question about coolant
 

ok just got my 08 back from ford. god bless bumper to bumper warranty.

the radiator was leaking coolant so i took it back and they fixed it, but they told me someone had put in the green coolant, and it was soposed to be orange stuff. the tech went on to say it could mess up the sensors and some other stuff. they wanted me to have the system flushed and wanted 140 bux to do it. i told them no do not flush the system because i did not have 140 dollars for the flush.

so later on he called me said they went ahead and flushed the system, at no charge. so ok cool. i also informed them that i had added coolant for the last 4 weeks because i needed the truck and couldn't get it in for service, and i also went on to say when i bought it it had green coolant in the system so i just kept adding green coolant. so he said ok. when i checked the coolant level today after i got the truck back from service and it cooled down its some slight watery yellow crap in there.

i was miffed because they changed the whole radiator, so the majority of coolant was lost anyways, and whats left would of been diluted down (in my opinion) so when i was speaking with them it sounded fishy and like un needed work. hence why im here asking.

so my question is WTF? green coolant? orange coolant? clear coolant? every pos vehicle i have monkeyed with ran green coolant so did my 94, now this 08 has all kinds of new stuff going on and makin me feel retarded here. so do i have to go get a different blend of coolant for it?

btw i wasent adding strait green coolant i had it in a 50/50 mix.

yea. the new stuff is that sort of yellowish stuff. mOst autoparts stores should have it.

Justin, I was a ford water pump engineer for 6yrs.

The techs I'm sure have good intentions but they are wrong. Actually the opposite is true. The "long life" coolants are more agressive on plastics than are the older "silicate" types of coolant. (green)

I guess you gotta play by thier rules because of the warrenty and all. But the green stuff will work fine. It's only "downfall" is that you'll need to change it every 3yrs or 50k miles. (the silicates leach out with use)

Rich

I don't have an answer to your question... but here's an article about it

http://www.machinerylubrication.com/...?articleid=703

That's a pretty good article IMO.

No matter what coolant is used there is one thing you can't get away from. And that's the fact that coolant is not filtered. Personally.. on my ranger I run the long life prestone and change it every 50k miles. (btw, changing it today for the first time)

I know on my 01 3.0L there is a sticker on the radiator shroud that shows a bottle of orange cooland being poured in with a big red X through it......then there's a picture of yellow liquid with a greed check mark.

I know the orange stuff is for most GM vehicles.......and the green is the older style coolant. The yellow seems to be the most popular now. And I only use Prestone.

allright thanks. yea i use the prestone 50/50 green mix.

Kinda high for $140 for a flush, the Ford dealer ship I bought my truck from does the full flush for $85. I did my truck not that long ago since I had the money.

Excellent article Elan ! It answered a lot of my questions.......