I have been exploring for an hour and I swear my radiator doesn't have a drain plug. Is that even possible? I fell silly asking, but where the heck is it?

1977 240d, auto transmission.

Looking towards the back of the car, its on the right (driver's) side of the radiator, about 3 inches from the end.

Its blue.

At least thats how my 123 300d's are...

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'85 300D, 'Lance',250k, ... winter beater (100k on franken-Frybrid 3 Valve Kit)
'82 300D, 'Tex', 228k body / 170k engine ... summer car
'83 300TD Cali Wagon 210k, wife's car

Thanks for the quick reply. Unfortunately I do not see anything like that on my radiator. On the lower portion of the engine side of the radiator there are the two connections for the transmission, the lower radiator hose and the slots for the tabs of the fan shroud. Nothing there that resembles a screw or a plug.

You are looking in the wrong place.....slot for the penny faces the road - when they say bottom - they mean it!

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Current Mercedes
1979 maple yellow 240D 4-speed

Gone and fondly remembered:
1980 orient red 240D 4-speed

Gone and NOT fondly remembered:
1982 Chna Blue 300TD

Other car in the stable:
2013 VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI / 6-speed MT

That's what I thought, but the support pegs on my radiator are hollow metal, no plug or anything to unscrew. Both sides.

I'm assuming it is supposed to look something like this:



but my radiator doesn't have anything like that. weird.

both of my support pegs look like this:

I recently bought an all metal aftermarket radiator for my 81 240 and it does not have a drain plug. It also has a hollow stub instead

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1981 240D 143k 4 spd manual -SOLD

2004 VW Jetta TDI 5 speed 300k -still driven daily

this may sound silly but why not just remove the lower hose connection

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2010 ML350 Bluetec
2012 Mustang Convertible

That is what I had to do.

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1981 240D 143k 4 spd manual -SOLD

2004 VW Jetta TDI 5 speed 300k -still driven daily

It must be an aftermarket radiator then. It's a new car to me so I'm not sure of the radiator's history.

Yeah, I figured I'd just have to remove the lower radiator hose, but it was really bugging me that I couldn't find a drain plug.

speaking of hoses, anybody have a good tip for getting a hose off that hasn't been removed for a loooong time. Mine seems to be pretty well baked onto the radiator.

Sounds like you need to replace your hoses, and since you're doing so you might as well take the radiator out to clean up where the hoses attach. If it's really that baked on, I'd cut the hoses off with a box knife, remove the radiator and gently cut the old hose away from where they attach to the radiator.

It's easy to remove the radiator: remove the coolant hoses, remove the transmission cooling hoses (at the bottom), remove the long bolt that holds the oil cooler (that little radiator that attaches to the main radiator on the driver's side) at the bottom of the oil cooler, slide the oil cooler up and off the radiator, remove the two clips at the top of the radiator, push the fan shroud out of the way and the radiator lifts right out.

You'll lose a little ATF in the process, so be sure to top it off when you're done. BTW, I do not recall seeing a drain plug on the Behr unit I just installed.

I finally got the hose off without having to cut it. Of course the water gushed out everywhere, about 50% in the catch basin and %50 on the ground.

Strange that it wouldn't have a drain plug, but whatevs. Thanks for all the input.

onto the water pump...