I’ve searched all over and I can’t find what size this is. Anybody have a diagram or help looking up. Best guess is 3/8 npt but I have also read 16 or 18mm but can’t be sure.

 

A 1/4" ratchet will get them out. Just had mine out saturday.

 

Thanks. Looking for size of plug itself as looking to replace them with valves as I may be flushing soon if I can’t figure out my coolant.

 

Wanna say 1/4npt...had to replace oem plugs and I had aluminum laying around from my who days. Don't remember me using 3/8 stuff

 

yup. Bet that is it. Probably why no one uses on 7.3s. They are the cats meow on 6.0s.

 

Last year in November I swapped out my coolant plugs for this type. With a little bit on anti-seize, snug them up, they're much easier to remove than the OEM one's. As mentioned before by the other fellas, they are 1/4 npt.

 

Thanks guys. Got work to do tomorrow. Actually had CAT brand but realized it was 50:50

 

Brian, your journey sounds like mine. I ended up going to CAT just off I-85 in Greenville SC and those guys are a bunch of jackasses that are worse than the parts store fellas that don't know the different between a ratchet and a wrench.

The CAT place tried to sell me the wrong stuff, then when I showed them on their website what I was looking for and gave them the part number, they told me I didn't need enough for 8 gallons of coolant. I literally had to argue with them. Turns out they sold me the wrong stuff even though I gave them the part number... I returned it and told them what I thought of their business practices and walked out.

I went to TSC, bought the Rotella ELC you have pictured which turned out to be cheaper anyway.

I bought 40 gallons of distilled water because we are on well water and we have A LOT of minerals in our water. I gutted the thermostat, then started the draining process of green to distilled, then to red ELC. I had the hose coming into the degas bottle as the return plumbed into an empty distilled water jug, then just filled the degas bottle when it was low enough. Did this over and over until it was ready for the ELC.

It went very well and I am glad I took the time to do it right. I failed to paint my water pump though, so I failed on the aesthetics part, but had great success on the functionality part.

Good luck, take your time and have fun!

 

Ha literally almost my exact experience. TSC included. 😂
I’m waiting until the very heat of the day to do it apparently. Such is life. 😓

 

I strongly recommend ‘flushing’ with tap water. Those minerals do no harm while cleaning the crud out of the engine.

Let the hose run in degas bottle with all drains open until it runs clear.

If you are concerned about the tiny amount of minerals in the tap water, fill with distilled and dump that before replacing t-stat and filling with coolant.

Be sure to add a 3/4 PEX barbed valve to the heater core SUPPLY (from head) if you haven’t yet.

Dont fill degas bottle over 1/2 way and don’t tighten the cap on degas bottle until you are adding the last of the coolant. You need room for the air to burp out without causing a volcano.

 

gotcha. Have one on my heater supply already.


I also made a valve to drain the coolant intermittently. I was planning to run the tapwater first, then do a full fill of distilled, drain and then fill with 4 jugs of coolant. Then ease up to the final level with distilled.

 

Well that was fun. need to cut up the filter because it’s got all kind of junk in it when I turned it upside down. That is after it had a thorough flush about two years ago. I was very skeptical of the coolant then and definitely was not treated properly after. Hopefully didn’t do any lasting damage. The water pressure at my house is not enough where I can open the block and the front drain at the same time so I made a valve for the block on one side. Seemed to work well. That’s why I needed to know the size.