When it comes to your car’s functionality, nothing helps it run smoothly like your vehicle’s coolant system. By regulating your car’s engine, this system helps ensure that problems like overheating and freezing don’t occur. The way it works is by pumping coolant through the engine and into the radiator, and then back into the coolant reservoir. One of the most overlooked pieces of this system is the coolant bleeder housing, which is sometimes called the coolant air bleed housing. The reason for this piece is simple, but in order to understand it, we must first understand what makes up your coolant, and what happens when you change it.
Coolant Basics
For a long time, your car would be cooled by water, pumped from a reservoir to the engine to keep it from overheating. However, doing this with ordinary water presented problems. Namely, the fact that water both boils at around the temperature that the car operates and the fact that water freezes. In hot or cold environments, water would cause more problems than it would solve.
Thus, after some time, a chemical mixture called antifreeze was developed that could withstand the cold temperatures, as well as increase the boiling point of water. To further combat the boiling issue, cooling systems were then designed to be pressurized, thus further increasing the boiling point. Nowadays, most car coolant is made of a mixture of about half water, half antifreeze.
Coolant Bleeder Housing
Even though your car’s cooling system is designed to recycle the coolant through the radiator and back to the reservoir, coolant still wears down and becomes less effective over time. Thus, it needs to be replaced from time to time. When this happens, however, air can get into this highly sensitive system. Because it is pressurized, excess air can be a huge problem. That is where the coolant bleeder housing comes in.
To minimize the effects of air in the system, the coolant bleeder housing is a small device at the top of the engine that is used to remove excess air. It is a simple valve that is opened after the coolant has been changed, and while the car is running. The housing is designed to let only air out, and not coolant. After running for a little while, the excess air should be eliminated.
Most auto shops are aware of this device, and will utilize it once the coolant has been changed. If you wish to do so yourself, though, contact an auto parts store to find out exactly where and how to open the coolant bleeder housing, as it is in different locations on different vehicles.
