Everything I’m about to tell you has been said before, and half of it you could figure out with a little common sense, or a haynes/chilton.
First off, don’t jack the front of the car way up in the air to get all the air out of the cooling system. That’s a completely retarded thing to do, and whoever suggests it will only be contributing positively to the world when he’s pushing daisies. Honda’s engineers are smart, they have degrees, and they’ve been building engines for a long time. Though they may not want us to fix our cars, they gave us everything we need. Including a BLEED BOLT. It’s located on the flange that the upper radiator hose connects to. All you have to do, is loosen it up, and that “trapped” air will escape.
Second, even if you don’t get all the air out, it will get pushed through the relief valve at the radiator cap and into the overflow tank, then, when the system cools down, it might get fluid from the tank if it needs any.
Lastly, if you want to run cooler engine temps for some reason, Do NOT remove your thermostat, and do not drill holes in it. If you’re going through the hassle of draining the coolant and taking the housing apart, replace the thermostat with a cooler one, say… a 160 degree jackson racing thermostat that you could purchase for $6.00 from Summit Racing.
Removing or drilling holes will cause coolant to flow through the engine constantly. That’s now how the system is designed to work.
This is how it is designed to work: While the engine is running, heat dissipates from from the head/block into the coolant that is SITTING in the engine, when it reaches the temperature of a stock thermostat (78 degrees C) it will cause the thermostat to open. Then, coolant flows from the engine to the radiator, where the COOLANT is cooled until it falls below 78 degrees again. Then the thermostat closes, and the coolant sits in the engine again until it heats back up. If you drill out the thermostat or remove it, the coolant will remain cool, and your temperature gauge will show normal temperatures, but the engine will overheat, and you won’t know.
If you’ve replaced the coolant and thermostat, and you’re still running hot. Get a new radiator. The radiators tend to corrode and become insulated such that the coolant still flows through it well, but doesn’t get cooled well.
I’m currently running a civic si radiator in my gs-r turbo. The water temps get to about 160-180 pretty quickly, and then hold at that temp. until the oil temp gets to about 180. Then the water temps will rise to 210-215 if I’m just sitting around, but they’ll run closer to 180 when I’m driving around.
good luck