator cap wouldn’t fit. we went and bought a NEW cap for it, it still didn’t fit. it was too tight to get onto the filler neck. you could see where the cap was scraping the plastic off the lip of the filler neck. what I had to do was take an exacto knife and shave the edges of the filler neck down to make the cap fit flush down onto the filler neck and be able to turn it tight.

so far, so good, the heater and defroster blows hot, I purged the air out of the radiator by letting the motor run for about 20 minutes and squeezing the lower hose about a half a dozen times until nothing but antifreeze came out of the top of the radiator. the temp gauge moved about half way up to hot, but, unless this vehicle has a very high heat thermostat, the only time the electric fans came on that I noticed is when the vehicles a/c was turned on. my question now is, how high does the temp have to be before the cooling fans start working?

Stuart.

[KZ 259]

the radiator fans should start running at once the engine has reached operating temp, usually when the temp needle is near the middle, which is ~200 degree F

[stuart]

hi KZ:

thanks, that’s what I needed to know. right now, im about to look for my cousin on his Facebook page and ask him if everything is good and working properly. I’ll let y’all know when I find out.

Stuart.

[stuart]

‘morning guys:

well, I spoke to my cousin and everything is working,(thank god), I had my doubts for a while because the cooling fans weren’t turning on, but he told me its running perfectly.

now its time for my next project. r/r the f&r shock/struts assemblies on my wife’s 99 Camry. but first im gonna take a ride down to Chattanooga today on my bike to a place called “ET AIRBRUSH” to check into having the bike completely repainted including 2 helmets, then start working on the wife’s Camry when I get back home. gonna go with everything as one piece units, struts, towers and springs. the car has almost 133.000 miles on it and they’ve never been changed and the front of the car is starting to sag down a little, so I think the strut springs have just about had it, plus it makes it easer to change everything out, oh yeah, also have to check the rear brake shoes too, they are also the originals lol. had to have a new water pump put in about 5,000 miles ago, also replaced the timing belt and all the hoses while he was at it. the garage mechanic showed me the old belt, it fell apart while he was taking the water pump off and pieces of it was laying on the floor of his garage, good thing that was done at the same time.

well, that’s about all for now. I’ll keep ya’s posted.

Stuart, a.k.a. roadwanderer2.

[stuart]

well, I spoke to my cousin this morning and everything is working perfectly. no leaks, no overheating and both fans turn on when the temp gauge gets just about half way up. one job done, and who knows, this might bring me some more business from family, though the only thing I dread from working on family members vehicles, if something should go wrong, I’ll never hear the end of it lol.

Stuart.

[george gonzalez]

The bleed point is always at the uppermost point in the cooling system. In many cars this is the radiator cap, but if the radiator is mounted low then it’s often at the highest point of the top radiator hose at the engine, where the thermostat usually sits.

It’s generally easier to pull the radiator with the fans attached. Complications include times when they mount accessory relays onto the top of the radiator, or hide an AC clutch wire connector halfway down the side of the radiator. Also you might have transmission cooling hoses to detach. A good idea to have some large and tiny worm-gear hose clamps around to replace the old cheap bent-wire clamps.

Don’t lose the bottom radiator donut mounts, they’re hard to find.

On a ’99 the radiator mounting bolts may be rusted 10mm jobbies and the heads may break off. So better be prepared to drill them out and retap the holes.

Otherwise it’s pretty foolproof, I’ve done it a few times and never had any major problem, besides the ones noted above.

[stuart]

hey grg:

well, it was a pretty straight forward job, but like I said, after watching the vids of how to remove it, no were was it shown to have that a/c pipe running across the top of the radiator. disconnecting the electrical fan relay clips were no problem at all. they came apart very easy, and none of the 10mm bolts were rusted. everything came out ok, with two exceptions. there’s a wire that’s attached to the top of the a/c compressor and goes to one of the electrical connectors, that one wire somehow came out of the harness. thankfully it was an easy thing to put back into the correct connector, and the new radiator cap was too tight to get onto the new radiator. I had to use an exacto knife to shave the top of the filler opening to make it a tad thinner to get the radiator cap to press down and turn tight. oh, one other thing, the brass trans lines that came on the new radiator didn’t fit right so I had to take the old ones off the old radiator and put them onto the new one so the rubber hoses wouldn’t kink when the radiator was put back in and the hoses reconnected to the metal trans lines. the right side brass trans line on the new radiator had too much of a bend to it so the hose kinked almost to the point of being totally crimped shut when I put the hose back onto the new radiator, so changing them out was the best way to go. other than that and the a/c tube, I really didn’t have any problems. I spoke to my cousin late last night and he told me everything is working as it should. another job well done.

Stuart.

[george gonzalez]

Yep, I had exactly those same two problems. I could not get the AC clutch connector apart so the wire pulled out of the connector. I was able to glue it back into place.

Like you the radiator cap didn’t quite fit, and the store had no larger caps. I ended up gently opening up the radiator cap about 1mm wider and then it fit.

On my car the AC hose did not get in the way after I unscrewed a support bracket and turned the bracket up and out of the way.

[stuart]

hey grg, I got lucky with the a/c clutch connector wire, I was able to slip it back into the connector and it stayed there. I to removed the a/c hose bracket and turned it up, the bracket moved but the hose didn’t until I used some “force” to bend it back towards the motor. I tried the same thing to the radiator cap by spreading the 2 metal pieces, but they didn’t move outward far enough, that’s when I used my exacto knife and very carefully shaved the filler neck down just enough to push the cap down and turn it tight. you could actually see where it was starting to cut thru the plastic to make it fit.

Stuart.

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