Beta JD3 coolant drain

[rovingrom]

I have a Beta JD3 (John Deere 3029) in a 2007 Colecraft narrowboat, with very low hours from new (280 hr).  It has a horizontal skin cooling tank running along the hull base plate (photo).  The is also a horizontal calorifier under the main bed, heated by the engine coolant as well as a Webasto.  I need to drain and refill the coolant as the previous owner has run the engine with zero anti-freeze / corrosion inhibitor and I am aware of risk cylinder bore liner pitting with this engine.  However I cannot find any coolant drain valve on the engine or skin tank, nor any bleed valves to prevent air locks on refilling.

Do I just remove coolant hoses, pump or blow through to remove coolant from the skin tank, then refill to the highest level, run the engine and top up through the engine header tank?  Or are there drain valves and bleed screws that I have missed?  The Beta Marine JD3 manual makes no mention of how to drain/refill the coolant, and the John Deere 3029 manuals relate to agricultural installations with cooling radiators.  Any help would be much appreciated!  

Please note: I don't need to know whether or not I should do this, what coolant to use, etc. - just HOW to do it?

[hider]

Remove with a wet vac after undoing hoses, suck on both tank connections.

Use the red antifreeze, its non-toxic and lasts longer than blue glycol. usually at least 25% antifreeze, 1:3 with water, mix it with water before pouring it in.

[MtB]

15 hours ago, hider said:

se the red antifreeze, its non-toxic and lasts longer than blue glycol.

 

Take care though, the colour coding is not a universally adopted or formal standard. Red cannot be relied upon not to be glycol according to a long and detailed thread here on the subject, about a year ago. 

 

 

[dmr]

Ideally get the correct anti-freeze with the anti-cavitation additive.

Can you break into the calorifier circuit to remove most of the water....and then fit a drain cock for future use?

After that its a case of removing one of those big hoses and then using some sort of pump to get as much water out of the skin tank as you can. To do a proper job you will likely also need to take a rubber end of the oil cooler.

 

Once refiled the system will probably mostly bleed itself after a bit of engine running (if you are lucky) but you must bleed the cylinder head as a bit of air always get stuck at the end, bleed screw just behind the air cleaner, can be difficult to remove for the first time..

 

.................Dave

[trackman]

I have a JD3 and have investigated this issue. Shan't go into why!

There's a drain plug on the left side of the block towards the rear, which on mine has been used for the calorifier return connection.

On the top rear of the head is a square plug, about 5/8", that is a bleed point.

I have isolator valves fitted on my engine calorifier connections, so I just remove the hose from the lower one, that was a drain point, and drain the block from there. The isolator makes it easy to control this.

Getting all the air out has been my problem. I found despite the bleed point, I needed to bleed the hose at the top front of the engine where the skin tank hose goes.

[rovingrom]

On 01/06/2019 at 11:18, dmr said:

Ideally get the correct anti-freeze with the anti-cavitation additive.

Can you break into the calorifier circuit to remove most of the water....and then fit a drain cock for future use?

After that its a case of removing one of those big hoses and then using some sort of pump to get as much water out of the skin tank as you can. To do a proper job you will likely also need to take a rubber end of the oil cooler.

 

Once refiled the system will probably mostly bleed itself after a bit of engine running (if you are lucky) but you must bleed the cylinder head as a bit of air always get stuck at the end, bleed screw just behind the air cleaner, can be difficult to remove for the first time..

 

.................Dave

Thanks for this Dave - great advice and exactly what I was looking for!  After spending some time checking the John Deere specifications and updates I found that there are 2 options to avoid the cavitation issue: one is to refill with a 50:50 solution of normal tap water and Comma Xstream G05 which has a special formulation to address this problem, the other is to use a special pre-diluted coolant produced by John Deere.  Being a skin tank my system contains 27 litres.  The Comma G05 normally costs around £30 for 5 litres but I found a supplier on eBay from whom I bought 3 x 5 litres for £60.

1 hour ago, trackman said:

I have a JD3 and have investigated this issue. Shan't go into why!

There's a drain plug on the left side of the block towards the rear, which on mine has been used for the calorifier return connection.

On the top rear of the head is a square plug, about 5/8", that is a bleed point.

I have isolator valves fitted on my engine calorifier connections, so I just remove the hose from the lower one, that was a drain point, and drain the block from there. The isolator makes it easy to control this.

Getting all the air out has been my problem. I found despite the bleed point, I needed to bleed the hose at the top front of the engine where the skin tank hose goes.

Great advice - many thanks for that!  I shall wait until an engineer friend is available and work on this together - clearly it's not going top be a 20 minute job if I want to fit isolater valves to aid draining in future.  

[rovingrom]

On 01/06/2019 at 10:26, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Take care though, the colour coding is not a universally adopted or formal standard. Red cannot be relied upon not to be glycol according to a long and detailed thread here on the subject, about a year ago. 

 

 

Thank you Mike.  One of the 2 reasons I am doing this though is that I have discovered there is a known coolant cavitation issue with JD3 and John Deere 3029 engines, that can produce early pin-point corrosion in the cylinder bore liners between the block and liner.  The solutions are either to replace the existing coolant with a 50:50 mix of Comma Xstream G05 (at £31.50 for 5 ltr!!) or to buy specially formulated John Deere coolants.  I managed to find 3 x 5 ltr G05 from one supplier on eBay at a tad over 60 quid delivered, so I'm going with that!

[Eeyore]

Did the data from John Deere mention the source of the “cavitation”? A similar sounding issue with (the much larger) Paxman engines was caused by running them at low loads. As a result the pistons didn’t get hot enough to fully expand into the liners, which allowed piston slap, which in turn caused ultrasonic vibrations in the coolant which eat though the liners! I wonder if the two are related? In any case you need to ensure the thermostat is functioning correctly and the engine is running at its design temperature. By the way the thermostat and cover on the ones I’ve encountered is rectangular and on the side of the head, a real pain to change. Check the cover on a flat surface and tighten the fastenings carefully as they are easily distorted.

Have a look at the plumbing on the Barrus water cooled manifolds; they use the heat from the manifold to improve the warm up time. Might be worth a look if the JD isn’t already plumbed that way.

Edited June 5, 2019 by Eeyore

[rovingrom]

16 minutes ago, Eeyore said:

Did the data from John Deere mention the source of the “cavitation”?

I don't think so, other than that it is a John Deere issue and not connected to the marinisation (and thus constant running at low RPM) by Beta.  The following JD link may be helpful:
Diesel Engine Coolant (engine with wet sleeve cylinder liners)
There was another link that I found a while ago that gave a little more info but I've hunted again without success!

[trackman]

To add to my post of 5th June I'll try to add some photos. This one shows the cylinder head bleed plug, the square, silver thing roughly in the centre of the picture, to the right of the header tank.