Coolant Color and purity

I syphoned out a little bit of coolant out of my new (to me) 2012 987 Cayman to see how it looked. It was pink with a yellow hue? Is it common for Porsche pink (G40) coolant to have a little yellow hue, or should it be pure pink? I am guessing that it is mixed with something else (hopefully compatible). The fluid had no visible impurities and no notable thickening. Guessing I will be adding a coolant flush to the rest of my catch-up maintenance.

It should be pink. If you do a flush, I recommend the vacuum method. I just recently did mine and it went very smoothly.

I once bought a gallon of compatible coolant that was orange. That could alter the color. Mine still looked pink after I added the orange but it was still mostly pink in the system. I think it was Zerex but not sure, its been a while.

Since it appears to be mixed, I will definitely flush and refill it. Yes, I will get a vacuum changing system after watching a few videos. Question, how much coolant is left when you volume it out. Since you are pulling from the top, I have to believe a good amount.

The vacuum tool is to fill the system. To drain you will need to open the drain plug and disconnect two radiator hoses underneath the car. This is a good video showing how.

Assuming you have an overnight to let it drain, do you need to pull the hoses, or is the drain lug the low point?

I also have a 987.2 cayman . When I did my coolant replacement quite a bit more coolant came out when the hoses were disconnected. That was after it stopped draining from the drain plug . Removing the hoses is not difficult. I followed the video and got it done with no issues. YMMV

I'm at the old man tipping point I guess. I could do the hoses, especially with a max jack. And the video was very instructive. However, I never replaced the last seized compressor, lack the space for a replacement too. I live near two very good indy's. I think I'm farming this one out, in fact the AOS journey I plan on making a thread about may be my last wrenching other than oil service and brake service, time to retire. (again)

I was right where you are at Spyderman 😉 Old and ready to retire from any vehicle maintenance requiring awkward body positions. Then I caved in and bought a 2-post for the barn, but really because my older brother needed to do SOMETHING for mental health and he said he was interested in building a spec Miata if he had a way to work on it. I lured him into using my barn as his "shop" and the strategy worked perfectly. He's so much healthier. Anyways, just for fun I threw the Porsche up on it to get a good look at it since it was my first Porsche . Once I discovered just how wonderful it is to address from underneath I postponed my retirement. It's still a buggar to get to things on top, but otherwise a fun car to tinker with. I'm gonna give it a go on the coolant exchange. I think a Porsche was something that I needed more than I realized?

Quite a bit 1/2 gallon, or quite a bit 2 gallons? Yep, just hate taking good hoses off when they are not being replaced. If they are stuck at all, it is way too easy to cut the inside and have a problem later.

I know exactly how you feel.. (I'm more than 7.5 decades old now..) There comes a time when the mind may want to do it, but the body is saying "Nope, not doing THAT..." so - I've spent more on my good independents the past few years or so. I'm a big believer in the vacuum "lift" fill system.. but a few caveats: 1 - You need a BIG compressor for this to work well. Your small pancake one isn't gonna hack it. It'll burn out before the thing pulls enough vacuum on the system to work. My independent now owns a vacuum lift system, I bought it as a gift for him, figuring the amount of labor charge I'd save by his using it was more than the cost of the thing at Habor Freight (the $70 model - actually quite decent quality.) Making a worker more efficient when you're paying them by the hour is always worth thinking about. 2 - Mix enough coolant/water in a 5-gallon pail before starting the job. That's the "lift" part of the thing, the system lifts the coolant out of the bucket and squirts it into the system filling it as the vacuum is released. You can't really start over without draining the entire system again if you run short halfway through. 3 - You do want to get as much coolant out as possible, although in my case we didn't drain the radiators or heater core intentionally (they probably drained just due to gravity, and us not doing anything to keep them from draining.) The vacuum collapses the hoses a bit - and that's part of what sucks the new coolant into the system. We were pre-emptively replacing the water pump (60,000 miles, hadn't failed, but.. we were in the area..) and that's a fairly low spot in the 2.9L cooling system. When we were done, we topped off the coolant tank in the engine compartment, then filled the filler tube to where it was marked, and that was it. I've checked it a number of times since then - nothing at all has changed. Haven't had to add a drop to the system. Depending on what you're doing - if you're removing any of the hoses with metal ends (that lock into fittings with a wire bale) - buy new O rings for them before starting the job. Porsche actually sells the O rings I believe. The old ones are likely to be compressed a bit and may not seal as well as you'd like. Install the new ones after rubbing some silicone grease into the rubber, leaving a very thin smear of grease on the O ring. If you do that - they'll last about forever (and go together easily.) The hoses seem to last forever - leaks are typically from the O ring.

