I'd also be interested in this one as the expansion bottle for my TF is lower than the top of the rad. I had to unscrew it and lift it up to fill the rad up. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to put is higher short of Hnaging it on a pole over the bonnet, like a saline drip!

The alternative way that I found to fill the system, was, by experimentation, to disconnect the hose to the heater (Note, it is at the top of the engine bay) and insert a funnel into the hose. Seemed to work. Maybe this approach might work.

Ian

There is actually no reason for the expansion bottle to be higher than the top of the radiator if it is just that - an expension bottle. Thinking back to some old BL cars that used A & B Series engines the expansion bottle was way down in the front panel.

Filling and bleeding the air out is rather different in that you need to engineer the situation so that you have some sort of filler or at least bleed screw a high point in the cooling system.

For example; on TC V8 it is desirable to have an in-line filler in the top hose to enable the system to be filled and allow air to flow up to this high point. In this case it will only just clear the underside of the bonnet and be closed with a blanking cap rather than a pressure cap as this would be fitted to the expansion bottle on the bulkhead. I think some of the suppliers such as Europa market this sort of low level top hose filler as it has many applications in the kit / specialist car field. Recalling the transverse engined BL cars of the '70's they all used this arrangement of blanking cap to radiation / filler, pressure cap to expansion bottle.

Regarding heaters, it is no bad thing to fit an in-line bleed valve to the uppermost hose on the heater to allow air to be bled out. Renault certainly used them as they had huge problems with this at one time and I think they can also be found in Rover K Series engine bays.

Don't be affraid to give the engine a few good revs whilst running up to force the water around the whole cooling system as some circuits just won't bleed out at tick over.

Do watch for spurts of hot water out of the radiator filler though!

One final thought, you could try running the car up on ramps to artificialy raise the radiator level in relation to the heater.

Hope that helps - Dave