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Is it a bad idea to remove block drain plugs?

2K views 9 replies 9 participants last post by  lust4speed 
#1 ·
Like the title says is it a bad idea to remove them when flushing the coolant or draining the cooling system? I recomended this as a precaution to someone when removing the intake and or heads to prevent the coolant from getting into an engine. You would have thought by the reaction I got that the world would come to an end. "You cant get them restarted", "would leak", etc. I have done this so many times that I couldn't begin to count.
 
#2 ·
IMHO ... that's why they're there!
If you can't get them to thread back in, replace them.
If they leak, teflon-tape them.

Cripes ... as a broke stupid kid driving "old junk" ... there were plenty of occasions when a boil-over or an upper rad hose sliced by the fan blade (broken mount -- caused by doing brake stands :mwink: ) meant adding straight water to the system.

When fall freeze-ups came along (thin ice at the top of a pail of water) it was fairly common practice to drain the rad overnight and re-fill it in the morning ... with more water. :embarrass

When the overnight temps started to get to the point where that pail of water started freezing almost all the way to the bottom, a guy would either pull the block drains or go buy some darn antifreeze! :D

Don
 
#10 ·
Only thing that I would be afraid of is if they have never been out and the engine is in the vehicle. Snapping the plug off where I couldn't get to it to use an easy-out wouldn't be any fun. The ones in 1960's Pontiacs were steel and I always remove them during the rebuild and replace them with nice high quality brass ones so I can remove them easily later on when I flush out the system. While I have never broke an original plug, they have sometimes been very, very difficult to convince to turn after 40 years of never being removed. Pontiacs are also a rather small 1/8" pipe plug size that doesn't help anything.
 
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