so yesterday i changed out my coolant temp switch to a lower temp switch for the afterrun system on the car...welllllll when i pulled the clip off it disapeared into the bowels of my car and after about 2 hours of searching, digging, blowing compressed air all that, i gave up and decided to zip tie it until the new one comes in the mail, well today thinkin the zip ties would hold i drive into town and what do ya know? they dont... sooo my temp stays in the middle but the coolant leaked out and i pull over to the side of the road and luckily a napa was just around the block so i walked and of course they dont carry that part but i thought id ask anyway and so i buy some more thicker zip ties and get real creative and get it in there good, walked to the store and got some distilled water and managed to drive to my mech where he gave me a bottle of g12 and ordered the part i need and should be here tomorrow. i topped off the coolant to as close of a 50/50 mix i could guesstimate and drive home with no problems... the shitty part is i was on my way to seattle for an eye appt for my surgery and looks like im not gonna make that. luckily the shiz broke while i was in town not in the middle of no where. im 68% sure the sensor would last up to portland which is 2 hours away to the closest audi dealership but i dont want to risk it so iill just take my losses as is. so the lesson learned today when changing out the switch be extra careful to not lose the plastic clip and zip ties are to flexible to hold down the pressure. now on my bimmer the cooling system needed to be bled, do i have to do that on my S4 or does it do itself like all other cars other than bmw's

 

I'm pretty sure you have to bleed the coolant. Buttt I'm not an expert. I don't know if you know where the bleed spots are but I'll tell ya where the ones I know about are. Just in case you don't. There is one up by the firewall next to the cabin of the car. Pull the big plastic shield off and you'll see the two coolant lines running into the car. I'm almost 100% sure the passenger side line is the one that you bleed with. If you pull it off a bit there should be a little hole that'll allow the air/coolant to bleed out. There is another spot down by the engine block I believe. You just unscrew it somehow and that should help. But that spot is lower that the expansion tank so I don't know how well that works. Now all of this stuff may be over the top because I'm not even sure if you NEED to bleed the system. But I always have anyways. Hope this helps a bit. And hopefully some of this made sense because I'm not an pro mechanic. But somehow I get the job done lol.

 

well the zipties are holding for now, the car didnt overheat on the 20 minute drive back from the mech. when i go back tomorrow ill take a look at those spots. my heat was working fine so im pretty sure its okay but ill still check. thanks for the help, man the bmw was much easier to bleed. the bleeding screw was right on top of the expansion tank at thats it.