Those cheap coolant test strips failed me on a 2020 Freightliner

I kept using the $8 test strips from the parts store on a 2020 Freightliner with 180k miles, and they showed green across the board, but the driver complained about hot running near Amarillo last week. Pulled the coolant sample and sent it to the lab, came back with high nitrite and low pH, the strips never caught it before the water pump started weeping. Anyone else had these strips lie to them or is this just a fluke with newer SCA packages?

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rubys809d agoTop Commenter

Those cheap test strips failed me" is just another case of cheap tools giving false confidence. I've seen the same thing with tire pressure gauges and multimeters, people trust the reading more than the thing they're measuring. When the stakes are high like a cooling system on a working truck, the strips are only good for a rough guess, not a final answer.