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soft plugs- freeze plugs?
If you are losing coolant from one of these babies, its very hard if not impossible to reinstall a OEM plug, without removing the engine block. These plugs have to be hammered in quite hard and straight with a special drift tool, to effect a perfect seal against the block, not to mention the fact that they probably failed due to oxidation (rust) from the block corroding. You also have to wire brush the "freeze plug hole in the block and make it smooth and shinny clean, before you install the new one. They do have various size (emergency) rubber plugs, with an expansion design center bolt that might get you going, but the only proper way to end freeze plugs problems, is to pull the block, and change them all.... Oh BTW....Engine manufacturers use a sand-oil casting plug process to effect all the internal dimensions of an engine block. If you understood the casting process, you would then have to think, hey? How the heck do they remove this huge sand plug mold from inside the casting, after its cooled? Well my dear friends, all those holes that are located by the sides of the block, (freeze plug holes) are really there to allow the sand plug mold to be removed from the block. Bet ya never knew that! Anywho, what do you do with all these holes after the casting process? Ok you got it, seal em up with some flimsy stamped sheet metal plugs, and hope they hold for 25 years..... When some dummy added pure water to his cooling system, because he was a cheap skate and couldnt afford anti-freeze, and the winter came, of course the expanding ice pushed the plugs out, and still cracked his block. So, he then tried to get off the hook for being dopey, and said "gee guys", my "Freeze Plugs" popped out from the ice, and it saved my block from exploding, thank god for those freeze plugs....What a nice dopey guy.....`Enjoy......
Last edited by dave_rose69; 05-01-2005 at 12:52 AM.
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