Fly Fish Idaho
New Member
- Joined
- July 18, 2020
- Messages
- 2
- Reaction score
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- City, State
- Meridian, ID
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 2015 Explorer Sport
Well, made a mess of things. Got the new line in up top but couldn’t get the drain plug off. Used a 1/4” Allen but ended up stripping the drain plug. There isn’t a lot of room to tap it so I’m thinking i’m screwed. Any suggestions?
Hey Volksjager,
I hit the identical situation last month but finally made it over the hump. For TLDR -- weld a nut to the plug...
After rounding out the drain plug internal allen, I attempted another run at it with vice grips. This led nowhere quick and I recommend against even trying. Two more weeks went by as I pondered next steps. I decided I would drop the cat to create more room to work. Explorer had 66,000 mile on it at the time and the PTU had never been drained, so I was reluctant to try this originally fearing the cat would be very difficult to remove. Turned out to be pretty easy to remove the cat.
In preparation, I had bought a replacement drain plug, the 2 gaskets for the cat, 3 replacement bolts for the cat (recommended to be replaced according to Hayes manual). One cat stud ended up backing out so I needed to also get a replacement stud. With cat removed and room to work, a friend welded a nut to the drain plug. This took several attempts until the weld held and the drain plug backed out. It took significant torque to remove the plug, so my opinion is the red on the drain plug threads is red locktite. I felt less bothered for rounding out the allen recess in the original drain plug. The Ford replacement drain plug also had red on the the threads, which I removed with a wire brush. I used Permatex High Temp Thread Sealer on the drain plug, instead. I drained 12 oz of oil, which was easy to collect as the cat was out of the way. I put 16 oz back in via modified vent hose and plan on changing in a month and then making it a 30,000 interval maintenance item. Hope this helps, best of luck!
Only suggestion for others reading would be try heating the drain plug if it seems stubborn when attempting the first drain. If it remained stubborn, I would err on the side of additional heat over additional force to break the hold on the red sealant to prevent ruining the allen recess.