my old cars (american) i would toss in what ever, I have been working for Mercedes for 12 years and they suggest OEM coolant only...i have seen what peoples cooling systems look like in their cars after putting in auto zone/pep boys stuff that isnt suggested for a aluminum engine and its ugly and expensive.

I try to use OEM parts on both my maxima when possible (unless its a performance part) and same thing with my suv, usually when a car company suggests something I would stick to it. I just bought spark plugs and a air filter for my car, i could have gotten fram or what ever else cheap stuff, but for the extra money, i know it is made for my car, and if i have a problem i know where it came from, just like someone suggested, peace of mind for down the road. Both my car and suv have about 80k on them, they need to last me another 100k before i think about buying something else.

Dont believe me about trying to use OEM parts? got a call from a wholesale customer, needed a $1500 cat for a car to pass emissions, they changed it still didnt pass, ordered all sorts of relays and what not from me, finally i sad why dont you bring it down and ill have someone look at it rather than guessing, burnt cap and wrong rotor on the car, all aftermarket crap, changed them and car passed with no problem, the shop tried to save $20 bucks by going aftermarket and spent close to $2000 on the customer, and didnt have the ***** to tell the customer they messed up......

Sorry for the story, but it goes to show what happens in some cases, NOT all of them

Jay

 

That's not the actual water pump that came out of the Taurus. That's just a picture I found on Google images to explain what was worn off.

If they haven't trashed the one at the shop I go to, I'll snap some pictures.

 

Why is this even a discussion, stop being cheap and lazy and go to Nissan or Toyota. /thread

 

We're driving 9-year old, 3-model-changes-ago Japanese sedans.
If I wasn't cheap I'd be driving a bimmer.

If you love your dealer high-grossing you in his parts department, go for OEM coolant.

 

That's a stupid thing to say. Cheap out on your coolant and it will cost you x1000 more in the future when every part of your coolant system is destroyed. It's not like Nissan or Toyota coolant is that much more. It's approx $25 for a gallon. $50 now or $1000 later? You pick.

 

You don't want a Bimmer, trust me.

If any kind of car is picky about the kind of fluids you put in it, it's a BMW.

We put Peak coolant into my sister's. The "universal" bull ish. And it ripped her thermostat a new one within two weeks.

 

I have a 170,000 mile Maxima
A 103,000 Maxima
and had a 146,000 mile Altima 3.5Se

All of them have been running Prestone Extended Life since I got them.
No thermostat replacements
No waterpump replacement.

I drained/filled again after 30,000 miles on all of them
Coolant was clear, no debris, no issues with the cooling system (except for the well-know upper-tank radiator crack developing in the 170.000 mile Max).

I call bull**** on OEM coolant expense.

 

There's your catch twenty-two. Prestone suggests that every 30,000 miles you should do a flush and refill.

OEM Nissan coolant is designed to last a lot longer than that. So essentially, you're paying a little more for something with a lot longer lifespan.

That's just like going to Autozone and buying, say, their cheapest brake pads. $29.99...in a year, they're worn out. So you pay $29.99 for another set. Or you can go buy a set of Hawks or OEMs (or even Autozone ceramics!) for around $65.00 that will last three or four years.

Just because something is cheaper doesn't mean it's just as good. In the world of automotive maintenance, you do usually get what you pay for.

Not to bring up headers again, but look at OBX headers compared to Cattmans. NOT comparing horsepower gains, but build quality and fitment, the Cattmans are far superior to the OBX headers.

 

The Prestone I use is the 5 year/150,000 mile one. But if you want more expensive stuff, no issues with that.

 

You never made that clear. Most Prestone you see is 30-50,000 miles.

What's the local cost per gallon..?

 

11 bucks at Walmart, goes on sale a lot for $8

 

Eh, I'll stick to my OEM coolant regardless. It something you change once anually or bi-anually at most. It's not that big of a hit to my wallet.

It's not like going out and spending $75 a pop on an oil filter and Royal Purple or something every month...not that Royal Purple is that great to begin with.

 

Thanks for the write up! You make this sound pretty easy, I think I am going to give it a shot soon. With OEM coolant after I get some. Thanks

 

Be sure to use distilled water, you can get it for 83 cents a gal at Walmart.
The high mineral content of tap water probably does more damage to aluminum engines that DexCool

And having the heater running on high temp is important because you want to make sure you get the old coolant out of your heater core, so it needs to circulate.

When you almost done and still have the car up on ramps, keep watching inside the radiator until it stops burping air bubbles, takes 15 minutes or so at idle. Then top off with distilled water and seal it up.

