Mixing different antifreeze

To be on the safe side read the Label along with the formulation. Regular Prestone is yellowish-green and should never be mixed with Prestone Dex Cool. Toyota has two formulations and should not be mixed. Life would be so mush easier.

You can mix two different colors of the same kind of coolant without any problem whatsoever. Never mix the two colors in a cooling system. The organic acids in red type will cause precipitation of silicates in the green type and corrosion protection is greatly reduced.

Red type antifreeze is good for five years.

Traditional coolants (often green or yellow) generally use silicates, while new style (generally orange or pink) coolants use organic acids. What happens when you mix red and blue antifreeze in your car? Q: Mixing red and green coolant in the radiator. That was an old type of antifreeze where the glycol lasts maybe three years max.

So you’ve got to change the coolant maybe three years or every 10miles. The modern coolant comes in various different colors and red happens to be one of them.

It often can last five years or 150miles. So it’s a better antifreeze to use. There are some IAT coolants that use propylene glycol instead of ethylene glycol. The orange coolants are organic acid technologies (OAT). OAT coolants use organic acids in order to prevent corrosion.

Although both the green and orange antifreeze are ethylene glycol-base the difference between them is that they contain different corrosion inhibitor ingredients or additives. While orange antifreeze contains organic acids, green antifreeze has additives, such as silicates, borates and phosphates. The color of healthy engine coolant is green (for ethylene glycol) or orange (for Dexcool). A rusty color indicates that the rust inhibitor in the coolant has broken down and it can no longer control rust and scale buildup. An antifreeze is an additive which lowers the freezing point of a water-based liquid and increases its boiling point.

An antifreeze mixture is used to achieve freezing-point depression for cold environments and also achieves boiling-point elevation (anti-boil) to allow higher coolant temperature. The cooling lines can be made from steel or aluminum. The heater core is usually made from copper or aluminum. The water pump is made with several materials, magnesium casting, steel impeller, and steel bearings.

When dissimilar metals are connected by an electrolyte like antifreeze or water, you get galvanic action. It is used for several purposes in your vehicle. As the antifreeze name would describe, in winter it stops the water from freezing. In the summertime, it also helps to dissipate some of the heat from your engine to avoid overheating. Any quality brand antifreeze will suffice.

If you top off VW Gwith generic bright green coolant, it forms nasty goopy deposits almost instantly. These are formulated very differently. Edit: apparently Dexcool as well. Although the chemical make of propylene glycol and ethylene glycol are quite similar, propylene glycol is less toxic, whereas ethylene glycol is less expensive and has slightly better heat transfer.

Ethylene glycol is the most commonly used of the two in the automotive industry. To help avoid such catastrophes and aid in preventing the costly mistake of mixing the wrong types of coolant together, different car manufacturers’ coolants have different colors and it’s important to know what type and what color coolant should be put in your car. Mix an ethylene-glycol coolant with water in a 70:ratio (in other words, 70-percent coolant to 30-percent water). This is recommended if you live in an environment that experiences harsh winter weather. It is also the highest coolant-to-water ratio that most experts recommend for use in car engines.

Mixing coolants of different types can cause chemical reactions to take place in a hot engine which can clog the passages, or even cause corrosion. You should completely flush the system to remove all the old coolant and replace with whatever quality brand you like. When mixing coolant and distilled water together, carefully follow the percentages on the bottle depending on your specifics.

The two act very similarly in their heat transfer and anti-freeze capability and you can mix the mixtures almost at will.

This is done to prevent calcium and magnesium phosphate from precipitating out and depositing on metal surfaces. Silicate is added to coolants to replace phosphates. Technician A says that there are a number of coolant types that each has its own life span. Technician B says that mixing of coolants is generally ok, since all coolants use the same chemical base. Generally you can mix like colours, and in some cases you can mix green with blue, red with green etc, but it is important to know what brands you are dealing with.

I have seen a green coolant mixed with a red coolant and the result was a horrible thick jelly-like goo – not great in your cooling system. Mixing different brands of the same colour radiator coolant. Purple is the new propylene glycol coolant. Not sure what happens when you mix the two, but says that the first aid treatment for drinking ethylene glycol is to drink beer: Antifreeze - , the free encyclopedia Some Googling suggests. Green is (usually) ethylene glycol.

A higher water to antifreeze ratio increases the ability of the mix to cool the engine, but the mix will not do very well in cold weather. Although there are two colors of antifreeze , neither type of antifreeze is the same as coolant. In addition the coolant also must act as a lubricant for the water pump and it also increase the ability of the mix to transfer heat. Note, there are different kinds of coolant.

The so called universal stuff IS NOT UNIVERSAL. It contains Anti-Freeze, an alcohol based additive that keeps it from freezing (obviously), usually propylene glycol or ethylene glycol. It will also contain a variety of different additives that keep it from eroding, corroding,. Currently no vehicle manufacturers are using high silicate products.

At best, mixing types of antifreeze will cause the lifespan of the new mixture to degrade to that of the one with the shorter service interval.