sjim

I have Ford E150 5.4L, in rear passenger side of engine where upper intake manifold meets the engine block, there's a missing plug/part/cover in this corner where the two meet. There's no wires connected to this part, but is a place for a single bolt and next to it is have exposed open valve, and gasket is visible on the bottom engine block.
I thought it was freeze plug, coolant valve, temp sending unit, but, nobody at 2 autozones could figure it out, even ford isn't 100% sure. At first, I though part of the upper manifold broke off exposing a corner of the engine block valve, however, isn't the case, whatever was there broke/blew off due to pressure or likely due to the pin hole coolant leak in my water metal by pass hose right above it.
I believe it's a water/coolant port of some type. see pic

sjim

nobody has any idea yet, lol, I'm stumped...

ColtRice17

Never seen anything like that.

ghostrider

It's where the heads are able to be reversed. It's 100% the way it was from the factory. it did freak me out when I saw it after building my motor!

RicheysFX4

If your getting antifreeze coming out there u got a blown gasket

ghostrider

It terminates to nothing iirc

sjim

Ghostrider... I actually thought that to be a possibility but man, everytime I looked at it I couldn't believe they would build it that way (lol). I actually was mistaken about the coolant it was from the water-by-pass metal hose going into the manifold that leaked from above down around this area, so it looked as though it had leaked.

Ghostrider.....have you fired up that engine...etc.... and nothing gushing out? guessing this has to be the case

ghostrider

Nothing leaked it has close to 10k miles on the motor now

sjim

ah, man I'm so relieved! lol, I'm guessing there's probably x amount of engines like this before they produced upper intakes to fully cover the lower block completely.

ghostrider

To my knowledge all the 5.4 and 4.6's are like this