Coolant Recommendations

[slamd02ranger]

My coolant is low in my solara, and I noticed that it is red coolant. What brand of coolant do you all recommend?

[Jon11582]

Toyota's Red ONLY. Anything else will destroy your waterpump.

Go to Toyota and get a Gallon.

I used Prestone's Orange stuff thats supposed to be "OK for all engines" and it ended up ripping up my water pump, leaving shrapnel all over my cooling system, and sticking me with a $700 bill...so stick to Toyota Red.

[Turbosolara]

yes you need to use the oem red coolant which has lubrication in there too.

[Jai_Jai_Binks]

Toyota red for me (well as soon as the red is all gone, i might go pink...toyota now uses pink in many differnet cars, its more expensive, but it lasts 24K miles, versus 10K for the red coolant).

[Jon11582]

wait....WHAT? I thought the red lasted 30K?

[indiglosolara]

wait....WHAT? I thought the red lasted 30K?

Yea, The red is suppose to last 30k miles or more. I did my drain and refil every 15k miles to keep my coolant nice and red. I am at 75k miles on my solara and my cooling system is still spot less and bright red.

As long as you take care of the fluid it will last long.

If you dont drain and refil every 15k miles I would do a flush every 30k or so to get all the dirty stuff out.

[SleeperSolara]

For me Toyota Red.

[Jai_Jai_Binks]

wait....WHAT? I thought the red lasted 30K?

You are 'technically' correct. It is supposed to last 30K, but i replace my about annually (regarless of milage). The pink one is 'technically' supposed to last longer. but it is double the price.

[naught]

Glad i found this thread. Too bad i didn't see it before i went to checker auto parts. Damn crack head behind the counter supposedly looked up my car in the computer and gave me a gallon of some stuff. Here it is a week later and I opened it up and the stuff is GREEN. Morons.

Any suggestions on where i can get the PROPER coolant for my car? I'd prefer to not go to the stealership for obvious reasons.

2001 SLE v6 with 46k

[lilm]

bleh i gotta change mone soon


ohh and why do you have a upside down flag...? and your little picture link in your sig doesnt work

[NeFaRiOuS_SLE]

The pic works for me; it's a silver stock Solara. But I agree on the flag; we're not in serious turmoil that requires a distress signal (well, maybe we do, but our quality of life hasn't been turned upside down... Yet)!

Back on topic, I do recommend Toyota red coolant more than anything, even though it's far more expensive than Prestone green/orange coolants... At least we have our own coolant for good purpose to extend the durability of our cars; Honda has their own ATF blend and there are still transmission issues!