Does anyone really do this to their cooling system?

I don’t know the slant, but on the LA there is drain plugs on both sides of the block to drain it.

I would not remove the soft plugs unless the motor is out and your doing a rebuild…

And if you have a stock system that’s not having problems, best is to just drain it, DO NOT USE FLUSH, and put some new coolant in it. When you use flush, it is like solvent and can actually cause problems… so now you have problems where you did not have one…