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What kind of car is it, and have you checked your owner's manual for the recommended change interval there?
GM cars, for example, which do not use standard antifreeze but something called Dexcool, or supposed to be able to go much longer intervals between changes (I'd still personally do it more often than the manufacturer recommends, just to be safe).
I think when I was driving a car that used standard antifreeze, the recommended interval was around every 30K miles (I could be wrong about that).
Definitely check your owner's manual for it's recommendations.
What color is the coolant? If it is orange color and not green you might be set to as much as 50,000, but if not right NOW it's time. You might need to take care and read about the spec the car wants. Not any coolant might be good enough. Many alloy engines these days want No Silicates in the coolant which can be hard on seals.
I have never replaced the antifreeze in any car I've ever owned, and I typically drive them into the 200K neighborhood. That includes northern Michigan and Canada.
Las Vegas Drunk "The maintenance schedule says 60,000, but I would change it earlier myself". Thanks- this is what the manual says, but because the car is almost 6 years old, I may change it t around 30k. Thanks everyone.
88, Just because you never did, don't mean the stuff didn't wear our, get contaminated and kill a few water pump seals. And if that didn't happen you were just lucky. Dis-similar metals act under the law of galvanic action and create contaminates. This has been a on going problem since dis-similar metals.
Contaminates can and do clog radiators and heater cores too, which become solids in the system. At times it is a wise idea to flush these out as best one can, even acid flush at times.
I have hands on rodding out rads and it is no fun. To do that is not rocket sceince either, you pull the rad out of the vehical and with a torch melt the top tank cover off from it's solder, then with a rod like a gas welding rod you ram the sludge out of each tube till water flows clear. And that won't get it all.
But you do what you can and solder the top cover right back on. That is a fair bit of soldering and the cover distorts coming off.
With the new fangle alloy and plastic rads, well they are the dixie cup of rads. Clog em up and throw em away.
Have a 5 year old car with only 25k on it. Time to replace fluid or no?
Dang, you must hardly ever take that car out of the garage! My car is 4yrs, 8 mos old and has 71K miles on it (it had 28K when I bought it 3 yrs ago).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac_Muz
88, Just because you never did, don't mean the stuff didn't wear our, get contaminated and kill a few water pump seals.
I'm wondering if contaminated coolant in my car was the reason I had a leak around the water pump recently. Luckily, it was covered by the powertrain warranty so I didn't have to pay to replace the pump.
How often do you recommend changing the coolant on cars that use Dex-crap?
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