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Yet another maintenance dilemma that I’m sure goes without doubt most non-mechanics must fret over.
Changing my coolant and I have no clue how to know what type of coolant I should use.
I feel like I’m drifting out at sea!I opened my coolant cap of my 10 year old Honda 2004 CR-V to find a green coolant.
Originally I thought that green coolant was the inorganic original back-then stuff.
But then I read that sometime before the century mark, Honda switched to OAT technology for their coolants, and it also had the green color. Now the dealership only has blue All Season coolant type 2. I’m planning on draining the radiator and re-filling/bleeding the system just like Eric did in his maintenance video. So should I?A ) just use the new blue honda coolant and mix it in with my green stuff (which I think is the original coolant) as the manual says use Honda all season coolant type 2, and hope it mixes well. Eric used a generic Blue coolant from Beck/Arnley in the video, but I’m not sure what coolant he had in there before. It is basically Water/Ethylene glycol/ and KOH.
B ) buy generic coolant from the store that is silicate free and splash it in there.
C ) never change the coolant and hope that the lack of inhibitors and anti-corrosive agents won’t allow my coolant system to rotten at the pump, which already has a minor sweat to begin with.
Your Call!
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I recently did a service on my 2004 Accord V6 and as you mentioned, it had a green coolant. It wasn’t too long ago that Honda switched over to blue color coolant. So, go ahead and buy a gallon from the Honda dealership (50/50 premix around $22 bux) and perform a drain and refill. Your car shouldn’t take more than a gallon. 1 gallon was sufficient for my accord.
Here’s what Prestone has to say about classification of coolants and how they can be mixed. Personally I try to avoid ever mixing coolant types, though some mixing is unavoidable when you change types. Even when you do a distilled water flush there will be small pockets of remaining old coolant that will mix with new. And the old days of putting a garden hose on and doing a huge volume flush is not environmentally safe. Their comment that the Magnussen Moss warranty act protects the consumer is vaguely reassuring, but I’m not seeing a guarantee of no chemical interaction there. For some reason the embedding keystroke sequence for embedding isn’t working for me today. The video is here
[video width=500 height=281 type=youtube]Ffpe8aVvb2c[/video]
From my experience, all coolants get drained after 2 flushes with garden hose. No coolant residue will be remaining in the radiator.
The block will be filled with water so it’s better to use undiluted. Filling with 50/50 after garden hose flush will mean the actual concentration is 70/30 or something. When I did garden hose flush, I emptied most of the water from the block with air pressure into the upper hose.
okay, so after my research, here is the(my) final word on Coolants…
1) some car companies use OAT and some use HOAT (with inorganic inhibitors)
2) not all OATs are the same and not HOATs are the same (key point)
3) only perform a drain and fill if you are using a very similar type of coolant, otherwise it is recommended to perform a flush and fill. The reason being that if you are using different package of inhibitors, you will be diluting them instead of adding them. Not to mention possible reactions.
4) for my Honda, which has the old green OAT stuff, I can switch to Prestone/SuperTech/Dexcool if I did a flush and fill. These coolants have 2-EH OAT, as opposed to Honda’s oem coolant, which does not, but the 2-EH is no longer a significant threat to well maintained/air-tight coolant systems. Either way, I’m facing a flush situation this time out, and then drain and fill maintenance in the future. A little more than I was hoping for $$$, but it’s the right thing to do.
The old green Prestone is an IAT coolant, and I’ve used it for many years. But it is disconcerting that even Prestone do not recommend that type, at least for cars built in the past decade (see the above video). It is nice to see that car manufacturers are concerned enough about corrosion of internal structures that they have improved on the product from the perspective of corrosion inhibitors. But overall I would say they have failed, since cooling system difficulties remain a major problem in the life of a car. New plastic parts that get brittle and leak are a big part of that problem (grin). So, you don’t often have to replace coolant on a schedule because you will do it anyway when parts start to leak or break down.
I do not believe Prestone makes Green coolant… their’s is yellow as to not change the color of your coolant when topping up.
2) funny enough, Dexcool gets used in Hondas. The Prestone all makes all models is essentially the same as Dexcool and gets used in them a lot also. Dexcool and Prestone all makes are both 2-EH formulas. Honda and many others don’t like 2-EH. But, 2-EH is not the problem it is made out to be. It is more sensitive to some types of contamination (especially air intrusion).
If the Honda is well maintained, the Dexcool or Prestone
should be fine. It is not OEM approved, but it is in the
same general family (OAT) as the genuine Honda coolant.
Honda does use phosphates which Dexcool does not.Sounds like a discussion with others on what type of oil to use on my motorcycle. Everyone has an opinion, LoL. I’d just drain it and replace it although it will still get mixed with some of the old stuff. My car manual says to use only Dex-cool on my Grand Am to avoid damaging the aluminium engine parts, others say Dex-cool damages the aluminum parts. So I use a mid-priced 50/50 “general” antifreeze. Has worked ok for now.
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