I want to change my coolant this week and was just out there looking around and the location of the coolant drain plugs aren't at all obvious with the way the wide VQ motor is crammed into the bay.

Does anyone have any pictures of the actual coolant drain plugs on our motors?... or any guidance on how to find them easier? Can you only get at them from underneath, and what, if anything, needs to be removed to gain access to these plugs so I an drain the block?

The following diagram from the FSM didn't really help much:

 

I just found a better pic in the FSM which seems to give a better idea of where the front drain plug is on the block.... still not sure about the location of the 2 drain plugs on the sides of the block.

 

im interested as well i will be draining my coolant monday during my aps tt install

 

Yeah... so I never found my engine block side drain plugs. I think I found the one in the front of the motor(thanks to the second picture that I posted above), but I decided not to even use that drain plug since it's directly above all the pulleys and belts and I didn't want to deal with the belts getting coolant all over them, since it is both messy and bad for the belts.

I opted instead for flushing the radiator and cooling system 4 times with pure distilled water, and warming the car up for about 10 minutes each time(with the heater on) so the new distilled water would mix with the old coolant in the system and flush out a portion of it when I drained it. Each time I drained the system, it would drain out about half of the systems total coolant capacity(a little over a gallon), but also weaken the mixture of the fluid coming out so that rather than being dark green like it is from the factory... it was almost clear water with a slight tinge of green in it from the diluted remaining OEM coolant in the system).

When I refilled it the final time with the real coolant, I put in a much stronger than 50/50 mixture of coolant to water(probably something like 2 or 2.5 to 1 coolant to water) so that the coolant would mix with the mostly-distilled water in the system and give me close to a 50/50 mixture once in the system and the fluids had been given a decent chance to disperse and mix with the distilled water that was already in there from the flushing. If anything it's probably a little weak on the coolant mixture, so I might go add a little bit more pure coolant to the radiator sometime this week if the level drops at all.

The closest thing to a drain plug that I found on the side of the motor was a pretty big hex plug on the rear portion of the drivers side of the motor... but I think that is a freeze plug, rather than a drain plug because it was pretty huge(like 1" in diameter).

 

I could be wrong, but I don't think freeze plugs are removable with a tool (they're not threaded). That was probably your drain plug.

 

Yeah, that front one seems clear. It is right below the thermostat assembly. I see that it has been a long time, but have you ever identified the side plugs over the years?

My other question is if you are doing a flush, do you really need to drain all these locations to get it all out? Maybe it just saves you from repeating the flush process too many times.

 

I drained my coolant from the block. I was supprised how much came out, it was more then the radiator. It made a fricken mess, coolant every where and it was a major pain. You need to use a universal joint socket to get them out due to clearance issues. I think the side block ones were an 17mm allen socket and they were on there pretty tight, took me a while. When reinstalling the plugs put some sealant on the threads to prevent leaks, make sure you get the high temp stuff. All you need to do is remove the plastic undertray to get to them.