If you hadn't read my other asinine question (I'm new, cut me some slack), I just got done flushing the living heck out of my '84 T/A's coolant system. It's a carbed 350 -- got all of the green stuff out.

However, I bought some Prestone Extended Life, as it "seemed" to be a pretty good idea. It's the orange "Dex-Cool Approved" coolant that Prestone sells. It's currently in my vehicle after the flush.

After reading a bunch of stuff on here, I'm a little worried about it. It's not official Dex-Cool, so I shouldn't have problems, right? This coolant color stuff is WAY too confusing for a 23 year old philosophy major .

So is the Prestone acceptable, or should I run for the hills and flush the heck out of it again, switching back to the good old American green death stuff?

EDIT: It's not the "complete" universal one, but the silver bottle Dex-Cool approved one.

 

i would get that out of your car as fast as possible. our cars are not designed for a hybrid/acid based coolant. i dont know what will happen but if the 3.1 liter gm motor that came in almost all cars in the 90s is any indication, you could eat away at all your gaskets. heads, intake ect. only use the green conventional coolant in our cars it is designd to be far less acidic.

most people go from dex cool to coventional not the other way around.
i personally think that dexcool and the other hybrid coolants are crap.
good ol' ethelyne glycol for me

 

It's such a 50/50 debate from what I've seen. I keep hearing "Well my car had it and it runs fine" to "a bunch of cars in our shop keep having problems."

The issue with these statements is that there is no evidence backing them up. They're all hearsay and they're all "just so" stories in their own way.

However I do think I'll go back to the good ol' fashioned Green Death Anti-Pet Coolant.

EDIT: I've heard tons about the Dex-Cool specifically, and I knew not to put EXACTLY DexCool in it, but I figured this Prestone universal stuff would be halfway alright. *sigh* GM's engineering just isn't what it used to be, I guess.

 

i do know for a fact that countless gm 3100 motors were serviced for intake manifold gaskets at an incredibly low milege. and i have heard from my teachers that gm investigated it and said somthing like the coolant is to acidic and it eats plastic or something like that. they never oficcially had a recal on it but i believe there was a tsb. some repairs were covered under warrenty and some were not. some happened at low milege some didnt. the fact that remains is that the motors equipped with dexcool and plastic gaskets tended to have said gaskets eaten by the coollant. my friend has a grand am and she had to have them done at 100000 miles.

oh and im sorry you spent the money on that incredibly expensive coolant.)hope that didnt sound sarcastic)

 

No worries on it, $10 isn't going to break my bank, though it is asinine that they'd have crap coolant for more dough.

Bought some of the good ol' stuff and will be flushing and changing out after it cools down.

 

sounds good

have fun and enjoy the drive