How to Drain and Refill Coolant 2005-16 Toyota RAV4

What's up guys? I'm Andy, from 1A Auto. In this video, I'm going to show you how to drain and fill the cooling system on this 2010 Toyota Rav4. If you need parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description and head over to 1aauto.com.

From underneath the vehicle we need to remove this panel right here. This one was pretty much falling off, there really wasn't much holding it on, but you should have some push pins right here, right here, right here, right here and over there. And this one didn't have any of these fasteners, but there's some type of screws that go there. You want to pull those off and then slide this down. Slide it out. Get that out of your way. All right, I want to loosen up the drain on the bottom of the radiator right here. It's below the radiator hose. Right there, loosen that up.

Make sure you have a drain bucket underneath. And actually it's pretty tight, so I'm going to take some pliers. And be careful with this because if it breaks, then you're going to have to replace the radiator. If it doesn't move with pliers easily, then don't even bother with it. Just drain it with the hose or something else. And here we go. It's going to let that drain slowly. Now I'm going to take the cap off, this is going to make it drain a little bit faster. A little bit faster.

Make sure that coolant drain is closed all the way. Just grab it and just give it a twist. You can try loosening it and just snug it up. You don't want to tighten it too tight, just finger tight and then maybe just a little bit more. That's good. If you have this panel, just line this up, right like that. Just position that there. If you have the screws or bolts that go in there, put those back in and any of the push pins to go in there, there. There's a couple other spots there and there, right there and there.

All right. Now, we're going to take this coolant funnel and for this particular vehicle I don't need any adapters, I can just put this coolant funnel here. This funnel comes with different adapters. We actually sell this at 1aauto.com if you want one. And we're going to take the appropriate coolant. You're going to want to check the owner's manual and make sure you use the right cone for the vehicle.

And I'll fill it up. And as you fill this up, it may take a little while, so you might find that the reservoir completely fills up with coolant and then just let the vehicle sit for a little while. It's going to have to bleed itself into the engine. There may be some air pockets, so just be patient and fill it up and let it bleed. As you can see that it's about two minutes later and it drained back down, just keep doing that.

Fill it up, let it sit for a minute and watch it drain. Once you've noticed that the level stays at one level for a little while, what you can do is go over to the radiator hose and give it a squeeze, see if you can get any air bubbles out of it. See if we can get it to bleed a little bit more. It looks pretty good right there.

Now what you're going to want to do is start the vehicle, let it run, put the heat on low speed and monitor the coolant temperature. Make sure the coolant temperature does not get over 210 degrees or into the red zone. And as long as you feel heat, it should be good. And then you're going to shut the vehicle off for a little while and then once it cools down, recheck your level and adjust accordingly. Take the funnel out, take the cap, put the cap back on. Lock in place.

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