After asking the forum which was the best antifreeze I told my mechanic to go ahead and flush out the ORANGE stuff and put in the GREEN stuff. Months later I popped open the hood and found the expansion tank/reservoir filled with ORANGE antifreeze. Mechanics response, "Sometimes you can't get all of the old out of the system." Is this accurate? Does he speak the truth? I hope he is telling the truth. I have been going to him for over 20 years and he has never let me down. Finding a trust worthy mechanic is hard to find as we all know.

All of your comments are most welcome.

 

It is possible some of it could have remained if he didn't do it right. However, I don't think it would be orange lol. It would be like a brownish mess. He could have put dexcool back in it, or used a dexcool substitute. I would have it flushed asap with the stuff you want. They need to stick a garden hose in the system to flush it all out, also known as a "complete flush".

 

A complete flush isn't that hard and there shouldn't be any significant amount of old coolant left. When I do I flush I drain the system and run the garden hose through it for a few min. Then I plug it up and put the heater on high and run the engine for 10 min or so and then drain it and fill it with anti-freeze. When drain the water from the last flush it is always crystal clear. I am wondering if he either didn't flush with clean water or didn't turn on the heater or actually filled it back up with the orange stuff. It really shouldn't be orange in your tank as the green and orange aren't known to play nice and usually gum things up.

 

I did a fast coolant change (drained radiator and reservoir) and notice that the orange dye dominates the green dye color. Since then a broken radiator ( the little connector that feeds back to the reservoir broke) I'm doing a complete lean and flush. My bid decision is green or orange. With Prestone products i understand the color doesn't matter any more.

 

The gumming up issue with green and orange is long gone. This problem was resolved at least 9 years ago. But yeah when the orange stuff first came out and if you mixed them, you were in for an awful mess.

 

The problem 9 years ago was that dexcool sucked and ruined engines without mixing it. I still do not trust the stuff and would never mix the two coolants. Prestone says you can mix it safely with other coolants, they are probably right. However, are you willing to risk your rangie's $3000 + engine because it says its ok on their bottle? I know I'm not. You can use w/e coolant you want, just flush all the old crap out first so you know you are not mixing anything.

 

Green is the only way to go!

 

I'm going green. Thx all.