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Heads up: Wrong coolant can kill your water pump in under 6 months
I keep seeing guys at my shop in Tulsa just grab whatever green coolant is on sale and dump it in anything. Last week a customer brought in a 2015 Ford Explorer with a seized water pump at 80k miles. I pulled the pump and it looked like somebody painted the inside with orange rust. Turns out he'd been running GM-style Dexcool in it for about 5 months. Different engines need specific coolant chemistry. The wrong stuff eats the seals and bearings from the inside out. I've pulled apart at least 4 pumps this year that failed from someone mixing coolant types. Has anybody else noticed a spike in water pump failures from mis-matched coolant?
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jamesm388d ago
Man that's exactly what I've been seeing too lol. A buddy of mine runs a little side gig doing basic maintenance and he's had three pumps come through in the last few months that were all killed by the wrong coolant. One was a Chevy guy who swore up and down that the green stuff was "just as good" and his pump was toast in four months flat. The orange crusty buildup is spot on, I've scraped that crap out of housings before and it's nasty. People just don't get that the seals are designed for a specific pH and additive package, so swapping it out is asking for trouble.
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Oh man, I gotta say you're mostly right but Dexcool is actually orange from the factory, not green. It's the GM OAT coolant. Still absolutely terrible to run in a Ford though, those explorers hate anything that isn't the yellow Motorcraft stuff.
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