 

You didn't mention before it needs to be up on ramps. I don't have any, just planning on putting a pan under the car to catch the coolant. Do I have to have the car on ramps to do this?

 

No, you don't. The coolant will actually flow out of the block easier if the car isn't on ramps/jackstands. But you can accomplish it either way.

 

Or you can jack up the front of the car as much as you car. It is useful to have it that way when you are bleeding the air out of coolant system.

 

This is true. Never thought of this...

 

The reasoning behind that, from what I've read, is so the radiator cap openning sits at a level higher than the heater core, since air tends to seek out the highest spot when bubbling up.

 

Same here....exact same thing happened to me even though I flushed between the two really, really well.

 

It shouldn't even go into those. I put green standard Prestone in my Saturn some time ago and have not looked back.

 

I just got an email from a Nissan Dealership in Seattle, WA area that said Nissan Coolant is now blue and NOT compatibile with Nissan green. I wonder if it's ok to put into a older 2003 Maxima?

 

I wonder how many "green's" you have to let slip out of your pocket to get one of those containers of blue stuff.

 

Flush out the Nissan green with distill water and put Toyota red.

 

Campbell Nelson Nissan told me $21.95/gal

 

My friend you are not living in rural america to trust the lone star dealership in the 100 mile radius. U are living in a big city, show the middle finger to that dealer. OEM coolants are available OTC when u go to a dealership, there are many jerks on the other side of a stealership counter saying "why buy nissan coolants when Peak Global is compatible (this is what happened to me when I got my pump replaced, you would trust them immediately becoz u think it is gospel coming right from a stealership's mouth)." U know why they say that becoz you will fu...k up ur cooling system and not know where to fix it and come to them to fix it. There are a lot of idiottts who will take you to lala land and take ur vehicle to the dumpster.

OEM coolants are the only option to healthy cooling and peace of mind.

 

Crap. Guess what I just drained from my car last month that I'd put in 4+ years ago.



No, I don't know what the Hell possessed me to use it either. Anyway I drained it, the radiator looks like new, the thermostat works fine, and I haven't had a cooling problem. Still, the horror stories with this stuff make me nervous. I replaced it with Prestone EL. Now I'm thinking of going with the Nissan oem coolant. Did I hear right? It's blue?

 

I drained and filled Dexcool at 60K and only at 100K did the overheating being. So the stuff takes time to cook and then it comes with a bang. I spent $800 for getting it fixed, 2 times ($300) to the stealership to say they cannot identify the problem, $100 for local guy to check it out. Finally $150 for compression test or whatever with stealership and then finally I gave up. Hell with these jerks "trying" to find the problem.

By chance of luck I told myself let me change the radiator. Hurrah, all issues were resolved.

To check if the radiator is partially clogged (as in my case), I will get a good clean pan and cleanup the surface around the drain bolt on the radiator and open the drain bolt (save the coolant if you have recently flushed the system, else throw away the collected coolant0. If the whole coolant in the radiator drains in a constant flow w/o any hiccups then u have a good radiator. If it drains drains fast, stops, drains, stops, then u have a timebomb sitting there.

Good luck. I can call myself "expert in Nissan cooling system" with all the nonsense I went thro to undo what I did at 60K miles. That was when I learnt the lesson hard, very hard way.

 

Oh well I forgot to add to this storey what happened to my brother. He had 175K on original Honda coolant. He happened to get new tires from Sears and then the guy there "recommended" replacing the cooling system. My idiot bro agreed w/o talking to me (we are all connected in this wonderful world with cellphones, right...). That service guy must have dumped Dexcool in it as my bro said it was green.

Now with 175K the radiator is already is its last straw of life, the dexcool cooked the radiator in 10K miles. Overheating and smoke under hood, he replaced the radiator and that too didn't fix the problem. He must have messed up something big like head gasket or whatever.

Salvage company took it for $500 and he bought himself a $35K loaded Rav4. Another lesson with coolants..

Take my word, never monkey with coolant department.

 

Are you hearing yourself correctly? He had a Honda with 185,000 miles on it and you think the car got messed up because MAYBE the tech put the wrong coolant in it?

Jeez, how many reasons can we come up with other than it's just plain OLD? Cars die, they blow up, crap happens. You could do everything that Nissan tells you to do and your 3.5 may still burn oil, your precats might implode and destroy your engine, and they will not do anything about it. But you trust them to tell you that you cannot put anything else but OEM coolant in it...this makes no sense.

