Hi guys,

My 2014 Versa is about 87k miles and I will perform the replacement of engine coolant for the first time. In the FSM it is stated that I it's mandatory to drain the cylinder block besides regular radiator draining. Technically this is done by opening the water drain plug on cylinder block. However, it seems that this plug is located at a very unreachable place and reading some stuff online I can see that the majority of people don't do this step and just drain the radiator/resevoir. Somebody could tell me if there is any problem related to not draining the cylinder block? I think this may be important in order to guarantee that new coolant don't get mixed (and contaminated) with old coolant.

Thanks for your help.
Daniel

Welcome aboard, Daniel!

It is absolutely not critical. In fact, it's a good way to introduce a leak that can't be readily seen.

Drain your fluid, replace as specified in your manual, and if you really want to make sure you get 100% fresh coolant, do it a second time (a couple drive cycles later).

Or flush the entire thing to get nothing but clean water remaining................

At that mileage and age of the vehicle, it would be a great time to start yearly drain and fills. The coolant in there is still just fine by the way.

Drain and fills take 10 minutes and are cheap to do.

Man I still use old school 'short use' green coolant and at 3-4 years between changes and no issues ever doing it, the metal parts have no corrosion on them at all. If you simply stick to some kind of a repeat change program you're fine but once a year? No way, waste of money.

Yearly it costs me maybe 10 dollars. Cheap insurance and peace of mind for me.

Yours and do as you will.

I myself doing the multiplication there see at 4 years $40 made out of thin air, a lot less work, and absolutely no harm to the cars, been doing it forever. The peace of mind is still there once you have worked on enough of them. I never use distilled water either, and break so many other car maintenance rules I cannot count yet can't seem to kill the cars at all. The corrosion protection is what drops off but in relation to many 'modern' coolants that they say last forever yet take 6 months before the coolant has developed full corrosion protection I feel the oldschool is way ahead there by having instant corrosion protection. Of course the antifreeze people will not say a word about that, it would kill sales of the 'better' (snicker) coolants. Yeah, it's better but like so many things nowadays, better for WHOM? I walked away from longlife coolants when the systems kept corroding to create rust in 3 months and instantly much much better.

Only one of the hundreds of ways I have turned cars as related to the conventional wisdom into money generators instead.

Try Walmart oil at $2.64/qt. and 9000 mile OCIs and cars running over 200K.

Again, yours and do as you will, just a small indication of what can be done but then I've never paid for a car repair of any type my entire life and tend to go way outside the box in relation to the conventional wisdom.

Back to the engine drain plugs at hand, they commonly being at the low point tend to corrode in place to break at drain time, best to leave them alone. A simple hose stuck in rad cap opening or top hose location and simply running engine at idle while draining at the rad drain plug can work fine. Meter the hose down until it just puts in what drains out of the plug or a bit more and then let it rinse all clean for a few minutes. Get that started before running the engine so that you don't somehow shock the block through a rapid temp change enough to crack it, a longshot but possible for the unlearned.