Well, I found a coolant leak this morning dripping from the bottom of the engine plate. There is a steady drip and a small stream coming from the drivers side when the engine is running. It stops a few minutes after you kill the engine and does not drip when sitting. I just bought the truck and the engine was just rebuilt 9K miles ago with everything new.

I have read on here about freeze plugs on the back of the head leaking and that is my best guess since I can not see any coolant anywhere. My question is how on earth you guys get where you can see this. From what I see it is dang near impossible to get to the rear of the engine. I am gonna try to look with a mirror when I get home.

My second guess is the head gasket. I know retorque usually does not fix this, but on a new engine have you guys seen this and been able to fix it?

Last question is on repair if it is the freeze plug. I have read and it seems reasonable that the trans member could be pulled and the trans lowered enough to be able to get to the back of the head. What I dont want to do is break and engine mount or something else if I go too low. Has anyone done this and can you varify how far it can be dropped if I need to do that?

Thanks!

 

The easiest way is to take the body off



The rear freeze plug is actually on the block.
The easiest way to repair if it is indeed the freeze plug is to leave the old plug in place and bolt a piece of flat steel with gasket material over the plug.
There is a threaded hole on each side of the plug for your plate to bolt down to as seen in the picture.
I've read of people doing this without removing the engine, just the head.
If you want to replace the plug with a new one then the engine needs to come out.
Cummins makes a plate for this location with a threaded outlet. Apparently using this outlet to run to your heater core makes for faster, hotter heat.

 

my truck has 512,000kms on it and it started to seep coolant at the rear of the head just below the frost plug in the above picture.

I'd have to check my records but its been at least 10-15,000kms since I retorqued my head gasket, no leaks to date.

I'd suspect with only 9k on a rebuild you will need to retorque the bolts.

 

Dead on. I crawled around underneath and on top with mirror and flashlight for half an hour to make sure I found the correct origin. It only seaps when you rev it up a little so I had my wife working the throttle up and down while I looked. It has definate white streaking coming from the rear 1/2 of the headgasket from the corner just under the freeze plug(checked this and it is not the source) right to almost the center.

I am going to start with a relube and retorque on the head bolts. I checked the few I could get a wrench on and they all moved a bit at 100lb/ft. Can anyone recite the torque spec? Is it the same torque-plus-angle as a 12 Valve?

 

I just installed a head gasket and torqued all of the inner head bolts to 125 lb/ft and torqued the exhaust side bolts to 118. With the torque angle, the torque for the head bolts is appoxamatly 118 lb/ft. Just make sure to clean the threads and lube them up before you try to torque them. The torque sexuence is the same, start in the center and work your way outward opposite for each set of bolts.

 

I pulled it apart and relubed/retorqued it today. It appears to have fixed the leak....at least on the first drive. Time will tell, but the bolts were not torqued up to 118 before because they were way too easy to break loose. I also changed the A/C compressor due to clutch slipping. Now I gotta get one of those spring clamp release tools so I can change the dryer.