Date: 10 Jun 2002 22:10:26 -0700 From: SaabynopsamalBox.com (Saab Guy) Subject: Re: FILL COOLANT FLUID
HERE we Go....I am taking this straight from Patrick Bedards column in the June 2002 issue of Car & Driver... The "old" antifreeze technology started in the '60s, improved in the '70s, and was superseded in the cars of the 90s by 2 new technologies. Putting new antifreeze in older cars is probably safe, putting old antifreeze in new cars will probably kill them... The old technology, a.k.a. "coventional" a.k.a. "inorgantic," is green in color. Most of what you see on the shelves at Wal-Mart and AutoZone [and Halfords] is conventional, including yellow bottles of Prestone and white bottles of Zerex One of the new types in "organic acid technology," or OAT. It's orange. GM pioneered this chemistry starting with 1996 models in the U.S. [Oh lets complicate things even more!] and using the name Dex-Cool. Ford changed a few models to OAT, and then backed away from it. VW, Audi, and Porche are OAT users, too, but most others have resisted. Instead of OAT, most new cars [I am thinking the Saab perhaps falls in here??] now use a "hybrid" antifreeze that's formulated with both OAT and the silicate inhibitors from green (Japaneese hybrids have different inhibitors). It comes too in many colors to pretend this type is color-coded. Interestingly, Turcotte [The guy bedard talked to to write the colum] says that as the materials improve for the white plastic overflow bottles, and they become less yellowing over time, automakers are becoming more venturesome in choosing coolant colors... NOW HERES WHERE THE GOOD PART COMES IN... The promise of OAT is long-life corrosin protection...throws out some numbers...The GM Dex-Cool formula works fine in systems designed for it. But it eats old-style radiators with lead solder, and the inhibitors work too slowly to protect against the sort of corrosion that happens so fast it actually erodes metal-for example, the cavitation likely in the imperfectly designed water pumps of older cars. "Card born with green coolant shouldn't be changed to orange" it's also a bad idea to mix the two, although the result doesn't immediatly turn into witches brew... so there we have it, if you have Green stick with it I guess, but I strongly doubt it is green...If it is orange, ONLY put in more orange, and seeing as Saab is partially owned by GM it likely could be Orange. All the other colors seem to play nice with each other...so if its blue and you get purple (not likely but who knows) you should be ok Am I right?? And we keep forgetting to mention, you should probably mix the antifreeze with water, distilled is best because it keeps minerals out of your system... Good Luck!! Ryan
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