Hi I replaced my old heat exchanger and refilled the manifold with coolent like the manual called for 1 inch lower than fill port. Left the cover off the manifold went to run it. It over heated. Shut down opened the peacock like the manual called brought the engine up to 2800 to 3000 RPM's nothing the engine temperature kept going up. I shut it down tried this 3 time still nothing. I've read about burbing the engine to get the air out , but don't completely understand the process as my engine does not have the hot water heater coming off the engine only a electric one and it has the thermostat bypass hose from pump to thermostat. Any help would be greatly appreciated
Chris,
I used to have a 1987 Catalina 30 with an M25XP engine. I, too, experienced the very issue you described. Here is the solution to it, which I have posted in the past to the Catalina 30 forum. I think it will very likely solve your problem.
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Take off the 3/8” hose at the bottom of the thermostat housing. (This is the hose that goes to the water heater.) You then refill the system through this hose. The best way is to get one of those hand pumps like this:
http://www.westmarine.com/buy/jabsco--manually-operated-hand-pump--7422371
You can probably find an even cheaper one of these at Harbor Freight that might do the job for you.
Pump the coolant through the system until it fills up the manifold and starts coming out the hose nipple at the bottom of the thermostat housing, i.e., the nipple from which you just removed the hose. You might want to position a cup or something to catch the overflow. Then remove the 3/8” hose from the hand pump and reconnect it to the thermostat housing. You should not have any airlock at this point.
If you don’t have a pump you can accomplish the job by raising the 3/8” hose as high as possible and filling it through a funnel, letting gravity do the work. I was able to do it successfully using this method but it was very slow, whereas the hand pump will do it lickety split.
I highly recommend this method as sometimes it can be quite an ordeal getting a stubborn airlock out of the system.