Questions about VR's (6) cooling system

[joe_rolls_commo]

Whats the correct proceedure for draining, flushing & refilling the cooling system?
The way I did it was.
-Take off bottom radiator hose & drain coolant.
-Replace hose, fill radiator & resivoir with water.
-Idle engine for a bit, then drain again.
-Fill radiator & coolant with coolant.
-Get donk up to op-temp with heater on.
This is where I stuffed up. Cuz my engine kept overheating. Apparently due to air lock. I spent the next couple of hours getting the donk up to temp, killing it and bleeding the air through the screw near the manifold. It's okay now, but I just wanted to know the correct proceedure to avoid air locks.

Also a couple of other questions.
-When is my radiator fan supposed to come on? While idling it doesn't seem to come on.
-My air conditioning pulley isn't spinning (bottom right, under the DFI) while the engines idling, is this normal?? Incorrect belt tension?

[dufus]

How To Flush A V6 Cooling System

[hako]

Your radiator fan will only come on when the engine reaches a certain temperature....usually about half to three-quarters of temp gauge.
The airconditioner pulley "freewheels" unless the aircon is turned on.

[ozengines]

My manual says basically what you did to drain radiator and then bleed the air through the small brass fitting on the water jacket.
The air con has a clutch, the inner pulley freewheels as HAKO said, the outer part is the clutch and spins when engaged by turning on aircon.
Quite often the fan will come on in aircon mode quicker as car heats up. I took my auto transmission cooling out of the radiator and mounted a separate V8 cooler for transmission. Temps are way down now in main radiator. I have a VR Wagon as well as the VX SS.

[joe_rolls_commo]

Cheers Dufus. My bad, shoulda looked harder.

ozengines: How did you go about the mounting the V8 cooler? I'm interested cuz I got a slow leak on the bottom hose fitting & cant fix it without replacing the radiator (apparently).

hako: I turned the AC on & the clutch didn't engage. Does it have to get up to operating temp first or summin'?