[rahrena8690]

This part failed on my '13 SE 1.6L at around 110k miles. It was a bear to get to and I had the same failure you had but the scraps of plastic were somewhat visible below the mounting area if I recall correctly. It's been a while, but I do remember coolant pumping out of this area at a significant rate. I don't know that I ever had an issue to plastic in my cooling lines, but I DID have to replace the bypass solenoid 2 times within a year or two and it is connected directly to this outlet flange as you know. Perhaps there were bits in there that bogged down the solenoid? I know the solenoids don't have the best reputation for reliability either though.

A thought at least- the coolant is under pressure -perhaps your bits were forced outwards and not carried through the system? Just a thought.

Do you have anything symptoms that may lead you to think there are dangerous plastic bits actually in the system? Any temp warning lights on your dash?

I recognize not much of the above is entirely helpful at once, but just trying to recall what happened with ours and jog some memories.

 

[rahrena8690]

Here was the picture that I got of ours when it went out. Looks a bit more disintegrated, and I think I still had to pull the o-ring from the block if I remember correctly. Lost a TON of coolant and it wasn't very clean when I looked in the catch pan, but I don't remember seeing noticeable plastic chunks.

 

[rahrena8690]

I've not gotten the part delivered yet, so my car is still disassembled. I've decided I'm going to just attach a shop vac to some of the outlet hoses that attach to this part and see if I can pull anything out that way while running water though the system.

According to the flow diagram, this part is basically a junction for hot fluid coming out of the engine, the turbo, and maybe the heater core with two outlet ports. One is valve controlled that goes back to the radiator when fluid is at a certain temperatrue and the other is a bypass hose that goes directly to the water pump. I'm only concerned with that valve and the water pump itself so I'll just vacuum water through that bypass hose and call it a day.

When I read online it doesn't seem many people have been too concerned with this, just trying to be on the cautious side.

Understood and totally get the precaution.

When you say run water through the system- are you thinking of running the engine? If so, Just a heads up from experience with ours, if that TSTAT on the flange isn't seeing any fluid, it's going to send your car into limp mode and give high temp warnings even if you're cycling water through it from the reservoir.

When I put my new outlet flange on (with the TSTAT), that part of the system wasn't seeing enough fluid at first since I was refilling everything and I couldn't seem to get it to start for the life of me. When I called a Ford Tech they said to reset the code to allow the engine to start again, but this time at startup (and as long as I was 100% sure there was new fluid being introduced at the reservoir), I should hold the gas at ~3000 rpm (and in PARK of course) to try to get the water pump to force fluid to the TSTAT before the code could throw again and the engine shut itself down.

Perhaps you'll see something different, but if you do see that, it's what worked for us. Not sure if you can do that though with the outlet flange off / sucking things out with a shop vac if I understood you correctly?