racer - good to hear. Several more thoughts/comments/questions. IMPORTANT NOTE - in reading this remember the only way to fully purge air from the system is make sure there is plenty of coolant in the tank on the firewall and then run a couple of full operating temp/cool down cycles to allow the expansion of heated coolant to push coolant and air into the tank and contraction of cooled coolant to pull coolant without air back into the engine. Yes I know a pressure or perhaps vacuum refill might do but my personal bet is there is no way to totally eliminate air simply by refilling the system no matter how the refill is done absent some drive cycles.
1. is your heater output now stable?
2. Some history for those who care or not - back in the olden days when radiator temp got to a certain level the cap "popped" and vented excess coolant direct to the ground which is why you never opened a hot radiator or filled a cold one much above the core. Then along came overflow tanks which captured the flow when the cap "popped" and sucked the overflowed coolant back into the radiator as the radiator cooled before the radiator cap popoff closed - you still could not open a hot radiator but in filling a cold one you filled it completely and then added the leftover coolant to the overflow tank to be sucked into the engine during drive cycles. On the CRD the tank on the firewall serves both as the top of the radiator (hence the pressure cap) and the overflow so you do your filling from there but that leaves no obvious easy way to get trapped air out of the system during a refill. Is that bad - yes if you leave too much air in the system vs. no if you minimize the air in the system.
3. IMHO on refilling the CRD system you need to minimize the air left in the system which can be done by 1) as noted filling with that valve on the top of the radiator cracked or full open until fluid comes out (burp the upper rad hose to help) and then closing the valve and completing the fill; 2) doing the valve in the top of the tstat housing trick; or 3) installing a Prestone or similar "T" in the hose from the viscous to the heater core that I mentioned. IMHO these are listed in reverse order in that 3, 2, 1 leave slightly increasing amounts of air in the system so ideally the Prestone "T" is the best. However, while I've used the Prestone "T" and left it in the system that "T" and its cap are plastic which has always worried me a bit although I've never had one fail (had one on a Dodge Cummings for like 75k miles) but I have heard of failures. So what to do.
4. If I cannot find/make an all metal equivalent of the Prestone "T" I'll probably install one on an appropriate length of heater hose solely for use during coolant changes to completely flush the system with clean water. Afterwards remove the hose with the "T" and reinstall straight hose and do a refill with the top radiator valve cracked.

No rocks please but if anyone has better ideas I'm all ears. This might merit a TECH post simply to have an easy place to point folks too.

PS tjkj2002's method, if messy, would work but all it's doing is mimicking a drive to operating temp and cool down cycle.

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Sold to LOST member my 05 Ltd, GDE Stg II turbo + TCM tune, SunCoast TC w. Transgo kit, Steiger window regulators, Samcos, Fumoto valve, 2nd gen filter head with Lub. Spec. bleeder, Hayden clutch & 11 blade fan, inverted spare, P-1 battery, BF Goodrich Long Trail TAs, Etecno1 glow plugs, timing belt at 50K miles/8 yrs

This is one of those refill tools that pulls a vacuum on the cooling system before refilling I take it? Tricky in what way? Hard to maintain an appropriate vacuum while refillling?

I believe Mityvac makes these, as well as some other manufactures.

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2006 Liberty CRD Limited

Provent @ 43,000 km
SEGR in progress
SAMCO Sport hoses @ 48500 km
Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac LT225/75R16

Yep it uses vaccum(shop air,must have good CFM rating).The tricky part comes into play with those over complicated cooling systems that have like 12 hoses going all over the place,can take longer and may require 2-3 tries.Works like a charm in cooling systems with 2 radiator hoses and 2 heater core hoses only.