Required:
-Temperature sensor
-Antifreeze
-Rubber washer (optional)
-Horseshoe clip (optional)
You only actually need a new temperature sensor but I decided to get the washer and horseshoe clip incase I broke anything. Came to £20 in total including the antifreeze from Eurocar parts
Partially drain radiator
WARNING MAKE SURE RADIATOR IS COOL, DO WHILST ENGINE HAS BEEN OFF FOR AT LEAST AN HOUR
First things first you need to drain off the radiator. No need to do the whole thing, just enough so there's not much left near the sensor when you pull it out.
The sensor can be found just to the right of the engine cover. It's the green socket with the black casing round it
The easiest thing I found to do was first remove the lid fromt the radiator refill, do this very slowly in case their is any built up pressure. Then rather than removing all the coolant I just undid the overflow pipe connected to the reservoir, see below. To undo the pipe you need to firmly squeese the blue clip then slide it down the pipe. Twist the pipe side to side until it comes off.
Dangle this down as low as it will go i.e. quite a bit below the level of the sensor, then drain as much coolant as possible off into a container. You'll need to encourage it, I did this by both squeesing some of the bigger radiator pipes to the right of the sensor and by also get an innocent bystander to put the lid back on the reservoir then blow through the plastic tube from where the pipe has been removed. Make sure you put something round this like kitchen towel because anti freeze is poisonous)
When you've drained off as much as you can, for me I filled about 1 and a half wine bottles, then lodge another container underneath the sensor to catch any excess, I used a pirex jug, see below
Now you need to remove the horsehoe clip holding it on with a pair of plyers
Pull the sensor out slowly catching any excess fluid in the container. Make sure you get the rubber washer, I replaced mine but the original still looked perfectly fine. You now need to remove the sensor from the black housing. There's probalby a better way to do this but if you look at your new sensor you can see a raised edge, this needs to be unclipped from housing, I did this with a small flat screwdriver.
Replace the sensor then push back in. Put the horseshoe clip back on
JOB DONE!
Now all you need to do is replace the coolant that has been removed. I actually re-used the stuff I'd taken out and topped it up with a bit of anti-freeze. My new anti-freeze is blue and my old red, I don't think it matters if you mix them but I read that you can test this by mixing some and if the new solution goes brown then they're not compatible but this sounds like a load of coblers. I did it anyway and it looked ok.
Now run your engine for about 5 mins with the reservoir cap off, this allows any bubbles in the system to be removed, also make sure there are no leaks coming from the sensor.
This is really easy to do, I'm a novice and it only took me about half an hour. If anyone has any trouble drop me a PM. Hope this helps out.