If anyone could prove that your Zerex or Prestone or Peak or whatever coolants are out there were not compatible, those companies would be out of business.

Jap cars with Japanese coolant burn up on the freeway all the time just like the Honda above did, it just happens because it is an old car and that stuff happens to old cars sometimes. It happens to bimmers with Castrol Syntec, it happens to GM cars with DexCool, it happens to Nissans with blue or red or green.

 

Let me clarify the price since I just left the dealership. The $21.95 is for a gallon of blue 50/50 pre-mix. Nissan doesn't sell a straight blue coolant in 1 gallon containers - they don't make it. You can buy only 1qt blue coolant for $14.95/qt. If you buy 4 that comes to $60/gallon!! Most dealership will tell you the straight blue doesn't exist, only 50/50. It does, they don't know what they are talking about. I am holding one in my hand now!

So the flushing with distilled water and then adding 1 gal of straight coolant to your radiator for the DYI flush wont work with the blue 50/50 coolant unless you can find and buy 4-1qts.

 

Nissan Coolant for long was the green (unique greeen dye) coolant.
The blue coolant is new for me but it looks like a more fortiefied formulation (10yrs/135K) change interval (checked on a TSB). Just like the Toyota Pink Super Long Life coolant (10yr/100K change interval).

Either way it is the same, original green coolant (full strength) was 60K miles and the blue coolant which is 50/50 is for 135K. All adds up to be the same... its about making money.

Sad we are paying arm and leg for coolants these days and you are right the DIY flush won't work, if you want to flush then you need to find the drain bolts on the block or get a air compressor and force air to push the water out from the block.

Sucks, this is making DIY a challenge, the manufactures are turing out to be real jerks.

 

The stuff that kills head gaskets and other cooling system components is when the PH level in any antifreeze gets to a bad level attacking all components of the motor and cooling system that have contact with the antifreeze.No antifreeze is good for the life of the car and should be changed every couple of years.I use prestone in my 2000 se and it has over 200000 miles on it.If you want to spend the extra money on nissan or other brand and it gives you peace of mind then do it.

 

That's what I use!!

 

*raises hand* Yeah, my '01 Taurus ate two water pumps in 90K miles then blew a head gasket around 100K miles.

Mr. B: Well, since the base, Vulcan 16V engine was essentially unchanged from 1515 when it was invented in Italy by Leonardo knocking some papers on cast iron onto the ground all the way through to 2008 when they stopped using it... Fordowned, son!

I know that we don't use DEX COOL in Penske's fleet of GM light- and medium-duty truck V8s. Our antifreezes do have the whole OAT thing going on, though. I read an insanely long (8 pages?) article in one of the silly trucking industry magazines we get allllllll about the exciting world of antifreezes and what 15L inline-sixes pushing 550 HP and 2000 lb*ft need to stay happy. Consumer autos were mentioned in brief.

After reading too much on these forums about coolant tonight, I'mma just get me that groovy Toyota stuff and have Meineke flush and pressure test the system.

 

I did the DYI coolant flush with the new nissan blue coolant in my 03 Max with 37K miles on it. Any opinions on how long I should go before changing the new long life coolant in my car? I am running about a 30% coolant to 70% water ratio.

 

I just had my coolant flushed, they tried to charge $40 more for DEX-COOL. They removed it from my bill. How can I tell if they put it in? Should I be worried?

 

Why are yoiu 30/70? You should be 50/50 with distilled water unless you live in a zone where it never gets too hot or too cold.

You need to call them and ask them what type exactly did they put in your car. DexCool is not what you want...


Coolant drains are something I don't trust to Meinecke/Pep Boys/etc because I don't think they use distilled water, just normal tap water. Defeats the purpose of using good antifreeze when you throw mineral-laden water into the system. Somebody correct me if you know they do indeed use distilled water.

 

Wait, wait, wait... Weren't you the guy who wrote angry tirades on who cares what sort of water is used to flush the system, as that gets replaced with distilled water, anyway?

 

[quote=trooplewis;7823963]Why are yoiu 30/70? You should be 50/50 with distilled water unless you live in a zone where it never gets too hot or too cold.

I live in Seattle, WA so it's mild. However, it was not intentional to do a 30/70 ratio. I did the DIY flush, not realizing the the new blue coolant only came in 50/50 gallon mix. So I ended up with 25/75 ratio, found a QT of pure blue coolant at a local dealer, added that and it brought me over 30/70 ratio. I will get another QT eventually, but its an hour drive for 1 QT of coolant to the only dealer in the area who carries it!