Those German clip on hoses (I first encountered on an Audi ) are wonderful. Even fairly old, they don't seem to want to leak. From the videos I have seen the connections most people open are traditional clamps. (At least they are not those annoying MB "Click-Clamps") What happened to the good old days when a petcock on the radiator and plug on the engine drained the whole system?

Snakebitten, I did it in reverse! We had a drive on rack an armed rack, and a drive through bay with overheads on each end to drop dead cars inside, unhook and keep going. Here's what I remember about the compressor. It was all of five feet to six feet high, had a robust almost engine looking electric motor and at nights end when it needed to be drained, we should have all had hearing protection it was loud. Everything was pneumatic so we needed it. Anyhow I'd love even a max jack but just doesn't make sense at my age. Depending on the job and my mood I'll probably end up like Silvio Dante' "just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in"... My father's friend, last one to go, a multi millionaire, wrenched from his wheelchair underneath customer cars, to those old guys it was like a smoking habit; maybe me too.

Well, I have a175 PSI pancake compressor and a 60 gallon 180 PSI 15 CFM compressor, so I think I am ok in that category. Guess I will be breaking a hose connection somewhere, however if 75+% can be drained from the plug , and since I know the capacity, I can fill with water drive and re-drain and just use that quantity of water in calculating how much G40 it needs. Coolant is not rocket science, but it is molecular chemistry and engineering.

I did not pull the hoses on the front radiators, but I did disconnect the two large lines leading running up the tunnel that go to/from the them. I also pulled the heater core lines. I think your "2 gallons" is a good guess from the various hoses (after the drain plug had been pulled for awhile). I mixed up 6 gallons (3 DI water, 3 G40) and that was plenty for the refill. Unfortunately that meant two mixing vessels as 6 gallons > 5 (gallon bucket). The Henn couplers on the two large lines were very easy to deal with. Yes, Porsche sells the o-rings separately. I can look up the part numbers if you need them.

6 gallon capacity. If: 2 gallons remain, (4 gallons drained) (Assuming I can get 4 gallons out of the drain plug ) 4 gallons water added. (New mixture is 66% clean, 33% old coolant) Drain 4 gallons (2 gallons remain) Add 3 gallons G40 and 1 gallon Water. New mix is 3 gallons new G40, 2 1/3 gallon new water, 2/3 gallon old mixture. 89% new, 11% old. I am happy with that since although it looks mixed, it looked clean and clear.

When I replaced the coolant in my 987.2 .... 2 gallons was drained when I removed the drain plug 2 gallons was drained when I disconnected the two large supply/return hoses 1/2 gallon was drained by disconnecting the 3 small rubber hoses at the thermostat housing Total drained = approx 4.5 gallons. Note that I also used low-pressure compressed air to blow into the supply side radiator hose, as well as the supply side heat exchanger hose, to flush out as much coolant as possible. According to the vehicle specs, the full capacity is approximately 6.2 gallons. After I drained as much as I could get out (4.5 gallons), I used a vacuum tool to refill the system, and replace the 4.5 gallons. My pancake compressor worked fine with the "OEM Tols AIRVAC Cooling System refiller" that I purchased for $85 from Amazon. Below are some photos from when I did mine. Good luck with your project!