I have never seen one like this before.

It has a port that seems to be leaking out of the side when the plug is fully tightened.


Radiator drain plug

It's leaking. Not a little but a lot. I haven't run the truck but a little bit after flushing the coolant with a hose. After I was done, and everything had dried up pretty well, I noticed a small spot on the driveway, but thought that's odd it's not where the power steering leaks.

I haven't run the truck that much, but I found my coolant reservoir bone dry the other day. I had been doing a flush on my wife's commuter so I took a look and decided to hit this one too.

The truck needed the flush. The old coolant was nasty brown no longer really green and now this little guy won't stop dribbling. But now I think I understand why the reservoir was empty. This little guy just keeps on going.

Does that little stem pointing left need a cap of some sort? Or does this mean I need a whole new radiator? The plug looked exactly like the proper Dorman replacements, and it appeared undamaged when I had it out.

Of course NOW the radiator has about 4+ gallons of coolant/water mixed in. Per p190 of my manual, 18 quarts of coolant. So I'd like to fix this before all of that is on my driveway.

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I believe that drain plug has 2 rubber gaskets. 1 on the outside that seals against the tank. And 1 on the inside.

 

The little stem out the side was where you could put a hose on to, and direct the hose down into a catch pan. It never worked for me. I would get only a little trickle out of it, would have taken a day to drain. Always end up spinning the petcock way open, so it gushes out the back.

Since you had some crud, what about some crud that is stopping the petcock's O-ring from seating properly? Just like draining a water heater too infrequently. Also, since it had a slow leak, it could have built up some scale there that is stopping in from sealing.

I use a rectangular big black plastic concrete-mixing pan, like from Home Depot's inside the store's concrete stuff aisle, as my radiator drain pan. With one of those, I could easily re-use what I dumped out, if I needed to.

I wonder if you're gonna have to dump yours again, and then check petcock stem for undamaged properly-placed seals, and put a rag or something thin and absorbent over maybe a small wood dowel, and push it in there and twist it around to clean the seat area inside the radiator.
Just a thought.

 

Like stated there should be O-rings to seal it up. I would see if cleaning crude and reseating it helps. If not. I have used epoxy to seal up something like this before. You won't even be able to drain with the drain plug again but I can assure you it won't leak anytime soon. I lost the drain plug on my own vehicle and had to use a epoxy covered bolt and allot of epoxy to seal up the hole. it holds good thus far.

 

I picked up a new drain plug at the store and it seems to have done the job.

I used that side stub with the tubing but only got about 1/3 of the coolant out that way. Opening it up and draining out the back is what really worked. Swapped out the plug and cleaned up everything in there.

I filtered the couple-days-old coolant through a paint strainer and put it back in.

It hasn't leaked a drop. Now I can't say the same about the power steering, but that's a known problem with a solution in motion too.

Thanks for the help guys!