Hello,
Have a 2009 Buick. Live in (cold) New England.
The filler-neck on the plastic radiator fill jug says to use DexCool. I haven't looked, but I seem to remember that the manual does also.
WalMart has 50-50 mixed Prestone anti freeze, but it doesn't say DexCool. It does say for "everything," etc.
The DexCool from my Dealership is significantly more expensive. It also is a 50-50 mix.
Is it safe to use the WalMart Prestone stuff ? Any meaningful adv. to the Dexcool ?
Thanks, B.
My personal experience only. You ''ll find all kinds of different answers. Here's mine. I wouldn't mix them. Don't like mixing stuff from one company with stuff from another. I'm not a chemist. I just don't mix. So I'd tell you to use Dex Cool to top off Dex Cool.
I heard a lot of complaints about Dex Cool. Easy to find them on the net. When I bought a '97 Lumina 6 years ago, it had Dex Cool in it. Flushed out the Dex Cool, put new hoses/thermo on it and filled it up with green anti-freeze. Prestone probably. Flushed the old green and put on new hoses and new green in a couple years ago. Tossed a new water pump on for good measure. Three of my girls used my car for a Florida trip, so I was being cautious. GM water pumps are lucky to get 100k miles, so it's good to put a new one on every 50k miles or so. They're cheap, and easy to put it. Coolant looks a bit nasty now so I'll probably do coolant again this summer.
--Vic
"WalMart stuff" covers a lot of ground, but most modern formulations sold at Wallyworld or your FLAPS are labeled to be compatible with Dexcool. Check on the jug. I wouldnt be afraid to mix them under those conditions, BUT it would be best to flush out your old coolant every few years and recharge with a premium quality antifreeze (not necessarily Dexcool.. I dont like it very much, honestly) mixed 50-50 with distilled or deionized water.
It will work OK. 99% of the problems reported with Dex are due to neglect. People who never open the cooling system to check for problems or never flush the system out.
I use whatever the factory calls for. In some cases this gets expensive. Especially with foreign vehicles that use oddball coolants.
You may want to phone Prestone at 1-800-PRESTONE because their customer service people are really good at providing information. Prestone says their coolant in the yellow bottles is for "All Makes All Models", but I don't remember if they said you could mix it with Dex-cool and still get 150,000 miles & 5 years from the coolant.
Prestone does make a version of Dex-cool, and it comes in silver or grey bottles, and I bought some for $12.00 from Wal-mart on Jan. 31,
2011, the last day of a $7/gal rebate on all full-strength Prestone oolants ($5/gal on 50/50 mix, making full strength cheaper by $1/gal, assuming you use distilled water with it). Many years ago, Prestone told me that their version of Dex-cool was designed to be more compatible with solder (even mentioned Modine solder on the bottle) than GM's version was. The Texaco Havoline version of Dex-cool is supposed to be very, very similar to GM's version (Texaco supplies coolant to GM)Here's an article from Motor magazine about all the types of antifreeze:
I use the old standard antifreeze. Dexcool is corrosive to the gaskets resulting in leaks. GM manifold gaskets and dex cool -- only
4 years maybe. I dump the dexcool right away and replaceit with the cheap stuff.Toyota extra long life, is the least corrosive of the antifreeze and lasts 160000km in Toyota's. But they use compatable gaskets.
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