Rusty coolant and clogged bleeder bolt…

[J]

So I did a coolant change today for an 01 Altima because the overflow reservoir had brown coolant in it with particles of rust and the cap was covered in rust.

1. I think the cap is what started the rust since it was badly rusted. When I drained the coolant it was iced tea brown and had bits of rust in it. The new coolant that went in (for comparison) was like lemon lime gatorade. I didn’t drain from the block so some of the old rusty coolant mixed with the new. My question is how resilient would the water pump and cooling system be to rusty coolant? This is probably hard to answer so an estimate if anyone could offer would be all I would be looking for. I’m just trying to tell if I need to budget for a water pump replacement.

2. The Nissan service manual said to open the bleeder bolt when filling and let ir run out, standard bleeder bolt stuff. My problem was when I opened the bleeder bolt and filled the radiator to the top nothing came out. When I looked inside it looked like a solid passage (I saw no holes anywhere). I’m assuming the bleeder was clogged. Has anyone seen this? The bleeder bolt is just a regular bolt and the coolant is supposed to come out of the hole it’s threaded into but the hole looks like a dead end. I picked at it with a pick and got nowhere.

3. I did bleed the system repeatedly the usual way, by that I mean using a spill-free funnel, warm it up until cooling fans run three times and squeezing the hoses to push air out. The lower radiator hose got nice and toasty and I feel like all the air is out. But I’m kind of worried because I didn’t get to use the bleeder bolt and the radiator and hoses sits quite a bit lower than the engine and bleeder. Anyone think I should be worried or is the bleeder optional as long as you bleed another way?

Topic

[college man]

Bleeder is optional. no worries.

[Author]

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