where is my radiator drain plug?
 

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?:confused:

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...

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.:confused:

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

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:

http://www.dieselgiant.com/mercedeststatinstall09.JPG

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

both of my support pegs look like this:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2532/...debf7d85_m.jpg

Replacement radiator
 

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

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

That is what I had to do.

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...