I have a 2001 Jeep grand Cherokee v8, it’s got 232,000 miles on it. It runs great, I keep up with whatever breaks and has been mostly a decent car for 3500$….so I had a freeze plug come out a long time ago and had someone put a replacement in. It’s one of the rubber ones with a hex head you tighten. The problem is it’s behind the starter and the exhaust manifold/header(not sure if it even called that). It was fine for a long time, now after like three months of driving it, it starts pushing that plug out and spilling antifreeze on that pipe and burning it. It’s not a huge deal to get under there and whack it back in place w a hammer and long socket extension but I would like to fix it for good. I’ve tried bending a wrench to the correct degree angle on it but I only had a short wrench, so no throw really.( now that I said that maybe that’s my problem is, I need a longer wrench?) I guess my question is, would there be anything other than freezing temperatures that push out the plugs? I live in Tennessee so it freezes but not horribly. For me to press another plug in there, would I have to take off the pipes coming from engine? It doesn’t look like fun any way I look at it. That’s why I’m here. I’ve seen a lot of good advice come from here.
Freeze plug is kind if a stupid name for these core plugs. Ice rarely pushes them out before destroying the engine.
It’s just pressure in cooling system that pusehes it out. It needs to be titght enough or have some other retention to hold it. Like a tap from the side. I have no experience on Jeep v8. So this is just general advice.