I'm going to do a coolant flush this weekend, however the drain plug on the radiator of a 3.0 4x4 isn't exactly ideal. When draining it has many obstacles to go over and it doesn't drain in a "clean" manner. Would I be better off just pulling the lower raidiator hose to do this? Or is there an adapter that I can get to slip in the drain plugh hole to avoid a mess? I have dogs and hate getting that stuff on the driveway....it's very dangerous to animals.

 

I'm able to put small rubber hose on the end of my radiator drain valve and use it to direct the coolant into an appropriate container. I forget the exact diameter (3/8" maybe?) of the hose but it fits nice and snug over the valve. About a foot long. Works great.

 

Today when I had to drain my radiator...I come to find that the radiator shop I took it to ..a month or two ago...broke the drain **** thumb-screw off right below the surface of the plastic extrusion boss...so i went to the lower hose as my next recourse...come to find he managed to foul up my hose clamp..(the head of the bolt was inside the clamp housing).

Seeing that I managed to have a "spare" motorcraft lower hose to spare..I just poked a (gaping) hole lettin it all drain into a 3gal bucket. I also relized that the radiator shop mechanic drained the fluid the same way (loosing the lower hose) but he was able to catch it all in a cut-down 5gal bucket..but I noticed it only took a fraction of the time to drain all the fluid.