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magnetic drain plug at your local autparts store, $4.
Yes , this will work . However ......
In days of olde , when knights were bold ..... well , alright , call this a beater school of maintenance - magnet trick #1 .
Go to your friendly aftermarket stereo store/installer and ask if you can go thru the trash where they throw all the old speakers out .
Get yourself some kind of speaker magnet that will fit on some kind of flat wall "near" the drain plug area - and not create some other kind of problem . (Side or backside is safer but bottom (protected) is fine - if you have grd clearance).
Remove the magnet from the speaker and install on the clean oil pan surface you have carefully selected .
When time comes to change your very warm to hot oil (important) remove the magnet and with a
suitable soft and very, blunt object LIGHTLY rap the "hot" pan in various locations until some test object held close indicates the magnetized pan is no longer magnetic - or at least barely so .
(A large enough (full pan lenght or width is fine) piece of soft wood will keep those with less experience out of trouble).
All you want to accomplish here is to lightly "vibrate" the HOT pan repeatably , - enough to lose most of its magnetism .
Wiggle the vehicle to slosh the pan just a little bit - gently - you just want a small amount of movement in the pan here - not big splashes - doesn't take much push on the vehicle .
Now drain your fluid .
I say fluid , because this can be even more useful on a steel transmission pan esp one with OEM non-filtration filtration .
If you are fortunate enough to have a high clearance vehicle with a large transmission pan such as a Ford F250
you can go to town on this - to the point of barely being able to remove the magnetic w/o damaging yourself or the vehicle .
Up to that point more or several is generally better .
Lets cover one common nay say on this .
Lets say you are in a hurry and don't fully demagnitize the pan before drain so that not all or even very little of the magnetic material flows out .
Ok , ......think , people , think .... sooooo what !
If the pans still "that" magnetic the stuffs not going anywhere harmful and you are going to reinstall the magnet before filling anyway .
If people really knew just how much magnetic material remained behind on ATs with internal magnets .... including on all or part of the pan when they do their partial drains .....
Anyway , if you leave a big one on for a while and then remove the pan come service time you will not believe what your magnet pulled out and held on your magnetic transmission pan - even compared to internal factory magnets .
This is all good .
One possible downside - it can become something of a disease .
You know you got it bad when you start attaching magnets to things like iron master cylinders
and trying to figure out how you can secure one in your power steering pump reservoir w/o messing something up .
For some , the most interesting uses involve coolant and cooling systems - correctly configured - strange but wonderful things can happen given enough time .
Without a doubt , Sarge and his Dad are the real deal - any pictures of Mom ?
