Hi fellas please tell me whats the best coolant to use in these diesels to protect againt cavatation, actually the most cost effective that will still protect I dont want to be spending 40.00 a gallon for coolant though. This Yellow, green, pink,gold, hoat,oat, snot BS is like chinese math to me and got me good and confused just a simple buy this --------- will do. Thanks fellas ps if this helps I need it for a ddec3 s60 and also my old ford IDI pick up
We use the red stuff... it's a long-life product. Mostly, you want to get the additive package in it tested every time you change the oil - no matter what kind you use.
Yep, the red stuff... Extended Life Coolant. They developed it to handle cavitation on cylinder liners better than the previous stuff. My Cummins came from the factory filled with the stuff. I am using it in my '06 Jeep Liberty Diesel as well... it is a cast iron block, wet sleeved diesel. You can get it under Delo, CAT, Final Charge, and other brand labels. Most of it is manufactured by Kost, USA. I like it because it has a long life, no need for adding supplemental coolant additives (SCA), so you can use just a blank coolant filter on the engine. If your system didn't have this in it before, make sure you do a good flush of the system before filling up with this stuff. A small amount of other coolant left will not hurt, but more than 10% will cause the ELC to not last as long. I can usually pick up 50/50 premix of ELC under the Final Charge label at Love's for around $10 a gallon. Everybody else is higher. The Extended Life products in most Wally World and auto stores are NOT the same stuff. That is primarily for gassers. The diesel version is a more robust product. Stick with the traditional truck name brands like Delo, CAT, FleetRite (International), FleetGuard, Final Charge, etc. I saw it recently at International on sale for around $9 a gallon for the 50/50 premix.
if you don't use 50/50 premix make sure you use distilled water .....never use tap water the minerals in tap water will eat at your liners
Nope... everything you need is already in it. You just need to get it tested when you do a PM - to make sure its still doing its job.
what he said X2 more money, im sure, but i have a Cat engine and i use Cat anti freeze so they can not use that for an excuse for problems. Same with filters. When i was running Cummins, same story, i used Cummins stuff.
If you plan to use the red Extended life coolant in an older engine you need to make sure it is compatible. The extended life coolant will attack some types of gaskets and actually shrink orings and other types of materials.
If you use DCA coolant in a Cummins and it eats the copper away in the injector tube it is not covered, when you have a "CAT and you use DCA and there Blue filter and the water pump cover plate is eaten away and the liners have holes in them. It is not covered. I have worked on engines most of my life and all this talk of how if you use their coolant. The only two coolants that work are Power-cool and Noat. Everything else is a want to be and it is crap. Ask Cummins if DCA is a protectant it is a coating. I put Power-cool in every engine I built and never had a coolant problem. I was involved with Nalcool that a customer brought in he was involved with a chip hauling company and there trucks ran 22 hours a day. Most of the trucks ran 3406B's at the time and it was before they modified the head coolant flow and they would blow out head gaskets and the back three liners would be sunk. To repair it you had to remove the back four to cut the back three. We had two trucks, at the same time, one that used the Nalcool and one that had the DCA, both had green antifreeze. I was doing both trucks, and the parts where on benches besides each other. One set of liners were like Swiss cheese, the others were like new. One block was rusted, and corroded one was clean. One had the thermostat housing corroded the other was clean. Both had water filters and were maintained as per spec and testing. It convinced me and I never used DCA In an engine I rebuilt again. Just a thought!
