Coolant question

[silverCorollaS]

Hi, my first post here.

My wife has a 2005 Corolla S I got her new summer 2004, I change the oil sometimes, sometimes have her take it in when I'm to busy at work HVAC tech.

Anyways, the car is far overdue for a coolant flush and change.

I think it's green standard coolant, but the manual says Toyota Extended life coolant.

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying coolant from the Toyota dealer, I have had good luck with Prestone on other cars.

What do you think?

I have hard water so I will use bottles of distilled water to do a gentle flush, instead of the garden hose.

Drain it, refill with just distilled water, drive it around and get temp up with heat on hot, then drain again, repeat until looking clean.

Then add new antifreeze.

Car has never overheated, this is just a maintenance as it has 110K on it.

[silverCorollaS]

I called and talked to a rep at Prestone, he said the extended life will work fine.



Is this what you have used?

[mikered30]

Peak Global lifetime works too, you have to read the bottle, as far as it is a coolant with long-life hybrid organic acid technology is a combination of low phosphates and organic acids and no silicates. Peak Global lifetime is the nearest to the toyota specs you can buy without going to pink.

The key is to get all the pink coolant and air out, which sounds like you know what you are doing.

[Raddman04]

Since your car is 6 years old it might be time for a compete back flush, you might be missing a lot of junk in there just flushing it by adding water and draining...Also are you really going to run your car 150K without changing the coolant as Prestone and Toyota says it's good up to Can you imaging the crap that would be trapped in that coolant by 150K So why pay the extra $$$ for those "Extended life coolants" if your not going to use it to 150K/5 years and just go with regular coolant and change it regularly and get all the nastiness out before they harm your car

Regular and extended life coolant are probably close to being the same anyway, they're just trying to get your hard earned $$$...Just my opinion

[silverCorollaS]

Well, I drained it, then added some distilled water and putted around the neighborhood like a old man, heater got hot.

Got it home, and drained it again, added more distilled water, just let the engine idle this time.

Thinking of driving it to store to get the coolant.

I would like to do a hose backflush, but we have horrible hard water here.

I looked at the odometer, it has 117,500 miles, and under the hood there is a sticker to run the coolant max of 100,000, oops!