coolant leak!

[arclightzero]

Ok, so despite the fact that my garage floor currently looks more like an oil field than a concrete slab, that's an easy fix. I've purchased about every oil seal and gasket out there and will be doing a little work this weekend.

However, a new occurrence that I found last night while digging around was a spot of antifreeze building up on top of the oil slick. So I crawled under the car to look and found that the coolant seems to be coming from the back of the motor. The gasket between the block and the clutch shield was saturated and dripping down the clutch shield.

I am thinking it's the freeze plug back there, but I'm not 100%. Any ideas on this one? I've never had to deal with freeze plugs, so I don't know much about them, but I read somewhere in the service manual that there was a plug on the back of the motor beneath the clutch shield, so I'm hoping that is the problem...

If anybody else has seen this or had to deal with this, I'd love to hear about your experience.

[Young Ed]

That's going to be a hard one to fix in the vehicle. 99% sure you have to remove the bellhousing to fix that plug.

[55 Fargo]

Hers how it's done, as I have done this myself, it is a bigger job, but not overly technical or hard.

1) Drain Coolant, and remove floor pan if yours unbolts

2), remove driveshaft,chock the wheels, get front of car on safe and sturdy stands and or ramps.

3)disconnect trans linkage

4) remove trans

5) disconnect clutch linkage

6)unbolt clutch housing pan

7) remove clutch assembly and release fork.

8) block engine with a jack,using a wood block under the rear of the oil pan.

9) unbolt and remove flywheel and starter motor

10) unbolt bellhousing, and motor mounts

11) remove bellhousing, clean and paint if needed.

12) remove freeze plug, cleanout hole of crud, replace freeeze plug with a good sealant and knock into place.

Take the time if need be to replace rear main seal, oil pan gaskets, etc

Have flywheel machined, if needed, replace or have clutch rebuilt.

Repeat steps in reverse to complete the job, replace motor mounts if they need to be replaced, I did not and should have on mine.

I may have missed somethings, but basically this is it, a 2 to 3 day job, or a weekend project..........Fred