Need engine/coolant help!!!

[CosmosM3]

I have a leak coming from the passenger side of the engine. With a telescoping mirror I saw coolant spraying out of a small crack/whole in what looks like an inverted cap, a circular aread on the engine block below the exhaust manifold. There are several of these circular inverterd cap looking things. Maybe I should say indented cap. Anyway, I don't know what these are or what they are made of or if they are replaceable or not. Can anyone help? Am I out of luck here or can I do something about this? Thanks in advance! Chris

 

[mikeresin]

those plugs are replacable.

although they look like the same size they are all diff sizes on most engines. a specialty tool is required to press them in. my advice is to take it into the shop to have done.

have you had the engine rebuilt recently? those plugs are supposed to be replaced with all rebuilds but sometimes people put the wrong plug in and the result is a collant leak from the watter jacket.

lemme know if you have any more questions

hope this helped

 

[CosmosM3]

Thank you! Good to know that these

are replaceable. I'd hate to have to tow this thing to the shop just for this. I've already had to tow two cars three times in the past couple of weeks. Oh well. thanks again.

 

[gijoecam]

He forgot to mention it, but they're called Freeze Plugs. They're there so that should the engine ever get cold enough to freeze, it pops the plugs out instead of cracking the block (at least in theory anyways).

Not sure why one would spontaneously leak though...

-Joe

 

[Bracken53]

Not sure about spontaneous leaking, but I had a couple of them rust through and start leaking on me. Unfortunatly its not an easy/cheap fix either.

 

[thundertiger]

In the UK we call them CORE plugs. Dont know why! but it sounds important..

 

[mikeresin]

In the UK we call them CORE plugs. Dont know why! but it sounds important..

we call them that here too.