2008 king ranch radiator upgrade ??? (help pls)

[akafireball]

Hi, Long time lurker here,Paul in SC..
I could use some advise from the Forum ,I bought my wife a low mile 60k 08 king ranch 4x4 a year are so ago .I am slowly loosing fluid cant find a leak visually about (1/4 to 1/2 gal a week) .I am assuming its a pinhole in the radiator . I want to tear into it and do new hoses new thermostat and a new HD Radiator . I can do all that for less than the cost of taking it to a shop to get it diagnosed . My questions for the form experts here are ...what is the best HD radiator to get ? can I get one with lifetime warranty or are they junk from the big 3 parts stores ? A motor-craft from rock auto is around $243 (can I ...should I get the rad w/super-cooling ?) I guess I should also figure out if i have the towing package or not I am assuming it does as its 4x4 King ranch? also should I get a lower temp thermostat I have done that in the past with chevy FI v8's with good results like a 160 degree thermo or 170? any advise would be greatly appreciated y'all ...& please excuse my poor spelling & grammar ...God Bless

 

[Hamfisted]

You can safely run a 180 degree thermostat without triggering a CEL for engine too cold. I would recommend buying or renting from your local autoparts store a cooling system pressure test kit and pressurize the system to find the coolant leak first, before you go spending money unnecessarily.

Cooling System Test Kit on Amazon






.

 

[JamaicaJoe]

Most coolant has a UV dye so you can see leaks under UV light. You might try that to find where its coming from.

 

[Gary Waugh]

I am not good at describing it, but there is a plastic T join in the cooling system hat is very probe to leaking, is easy to change out and could be your cause.. something to look at before replacing the radiator.. if you pop the hood up, then stand in front of the car looking at the engine. You will see your battery on the left hand side of the engine, there is a coolant hose that comes up from the bottom of the engine between the engine and the battery, it comes up over the rocker cover and joins another line that comes from the bulk head and the 3rd coolant line goes to the front of the car. Where these 3 lines meet is a cheap plastic T piece that often leaks (when it does the coolant drips onto the spark plugs and sometimes causes a misfire!! The T piece is not available from Ford, they sell the 3 hoses with the T piece, so you can either replace rather hoses and T piece (what I did) or you can cut the T piece out and fit a metal T piece with hose clamps h there is plenty of slack in the lines to do this, and it’s a lot cheaper than the ford part, you just buy a metal T piece from a hardware store).
worth checking first, because my leak was slow, the coolant would drip onto the hot engine and evaporate, so I never saw any coolant on the floor!! But when the engine was running and hot, you could see the coolant leaking out.

 

[akafireball]

thanks Guys ...all are good ideas ill check with uv dye before i go any farther ...i totally forgot about that ...then if no joy...Ill rent a cooling system pressure test kit...

 

[akafireball]

Thanks to all y'all..I replaced the leaking heater hose t piece with plastic part from advance auto (help) section...bought spare y and t in brass for next time from amazon ...

 

[ediddily]

Can you post a few pics of where this "T" is. I have a leaky radiator on battery side too. Replaced the radiator just last year and don't want to do it again.