On the 996 I've been using the VAG stuff (from VW). On the Duc I've used the BMW stuff. ON just about everything else it's whatever's on sale at the local parts store. On my Pilot I ran Honda but Hondas are so sensitive.
What stuff do you like? Oh, of course the race car gets water and redline water wetter.
Toyota Red, or pink (pre mixed) if I can't find the pure Red anymore.
It depends on the system and what it originally used for coolant. If it originally used old school green or a G-05 type HOAT, I put G-05 in it (after a good flush if it previously had green). Anything with an oddball factory coolant I usually feed it the factory stuff.
My Fords and Mazdas get old school green, even though they came with Ford Gold coolant. But they also get full flushes every 18 to 24 months without fail.
Anything that NASCAR uses is a no. Everything else is fine.
LOL. Race cars should be using enhanced water just in case of an accident, right.
Whatever green stuff is on sale in everything except the Colorado. It still has Dexcool in it.
I think the best actual coolant I used was Evans NPG, but it has some pretty huge drawbacks.
I put it in a tow mule with a Caddy 500 when I lived in CA. The nice part was that since it didn't have any water in it, I didn't care when it hit 250 degrees climbing a mountain with my foot to the floor in 100 degree weather towing 10k lbs. No ping, no boil, no damage.
Downsides:
- the system uses a non-pressure or low-pressure cap, so you always smelled coolant
- if you developed a leak, it was expensive to replace what you lost (and not fixable with a quick trip to AutoZone)
- It was not quite as thermally efficient since it didn't have water, so other things had to be considered like increasing flow around the thermostat, bigger radiator.
Long story short, it wasn't as good at cooling, but you didn't care because it can't boil until something like 380 degrees.
My cars are all old-ish, so I just use plain green Prestone (or the generic parts store version).
I was at the center of the Dexcool crap and I know its not as evil as I perceive it, but its really bad stuff. Kind of like the Firestone/Explorer debacle, Dexcool was partly Havoline's fault and also GM's fault, but it really isn't good stuff. Its good on paper, not good in use.
In reply to curtis73 :
Dexcool generally works fine provided a couple of conditions are met: it's never mixed with any other coolant and some attention is paid to gasket materials to ensure the coolant doesn't eat them. Once you get outside those conditions, things go bad fast.
As far as the "plain green Prestone", I hope you don't mean the "all makes all models" green stuff. That stuff isn't regular green coolant. It's pretty much green Dexcool.
AHHH... thanks for hte reminder. The truck has no antifreeze (at least for Indiana). Need to do the t-stat anyway might as well do a D&F
rslifkin said:In reply to curtis73 :
Dexcool generally works fine provided a couple of conditions are met: it's never mixed with any other coolant and some attention is paid to gasket materials to ensure the coolant doesn't eat them. Once you get outside those conditions, things go bad fast.
As far as the "plain green Prestone", I hope you don't mean the "all makes all models" green stuff. That stuff isn't regular green coolant. It's pretty much green Dexcool.
Nope. I mean the old-school stuff.
Dexcool has a lot more to it than external things. In the presence of any cavitation and silicates, it forms sandy orange jello. From there it destroys water pumps, heater cores, and plugs passages. There is a reason GM has sued Havoline 9 times totalling over 3 Billion dollars.
GM spent thousands on my car alone. Two water pumps and three heater cores in the first year. After that, I got tired of my new car sitting in the dealership all the time so I flushed and filled with plain green and haven't had a problem since. We Impala SS guys had a "waterfall in the dashboard" problem that would happen if the coolant got a little low. We knew that as soon as we heard it, we might as well flush and refill or we would soon have a leaking water pump, sandblasted impellers, clogged heater cores, and overheating.
The GM shortcoming was that (in addition to the E36 M3ty coolant) their left hand didn't pay attention to their right hand and they continued the use of clay tablets in the cooling system which introduced a bunch of available silicon to the mix.
Its "fragile." Like you said, it only functions in a very narrow set of operational parameters. I just don't know why anyone would use a coolant that turns into abrasive paste if you sneeze wrong.
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