Iconoclast- You do indeed need to bleed you system.

 

Yes, you should,, & you also need to flush the cooling system completely to get rid of dexcool & fill with green coolant, dexcool works fine only when there is no leaks or air in system, when air present in system as yours does, it starts building up crystals where air is present & little by little clogs the cooling system, green coolant doesn't do that,, so it's safer for leaky systems,,
If you can't do it yourself have your mechanic do it, & don't listen to them if they say your truck calls for dexcool, insist on flush & green coolant,, most everyone here has replaced dexcool to green with great results ,,
If you are doing a system flush & have OEM thermostat, also replace with at least a genuine gray 180*,,,,( if not going with inline setup,, ).

 

thanks for the help for everyone. i only topped off with the dexcool because that is what was in the system, i assumed dexcool is better than low or no coolant at all. $16 on a bottle to top off on is a hell of a lot better than several thousand on a new motor.

i will request the service to be performed with the green coolant. in addition to the updated thermostat. where may i purchase one?

 

Few places will have the genuine gray 180, but I would try calling "lucky8" first, they will even give forum members a discount,,,,
Make sure to get rid of that waterfall sound right away by bleeding system, as I mentioned dexcool doesn't like air in system and crysallizes, (not to mention high temp, because of air)

 

There is no cap and rotor on your truck. The primary ignition is computer controlled. The low idle and shaking you mentioned, do you have any trouble codes? Maybe misfire codes? The engine shouldn't shake like that and misfires can cause damage to the catalytic converters.

 

no codes at all. scanned every day last week. not one code just a rough idle.

I will reach out to them today.

Is this the item:
http://www.lucky8llc.com/collections...emp-thermostat

 

That's it!

 

i may be a bit paranoid or overprotective but since i am doing all this should i replace all the coolant hoses as well?

 

I once found myself with loss of power under load and thought it was transmission shudder. Not so much a problem at idle but when accelerating up hills in 3 or 4th gear. It was a faulty wire; not obvious to the eye but found it when I began pulling the leads from the spark plugs and one of them seperated at that point. No fault codes but definitely had bad spark plug wires. Engine bay temps are pretty high on these trucks. They run hot, especially when not having been maintained and upgrades/replacements performed. This causes things like vaccum hoses, plastic lines and electrical leads to fault or fail. The Disco-2 is an ornery, high maintenance beast if I have ever known one. Get ready to spend some real time and money. Word to the wise: Pull the front driveshaft and check the Ujoints very well and do not use/reference the dash cluster gauges. You need aftermarket gauges for oil pressure and coolant temps. Read up on it, do some searches and you will find what I'm talking about.

 

There is no such thing as paranoid when it comes to a D2. You should replace the upper and lower hose assemblies, as well as the plate and gasket as a kit where the coolant circulates the throttle body. Most just bypass that altogether. Also a problem are the 2 plastic coolant lines which become brittle. Most replace with new high temp heater hose. You will find some starter tubes where plastic lines originate so replace everything at its entirety. Coolant leaks and loss a real issue on D2s and will result in overheating episodes. Even the overflow tank and cap should be replaced. Mine looked good and cracked at the neck. Damn near overheated. I saw steam and temp gauge was still reading normal. Had the plastic Tee on upper hose blow at an intersection waiting on stoplight. Saw steam, temp gauge in the middle. WTF is wrong with this thing?! That's when I joined forum and learned about this issue with dash gauges and bought something else to read live data from the ECU.