If you check the owner’s manual of every car made in the last 20 years or so, it screams to high heaven that there is ONLY ONE!!! proper kind of coolant to use. This is accompanied by almost-Lovecraftian warnings of doom and severe damage if you use any other type of coolant.
On the other hand, go to Walmart or any auto-parts store, and every major manufacturer of coolant (including the private labels, such as Walmart’s brand) claim that their product will work in any engine, with any type or color of coolant. This claim is consistent across all price levels.
So which is correct, or at least closer to being correct?
Just guessing here, but your owners manual giving you such dire warnings about using the wrong coolant also says to use a coolant made or sold by Ford/Cheverolet/GMC/Toyota/Volkswagon or whatever brand car right? I’ve seen this a lot with Fords and transmission fluid, but I’ve never seen coolant warnings. Might be because I’m not looking though. Bout the only thing I use the owners manual for is to figure out how to set the clock twice a year.
Its a marketing ploy. Sort of like how (again Ford is the one I’ve noticed) you never see a car commercial mention mechanic’s services provided by anyone but, very specifically, the service department at the dealership.
Except Cadillac and their motor oil, forgot about them and their motor oil, I’ve never had a caddy, but I seem to recall something about voiding warranties and motor oil in connection to Cadillac.
When I thought about it a couple of years ago, I decided that Orange and Green coolants /could/ be mixed together, based on the listed ingredients. I formed the opinion that the warning about not mixing was mostly about some /other/ kind of coolent from the past.
Also, it seemed to me that the main difference between Orange and Green additives was different regulations in Japan/Eurupe/USA, that made USA components illegal in Europe/Japan. The secondary difference then was that, having tested and specified a coolent mix, Japanese/European car companies with long warrenties were disinclined to say “Oh, and anything else you put in will probably be OK anyway”
In the end, I decided that it /probably/ wouldn’t make any difference which I put in /my/ engine, but even then that nobody had tested or guaranteed anything other than the manufacturers specification.
pretty much every car maker still uses ethylene glycol with a hybrid organic acid (HOAT) anti-corrosion package. if you put green stuff in your car, you trash that and at best you’ll need to change it within a couple of years.
As I understand it-it depends.
There are certain cars, at least certain model years of cars, that can be damaged by the wrong fluid. A few minutes googling will provide you with more than you want to know.
The problem as I understand it is that for the vast bulk of cars sold in the US (as I remember the story, this problem started with one or more German automaker and has spread to others) there won’t be a problem. Your challenge is to determine whether your car is one of the exceptions. And the best place to determine that is the car manual. Which as you pointed out, has large screaming warnings that if you used any fluid except the exact fluid from that manufacturer, they can’t be responsible for the consequences. Are you feeling lucky?
Personally, I recommend doing the research. I did-now I have 2 containers of coolant in my garage that I will never be able to use… Sigh. I wasn’t lucky.
One good rule-don’t mix the coolants. Whatever you decide to use, use only one kind.
And Flyer did the research. I was mostly correct…, I still wouldn’t mix coolants. Seems like an unnecessary risk
Unless you are putting it into a system with copper radiator or heater core, or any copper piping there should be no issue per say.
The good old Green can go in anything, the downside is the corrosion inhibitor wears out, which it always did.
The orange can only go in systems that have no copper, it’s upside is the corrosion inhibitor lasts a lot longer.
The antifreeze part of the good old green stuff never wears out, and you can actually but the lube/anti corrosion to add back to it, but knowing what kind of crap builds up in the cooling system over time, i am still up for a flush and refill every so often.
Even if you want to recycle and rejuvenate good old green, nice to get the junk out of the cooling system.
This. I suppose is the most important about it, doesn’t really matter what type of radiator or cooling system, but a flush every now and then definitely needs to be done to keep things working. I check my fluids once a week and whenever I check the reservoir it’s still bright hulk green, no rusty brown color, flakes or anything. I had the radiator changed out a while back with an aftermarket, really cheap considering my car and I am making sure to take good care of it, never want to go through that again. You know, the driving in the summer with the heat on and hood cracked (on city streets, don’t try that on a highway)
