Saab Coolant

If its blue put more blue stuff in. If its green put more green stuff in. If its red put more red stuff in.

You can't really go wrong with the above. If your doing a full drain, flush and re-fil the red Organic Acid stuff is bloody good. I use it in mine.

You could try Comma antifreeze products, Comma Xstream Green or Red. It means that I don't really know if it is suitable, but I'm giving the red stuff a try. Seems to have heavy duty corrosion protection.

Just a note or two... Saab specs a low silicate anti freeze. I'm not UK familiar, but in the US we have Zerex G05. A coolant that meets Mercedes specs will do it too. Be _very_ careful changing coolants these days. The old green type is usually very high silicate. That's not what you want. Organic Acid types can be OK but require a very, very clean environment - even *air* in the system causes problems with Texaco's Dexcool.

The Comma XStream Red is silicate free

Bob, you got me looking when you mentioned the Dexcool and Zerex G05 coolants. You caution the use of organic acid types, yet it appears the Zerex is that type, per the following blurb on its site: "Utilizes hybrid organic acid technology to minimize inhibitor depletion"

Query, do all green coolants c>Bob wrote:

Yes, it's a long story :-)

The Dexcool and compatibles are a particular type of organic acid technology. There is a big difference between those and the G05 type of coolants. The problem is not so much with the org-acid but with the particular type of org-acid. They key to identifying the type (without an MSDS sheet) is to look for "long life" or "5 year life". Those are the controversial products.

It appears that the problems with the long life org-acids like Dexcool are actually impurity related. In fact, some claim that Dexcool itself is the only issue and that other manufacturers products are better made. I've heard of some tests showing impurities in Dexcool right out of the drum. If you want a good scare, do a web search on "dexcool" and "corrosion" or some similar terms. There are thousands of pages on the problems. There's even at least one class action suit:

GM claims that the problems are only with radiators that are allowed to go low and pull air into the systems but their own documents show that they also have problems with sealers that are used in the factory, leftover solder, etc.

Generally, yes. In fact, silicates are touted as a positive thing by Prestone. They revolutionized the industry when first introduced as a corrosion preventive. But, now we are supposed to be using low phosphate and low silicate. I don't know what was originally spec'ed for a 1988. Yearly changes would be a definite plus. THe only down side I see is that the high silicates cause water pump wear and some claim head gasket wear. The lube you are adding may offset that.

In article , cs spouted forth into alt.autos.saab...

What's this waterpump lube?

I'm for anything that may help keep my 900T16S on the road and running sweet for longer.

In article , cs spouted forth into alt.autos.saab...

Thanks. Will look out for it then when I do my next coolant change. Current pump is starting to squeak a little, so when that gets closer to going, I'll replace it with a recon or new one, give the coolant a flush and replace, and try to find the lube/conditioner.

The lube/coolant for the miller makes sense, as it stops the bit/milling head overheating and burning out because it cools and lubricates the workpiece as it works.

One thing I liked about the older Skoda alloy 4cylinders (especially the very older ones from the 50/60's upto arround mid to late '80's was the little screw cap on the water pump body, once a year, you unscrew it, pack the cap with grease, and screw it back on. Made sure that the pump was properly lubed in the low performance use the engines generally had. Biggest failure on those engines was people not running proper coolant mixes, and then getting either water way corrosion, blow head gaskets, or in extreme cases the impellers on the water pumps actually corroding away completley even though the greased pump working were spinning perfectly. Things like that, and adjustable slave clutch cylinders to allow for a little wear in the clutch plate are things that not a lot of people know about when they laugh at the older former soviet block Skodas (not the new VW based ones that are starting to get marketted arround the world now).