quote:

ORIGINAL: supercharger

For anyone dealing with a freeze plug leak, I just fixed my Durango so here's some advice. I have a 1999 5.2L V8 4WD

My Durango has been leaking coolant slowly for years from somewhere I couldn't find. I just kept filling it up every few weeks for a long, long time. I finally got ahold of a pressure tester and when I pumped it up, coolant came out of the water pump weep hole.

I replaced the water pump last weekend, poured in the new coolant, and when I started it up there was still a leak. I crawled under the car and finally traced it to a freeze plug that had rusted out. If you look inside the wheel well above the front right tire, you can clearly see 2 of the freeze plugs on the block. It was the the rear of these two that rusted out on me. The other one looks fine. I think this freeze plug leaking is the reason the water pump shaft seal went bad because the water pump was only about 25,000 miles old.

I scraped out the rusted part, pulled and twisted on it with pliers, and finally hammered a tent stake (for lack of a better tool with reach) into the plug until it rotated and I could pull it out by hand. I then scraped tons of black sludge crap out of the hole with my finger.

Although this plug is visible, and accessible I didn't know how I would hammer in a new plug until I found out about the rubber ones. I bought one for about $3 from Kragen. You pop it into the hole until a metal disk on one end butts up against the block and then tighten a nut on the outside of the plug. This expands the rubber and makes it seal. It took me all of 5 minutes and turning a socket wrench next to the block was far easier than trying to get a hammer in there and put the plug in even.

If you have a rusted freeze plug behind your transmition, you might be screwed, but if you can get see the plug that's bad, I would recommend fixing it yourself and not paying several hundred dollars for some mechanic to pull your block or rip you off.

I flushed my coolant system for a while using a prestone flushing kit that lets you attach a hose to the heater inlet hose. I did this because I didn't want to remove the thermostat. If you take your thermostat housing off, it looks like a pain to replace because scraping off the old gasket would be almost impossible without removing the alternator.

It is now holding coolant and there are no leaks anywhere.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ccusum

I think I am having the same problem. Today I get up and get in the truck, get it to operating temp, turn the heat on and nothing but cold air, and the temp guage climbs to around 250 pretty quick. then drops a couple of minuts later to around 180. and I finally hve heat in the car. Temp is holding steady. Pull into a gas station to get gas, shut the car off. Come back in and the same thing. but this time, I still have heat. Temp climbs and then drops.

Any idea if its the freeze plugs that people seem to have a problem with or could it be something else?

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ORIGINAL: steve05ram360

wow that's not bad... I think he has to yank the e-manifold to get to them, that shouldnt take long at all. actually, it sounds pretty cheep, just the r/r of the manifold itself is about an hours worth of work. how much does he charge per hour?