BLEEDING Bongo!!! - It is a one man job

[Yarnus]

Dear Everyone.

Firstly I want to say hello from me and the family, after coveting the Mazda Bongo for some considerable time now we finally managed to get ourselves a 95 2.5 TDI 4WD Auto.

Having read posts and watched the brilliant 3 part bleeding series on you tube I thought the father in law (ex VW mechanic) and I had managed to bleed our Bongo after replacing the bleed hose. We hadn't. So I had a go again myself, on my own.....that was 7 weeks ago and (touch wood) no problems....

Please see the picture attached on how I managed to do this....



Looking forward to being on here a lot more, great source of info and advice.

[dave_aber]

That is a wonderful bit of heath-robinson engineering.

I salute you!

[dunslair]

'More cheese Gromit?'

[Simon Jones]

Simple but effective .

[Northern Bongolow]

any one who thinks around a problem is ok in my book. .

[stefan442]

Brilliant

[Mickymouse]

Hi Yarnus
Welcome to the forum,can you explain in more detail how you can bleed the cooling system single handed?

[Yarnus]

Firstly thanks to all who have commented.

Once I had worked out how to attach the pulley, and knocked up the cradle for the funnel I started the lengthy process of bleeding.

Most of the time I was on the passenger side of the car see sawing, the pulley system allowed me to move around the vehicle checking the level in the header tank. I also used the bar/handle from my trolley jack to wedge the accelerator down. By shifting the driver seat forward a smidgen I could wedge the bar against it and hold the engine at 2000rpm exactly.

I could drop the funnel low allowing coolant to fill in along with escaping air, tie it off on the wing mirror (very handy shape for this) and then run round to rev the engine up. Wedge the bar in and then run round to the funnel again checking the header on the way.

Tying off on the wing mirror ment that I could just slip the cord off without having to unwind it (picture shows funnel tied off).

It got to the point where I had my rhythm down so well I could have done it all day.

Balancing the funnel is also a key element to the success, there were a few times when I thought it was going a bit lop sided so had to raise the funnel a bit quick before it spilled out.

Next time I attempt this I will get a second pair of hands involved....no not to help with the bleeding but to film it.

I hope this has satisfied your curiosities. I will be honest I wanted to wait a good while to ensure my jubilation at completing this task single handedly was not premature.

The roof to tent fixings are now my current focus. Lot's of threaded sleeves have come out.... can you buy these as replacements out of interest? I have already cleaned up the old ones with a rotary tool, but would rather swap a few old ones out for new.

[crazy uncle gray g]

Nice one! where there's a will, there's a way