I discovered yesterday I hadn’t tightened the petcock on the radiator sufficiently a few days ago when I changed the thermostat, and had a drip making a mess of the garage floor. I’ve kept the existing valve way too long, only because I liked the outlet tube on the end that allowed attaching a hose to direct the coolant flow into the drain pan. Unfortunately the drain is under the fan bracketry blocking the view when opening or closing the valve. Due to its age the ears were bent over towards the radiator, making it very difficult to determine if it was tight or not – or to even get a grip on it.
The other problem I experienced virtually every time I drained the radiator, the hose plugged into the end of the extension would stick in the tube and rotate around upside down and shoot coolant over the top edge of the drain pan, fundamentally negating the value of the hose extension!
So I went through my brass fitting tote last night and came up with a short extension to move to petcock away from the radiator, and turn it 90 degrees. This allows the coolant to drain directly under the lower radiator hose and into the pan without need for a hose extension, and provides easy access to the ears for opening and closing:
It took me a while to remember where the new drain came from, as I’ve never purchased one individually that I can think of. Then it occurred to me, this was the valve off the bottom of the compressor. I always remove those and connected a ball valve to the tank for easy release of the moisture buildup.
Of course now that I’m intending to leave the 165 degree thermostat in the engine perpetually, I probably won’t need to use this again for decades!