The OEM coolant looks murky like that. Your not suppose to use green. Red or Pink only. It’s the way that the black end tanks reflects the color differently. The reserve tank should be pink. If you saw that the pink in the reserve you have it right... if it was mixed with green you will see it in the reserve!


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Green coolant? Red or pink phoat coolants only. I use zerex 50/50 toyota coolant.

You should flush your cooling system with distilled water to remove most of the green coolant. Overtime, the sediments will rust on the inside of the heater core.

DIY: 2003-2008 Corolla, Matrix, Pontiac Vibe Coolant...

I completed this procedure at 90,900 km on my 2008 Corolla 1.8L, 4 cylinder, CE. Toyota recommends that the coolant be replaced at 128,000km (80,000 miles) and then every 64,000 km (40,000 miles) afterward on the 2008 Corolla. Why Change Your Coolant? As the coolant ages in your vehicle, it...

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NO GREEN COOLANT ALLOWED!! Many posts on here about this issue...............get rid of it ASAP...............use the pink stuff from Toyota.

 

That was a mess up to mix green with pink or red, you will now have to flush your system multiple times with distilled water until the drain water is clear and figure out the ratio of the water left in the system with the straight red you get from the dealer.

This would be a great time to replace the thermostat and radiator if your radiator is in bad shape/leaking/rusting.

 

Green coolant is fine. If anyone thinks all shops stock up on all OEM specific fluids, you are being delusional. Pink/red is preferred but when a vehicle is over te years old and you are it's third or fourth owner, anything can be in it.

 

"when a vehicle is over ten years old and you are it's third or fourth owner, anything can be in it"....................BUT SHOULDN'T BE IN IT. Will speed up water pump seal deterioration and cooling system corrosion due to the low nobility dissimilar metals. Use at you peril!

 

Having the correct coolant is good to have, not a mandatory thing. Your water pump and coolant jacket isn’t going to face catastrophic failure due to the imminent corrosion that’s happening with the green/universal coolant in there.
You’ll be fine - go enjoy the reliability of your Toyota. Change out the antifreeze next time you get to your drain and fill interval - maybe do it a couple of times.

Think about it - would they truly label their green antifreeze as universal if it truly caused exponentially accelerated failures and make themselves liable? Last time I checked, I haven’t seen a bunch of law suits filed against the companies because someone put green antifreeze in a vehicle requiring red/pink/blue/yellow or whatever color their vehicle came with.

 

So I ended up flushing out the system and replacing it with Pink Toyota Coolant. I got as much green coolant out as I could. I don't think it's as big of an issue as some people make it out to be, but at least I know it's been done right.

 

By the way, I had to do that too... I ended up draining 7x (7 gallons) of green out before putting in Red concentrate.

Coolant drain/flush - 2004 V6 1mz-fe Camry

Coolant drain/flush - 2004 V6 1mz-fe Camry (w. pics of block drains) Hi, I've been searching the forum and researching how to replace the coolant in my 2004 Camry XLE V6 1mz-fe engine with 55k miles but I need a little more information. It uses the super long life pink coolant. It says...

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And had to do the same in my honda once when I got a radiator replacement where I went with OE blue and came back with standard green... Same procedure.

 

Yeah, not a big deal. But a mix of oat-hoat is not recommended. Other than that all green or all pink/blue/red is fine. Yeah the compositions are different. Just to go with the flow or someone putting the "correct" type might cause a mix. So right type regardless of color is a good thing. For example, Zerex Asian or Prestone Global are different colors but mixable vs standard Green. Overall not catastrophic though.

 

Ideally you'd flush it with distilled or deionized water only. It's the introduction of hard tap water in cooling systems which causes most of the problems. I take it you are not the original owner, or other people have serviced your car for you, but in any event, although the universal or standard green coolant will work (car won't blow up, blood won't run in the streets) it is the P-HOAT coolants which will work the best. I don't install tap water into my cooling system, and have only used P-HOAT coolant. At 409K miles I have the original water pump, thermostat, radiator, and hoses. Is it the P-HOAT coolant, the distilled water, or both which are to receive credit for the longevity? I'd say probably both, but more attributable to not using tap water.

By the way, P-HOAT coolant comes in these various colors (Red, Pink, Blue, Green) and at least one other funky color depending on the manufacturer. I once was working on my DIL's Mazda and had to replace the t-stat and refill the radiator. I had a limited budget and had not enough red P-HOAT coolant and not enough green P-HOAT coolant. I didn't want to spend any money, so I mixed both. Yep. Nothing chemically wrong with it, since the only difference between the two was the color. Only issue is that it will make it hard to identify by a mechanic or someone else working on the car in the future. The red and green mixed to look like an awful brown color. It looked truly horrible, but was actually clean and chemically correct.

 

+1 and funny. Yeah distilled only. Brown, imagine that. Cant tell if you have a radiator issue based on long time or a real issue. Hard to detect unless you do a coolant test.

I remember purple, different shade of pink (orig Zerex Asian), bright orange (I think NAPA global and Prestone Global) etc.