anyone ever have coolant leak from the driver side freeze out plug on the 4.0s? just happened to me!! plug is still in block,so for now jus by lookin at it im pretty sure its cracked.( the block) other than limping it home a little hotter,she still had fantastic oil press!!

soooo anybody got a rebuilt 4.0 they wana sell? argghhh

 

Is it the block that's cracked or is the plug leaking? You can change the freeze out plugs. Atleast you can on other vehicles anyway.

 

Change the plug. If you didn't overheating the crap out of it or physically damage it or do some weird voodoo to it there's no reason the block would crack.

 

The freeze plugs will rust with time and leak. I'd just cut a new one in it and ride.

 

Keep in mind that the freeze plugs are also designed to fail before the block cracks in the event of your coolant freezing in cold weather. This will not necessarily be an instant process if your coolant has never frozen up enough to push the plug all the way out.

It's also not unheard of for them to fail if there is an over pressure situation in the heat, especially when they are on an older vehicle and have had time to deteriorate, and they will do that over time. After a while, they will sometimes simply start leaking.

If the leak is coming from a freeze plug, it's much more likely that the plug has done it's job and protected the block from cracking, or has simply gotten old and is leaking.

Good luck, please let us know how it goes.

 

Yes :-)

 

^makes total sense.got a better look at it today,and i was pokin around with a small chisel nd lots of rust started coming off nd its an obvious leak from the plug.got em ordered and gonna replace it tomorrow.any quick tricks for poppin these babys out? was gonna strike the one side with punch/chisel to hopefully pop out the other side.

also few weeks ago jeep was running hotter than normal (not over heating) nd i did a coolant flush due to rust forming nd gunk in rad fill neck.after the flush she ran nice nd cool nd right before this plug failure she started running hotter again.so i pop open rad cap again and boom...theres all the rusty muck again.is my motor doomed? or is there a solution out there?

 

bump

 

Keep flushing :-) make sure you flush the heater core separate.

 

I had the rust in the radiator problem. I had to do a head gasket and new radiator and I'm still not out of the woods with that stupid engine (but it runs cool with the 3-row, that's for sure). You probably started running warm when the leak started, which let your coolant boil. Remember to keep topping off the coolant (in the rad and bottle) after running the engine for a while subsequent to opening the coolant loop for any reason. Might want to consider a can of flush stuff after doing the freeze plugs, and flush again after running that for a day or two.

 

thanks^yea i flushed it once before all this happened with the flush out chemical.and then after this problem with the freeze plug flushed it again with the plug out.what did you mean by 3 row?? bigger rad? or a performance rad.might have to upgrade

 

happend to me today.....worst thing in the world to hot out and old radiators dont mix

 

The first freeze plug on the driver side is leeking on mine. Its been leaking like that for a couple months and ive just been topping off the coolant every 2 weeks or so. Havent gotten around to fixing it yet

 

JB weld makes a great temp fix.

 

JB JB JB JB JB!!! What do you mean temporary???