Dexcool

[elcamino]

I have had several vehicles with Dexcool and not had one problem. My buddy has 125,000 miles on his 1996 Chevy Z71 truck and just changed the coolant this last week. He only did it because he plows snow with the truck and figured his luck would run out sooner or later with the original hoses, I saw the old coolant sittig a pan in his shop, looked very good.

My 1999 K2500 Suburban went over 100,000 miles in 4 yrs and the coolant looked as good as new. The system was never touched.

I think a lot of the problems with Dexcool it the owners. I know one guy who added the green stuff to his car because he said the Dexcool was too expensive. As far as I know nothing has happened yet but he would not tell my anyway.

Kind of funny about the Prestone guy bad-mouthing a Texaco product. I never believe those stories, sounds to much like bashing a competitor who may have a better selling product.

Trouble with many things is when people see "good for 150,000 miles" then tend to never check things and then when something happens, they want to blame something or somebody but not their actions or inactions.

[bbdon]

I have been reading a lot about this subject too, since we have an S-10. My understanding about the Dexcool is that the chemical reaction that creates corrosion protection with this coolant is dependent on high temperatures to work. So in a show car that does not get warmed up much, you don't want Dexcool. It won't provide any corrosion protection at all on a trailer queen. I think that some of the sludge problems that people have been having were traced to incompatible stop leak, which may have actually been put in by GM at the factory. The advantage of the Dexcool is that it lasts longer, and reduces water pump wear. I don't think that those are important factors for a valuable low mileage musclecar.

[NCGuy68]

Whether you run ethylene gylcol or Dexcool DON'T mix the two! It will turn to jelly. Saw a example of this a couple weeks back and it wasn't a pretty picture.

On the other hand, my 2000 SS came with Dexcool. Its now over 4 years old and looks/smells as fresh as day one.

[elcamino]

Another thing I found in some GM TSB is that Dexcool is not back-wards compatible. Meaning if the vehicle never came with it, don't use it because it may react to the metals in the engine or the cooling system.

I know I have the TSB somewhere here but cannot find it right now. It listed what cars and truck came filled with it and those that did not and recommended against using it in those that did not.

So it would seem not the coolant to use in a classic car.

[Norm reynolds]

I have to disagree you can do a back wards with dexcool Pontiac had a TBS
On the V6 it seems that GM engineering found that they were replacing way to many head gaskets and it was found that dexcool was the problem I cannot find it right now
I went though five water pumps in five years on my Blaze with a 350 When Iput on the last one I put back the green antifreeze and no more water pump problems
A friend of my had his Blazer in for service at a local Chevy dealer and they told him that his head gaskets were showing signs of leaking they also told him it was because of dexcool we drained it out and flush it out real good and put in the green antifreeze that was nine months ago and so far no leaks When I was working on a fleet of trucks we had a real big problems with the Cuminigs diesels blowing out head gaskets
I was told by Freight liner to dump the dexcool [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsdown.gif[/img] Like I said before I have seen way
To many problems with it and I WOULD NOT USE IT ON A SHOW CAR [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/no.gif[/img]