RonnieLS1

Out of curiosity, how many people on here have not bled their supercharger cooling circuit whether their car is modified or not? To give an example I just bled a 2017 stock Z06. The guy road races it in Homestead. He said after the 1st few laps the car would start to pull timing and he wasn't going as fast as he should. He brought it to me, and it took about 3/4 of a quart of coolant after the bleeding process. He had so much air in the system. Not only was there an 1" of air in the overflow tank, but there was also a ton of air in the bricks. I honestly think this should be one of the 1st things people do before they start modifying their car. These cars come from the factory with a ton of air in the system. Mine needed 1/2 quart of coolant. Just my opinion. Anyway, the guy was super happy. He is going to let me know when he races again in Homestead to see how the car performs after the bleeding process. Anybody has any questions let me know. I'm an open book. Call my cell 954-325-7722.

Ronnie

Factoid

Wow, great info, Ronnie, thanks for sharing!

RonnieLS1

Anytime. Seems like more people are interested in doing pulley swaps. LOL.

9sec

main reason is that the best way to bleed the system is a cooler bleedewr but its costly new and many dont want to spend 600+ for something they may use twice. I was lucky found a used setup and bought that

NortonCO

Thanks, Ronnie. Do you use special processes or equipment to bleed the system? I ask because I haven't done mine yet, but neither do I have any special equipment to facilitate doing it. My other forced induction vehicles have what seem to be better-designed cooling systems that are less prone to air bubbles choking them.

Torque Obsessed

I'm one of the fools who didn't bleed theirs. Had 2" of air in the tank but didn't realize this meant the rest of the system was empty! The insides of the hoses were bone dry. I'm pretty sure that the entire cooling system was not functioning at all.

No check engine light, no warnings whatsoever. It's insane that the only way to detect this is to notice reduced engine power.

RonnieLS1

I use Jared's Cooler Bleeder. I bought one brand new off of a forum member a while back that sold his Corvette. In my opinion it's the only one that gets all the air out. When you are finished there should be 2 air pockets at the top of the tank the size of a quarter at most.

RonnieLS1

Did you get it resolved?

atljar

I agree Ronnie. Its one of the first things that should be done on these cars.

In a best case scenario, you may be down a little power. In the worst case, you can have significant power loss, lots of timing pulled, misfires etc. I have yet to see a car that didnt take a fair amount of additional coolant into the system. Without being full, the intercooler isnt efficiently working. I think it's often overlooked because its not a "cool" go fast part under the hood, but rather a process that's harder to justify, albeit the HP gains can easily rival and exceed many other mods.

-Jared

RonnieLS1

Totally agree with this. I have bled a 1/2 a dozen cars and they all took a lot of coolant. If there isn't enough coolant the pump cavitates and shuts down.

TJay74

If you ever make it out to OKC I would be interested in your time.

SladeX

Prior to the cooler bleeder a lot of older owners tried various ways to bleed. I was successful with the tilt the car 45 degrees on my already inclined driveway and made the fill tube the highest point which combined with a mityvac and cycling the intercooler pump on and off with sporadic vacuum building and releasingI was able to purge all but 2 quarter sized bubbles out of the system and maintain -29hg/in vacuum on a handpump. The process of doing all the above is really what the cooler bleeder does in a neat package (short of the 45 degree car tilt), but the stronger vacuum the cooler bleeder hits the system with is enough to really purge the air out.

Torque Obsessed

I only discovered the situation a week ago because I'm in the process of installing the LG cooling kit (dual intercoolers in the cheeks). Haven't put the car back together yet, but I'll make sure it's all full and working when I do. I bought a Cooler Bleeder and it just arrived today. I figure if I use it a few times it'll pay for itself vs paying a dealer to bleed the system, and I'll know it's done right, and I can do it again anytime I think it's needed without having to take the car to the dealer again.

There are very few things that freaked me out as much as disconnecting the lines from the OEM intercooler and having no fluid come out. I started thinking about how long I've been driving the car like that...

Vegas Vette

I have a Cords under hood ice tank with the tank installed it quite easy to bleed. I just jump the intercooler pump to run when I want it to, fill the tank and open the bleeder ports and its bleed in no time. There is a You Tube video with one of the techs explaining the process quite simple.

SladeX

The cordes tank is not the highest point in the system when installed. If air gets trapped in the intercooler bricks at the top of the supercharger, the intercooler pump alone is not strong enough to displace that air trapped there. A strong applied vacuum is needed to forcefully move that air in conjunction with the intercooler pump.

Vegas Vette

There method seem to work just fine for them there builds make plenty of power.

atljar

Correct. Expansion tanks dont do anything to help bleed the systems. There are quite a few members here who have used The Cooler Bleeder with the Cordes tank adapters. Hopefully they will chime in to their experiences and how much air was still in the system.

Cordes Performance Racing

sure does.

rtv900

so does that mean 45 degrees with the nose of the car uphill?
or opposite?

SladeX

Nose facing uphill. Trying to do 45 degrees on a level surface will get the rear bumper to touch the pavement, not to mention it's really really hard to get that kind of angle lifting from the engine cradle with conventional jacks. The more angled your driveway, the less you need to actually jack up the car's front relative to the rear.