[wren57]

Long story long:

In the process of flushing my coolant. I removed the under tray and FMIC. I unclipped the hose from the heat exchanger and fluid poured everywhere. I didn't quite position my 5 gallon bucket correctly. It would have been much easier if I had waited for my gf to get home to open the reservoir while I quickly moved the bucket. Instead, coolant everywhere! Good thing for shop towels. Anyway, now to the point. After I drained all the coolant from the clip on the heat exchanger, I unscrewed the coolant drain plug. For those that don't know, it is a tiny blue screw on the drivers side. I read somewhere that you have to hold the black screw (hex head) surrounding the blue screw with a 3/4" wrench while you remove the blue screw, so that's what I did. Got the blue screw out and to my surprise almost zero coolant came out. It is dripping right now but not nearly the volume I was expecting. So basically I wasted my time removing the FMIC and that screw. Oh well. I got to get the oil out of my FMIC at least.

CLIFFS: There is zero point removing the FMIC to remove the blue drain plug... just remove the hose to the heat exchanger.

[bimmertt]

Yes, for ATs it would be extra work to remove the intercooler. For MTs, we have no choice but to remove the intercooler and drain from the radiator.