I've heard that you can do a coolant flush on the r56 or just about any mini or car using a power extractor to avoid lifting car. Has anyone tried this? If so, was all of the coolant removed including the half inside of the lower hose and not just the expansion tank?

 

Did it an it worked well!

 

Why?

Gravity is your friend.
Decoupling the two halves of the coolant hose at the bottom is brain dead simple. Then use gravity to drain all the coolant out from both ends of the hose into a pan. Doesn't get much simpler than that.

If you are worried about getting dirty or working under the car to disconnect a coolant hose, DIY coolant flush is probably not for you.

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This is if you don't have ramps or a means of securely raising your car. It's actually easy since you only need to give it a few pumps n pressure does the rest

 

Forget ramps - any DIY-er needs a jack and a set of jack stands.
And a set of metric sockets. And a torque wrench.

These are the basic tools I owned when I still lived out of apartments and wrenched in parking lots in college.

You can only *suck* so much, pun intended

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Good for you. Overall, it worked fine. Just let this alternative be as is; as it works for those who go this route.