It's going to come out green forever unless you remove the block drain from the right side of the engine.

You run a garden hose to the small hose at the rear of the head and flush the block out though the block drain and lower radiator hose. 10 minutes and you're done.

Finished
 

I tried as hard as I could but I couldn't get the block drain plug to budge, so instead I loosened the thermostat and undid the hose that comes out from the back of the engine to the heater core, and flushed it out that way.

I am finally done.


What I have learned:
Changing the thermostat brought my engine temp from an avg of 105 to an avg of 96~ish. Cost me $23.

Flushing the coolant brought my engine temp down by maybe 1 degree, and cost me... ohhh lets see $15 for coolant, $10 for citric acid, $3 degreaser, $45 water pump, $8 in wrenches, and two weeks of my life.



Thank you people on this forum as you all greatly mitigated this experience for me.

Bolt re-use.
 

Unless the bolts that hold the water pump to the housing are totally buggered I re-use them. I do, however, take the time to clean them thoroughly with a wire brush, them lap them in w/a tiny bit of Lubro Moly copper anti-seize. Steel bolts in aluminum holes = bimetallic corrosion, especially with weak coolant.

Taking an extra five min. to clean things up a little will save (you??) an hour next time around. Changing the water pump housing because of frozen/broken bolts is NO picnic.

Putting a drift on the head of the bolts and whacking each a few times with a small hammer before trying to loosen won't hurt anything, either. Same holds true for the bolts on the thermostat housing. At least with those, you can get at the the ends of the bolts with lube. Never understood what people were trying to accomplish by spraying the HEADS of bolts w/penetrating oil??

Jay.

Bad idea.
 

Because of the constant thermal expansion and cooling the bolts go through a lot of abuse and become quite weak. I've broken off 3 in the housing...spend the $2 and get new bolts and save the headache--as you said "Changing the water pump housing because of frozen/broken bolts is NO picnic.".

Spraying the bolts with penetrating oil will loosen them up. The oil works its way behind the heads to where it is seized and loosen up. A couple light taps with a hammer helps work the fluid into where the threads are.

Can anybody post a pic of their ground down wrenches for this job. I would love to see the finished product. What are these, 10mm from what I remember?