What's everyone using for coolant?

[redglbx]

Like Cyborg, I only use distilled water if I don’t just buy the pre-mixed stuff, just depends on the mood of the day. Bob is correct in that the pricing is the same so you’re paying for the 1/2 water but there’s something to be said for the convenience. But we also have a lot of minerals in the water so using distilled water for “stuff” is mandatory.

[Lucien Harpress]

My coolant choice process usually goes through three steps.

- Check to see if there's no silicates.

- What's the cheapest stuff they got? (I think Peak is my current go-to, because they sell it where I work and I get a small discount. Pre-mixed because I can't be bothered measuring stuff.)

- Grab the green/blue/yellow stuff, because I use the same coolant in everything and it matches the paint on my KZ1300 better than the orange Dex-Cool.

[Sidecar Bob]

Some of the car make specific coolants don't play well with each other. IIRC Dex-Cool will turn to goo or something like that if there is a trace of regular ethylene glycol coolant that you didn't flush out.

[Track T 2411]

In my experience with dex-cool, it has a propensity to eat some types of gaskets. Fel-Pro even reformulated some gasket materials specifically for this reason. I generally avoid it all together. My 2 cents...

[DUGG]

This is what I’m running. The latest and greatest asian/honda antifreeze.

IMG_8125.jpeg

Yes, back in the day when these motorcycles were built the only antifreeze was the good old green stuff. Just like 10-40 oil was the standard.
But there’s a lot better products out there now.
They discovered the 10-40 wasn’t all that good.
Something to do with too big of a jump on the polymer change.
That’s why 5-30 is now the standard.
Or for 15-40 for heavy or older applications.
For me, the cost difference is negligible for the amount of fluids these machines require. They’re not getting any younger and parts are becoming harder and harder to come by. So why not put in the best fluid you can.

[redglbx]

Not a Pentosin fan of anything they make. Years ago when I was still working in engineering for one of the major OE brake suppliers our biggest customer changed from Dow 50-4 brake fluid to Pentosin brake fluid, both DOT3 purely on a cost basis, and it was considerably cheaper.

But they did not notify us of the change where we normally would test the stuff for compatibility & performance. So after a short time they started calling and raising hell about vehicles on the lot needing multiple brake bleedings before being sold because of air in the system.

So, the brief story of it all was that they had changed to Pentosin B-fluid which would grow algae in the fluid that would make the air that would require bleeding , a continuous process. We spent nearly 2yrs chasing and reasearching it before finding out what was going on. Pentosin’s attitude was we just sell the stuff, not our problem, it has to be your brake system and when ultimately confronted with the overwhelming evidence became belligerent about it and ultimately wouldn’t compensate us or the customer for any of the time spent figuring out their problem. Pure arrogance! Nope not buying anything from them, terrible company !


Guess I kinda hijacked this a bit,,, sorry!

[CYBORG]

good to know. thanks

[Prospect]

Can you mix green with purple?

[Prospect]

I have green in the bike and added some purple because it was low.

[CYBORG]

Check the label on the container. Most will. And it should say so.

[DUGG]

If it old fashioned green antifreeze probably not compatible.

[pjlogue]

I would be very careful mixing different coolant brands. I had used a universal coolant "compatible" with all other brands in my car some years ago. When winter came I noticed the heater wasn't putting out much heat so I flushed out the system. To my horror, I found long rod like crystals everywhere in the flush. These had packed up the heater core and radiator. I was able to get them all flushed out, even from the over flow tank! I now always flush my engine cooling system with R/O water 3x before using a different brand of radiator fluid and will never mix brands.

-P.

[redglbx]

Just curious,,,, what is R/O water ? And to Bob,so you don’t have any troublesome minerals in the water up there ? If so I never knew that ! Here, I’m lucky in that our well has pretty minimal amounts, probably the worst is sulfur/rust but even that isn’t really all that terrible but still not using it in any of my cooling systems, particularly after the years of overheating with my 76 and trying to figure it out ($$$).

[Sidecar Bob]

I think he means Reverse Osmosis filtered water.
The town water here used to be very hard, so bad that a couple of years after we moved here they closed one of the town wells and replaced it with one that has much softer water. We still have a water softener so our water should have very few minerals. I've never noticed mineral deposits in my engines or radiators so I'm not going to worry about it but if I did I would just dilute the coolant with distilled water like I use to top up the batteries.

[cfairweather]

So far, after reading all of these posts, I still think the best solution is to pay about $8.00 for a gallon and know that the stuff meets all the requirements. Best of all, you don't have to mix it :

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Super-Tech-E ... hbdg=L1103