youre someone i would like advise from. my car doesnt give me too much confidence and i just want it to last atleast a year more after i pay it off then i will replace it with something else. i currently have just less than 3 years of payment left on my car. my girlfriends car her payments are done in 4 months so im not really worried about her car at this point.
if my car is a 2010 mazda3 and i got 123,000 miles on it what are the odds i would need to have my automatic transmission looked at before it fails? i havent done any maintenance on the automatic transmission. i truly just want this car to last me 4 or 5 more years.
I am not a Los Vegas odds maker, but my guess, without performing maintenance on your transmission, odds are 7 to 1 it will give you trouble in the next 4-5 years.
I know a mechanic whoās knowledge I deeply respect. If he repaired a cooling system, he replaced it with ethylene glycol (green) no matter what was previously in it. He was afraid that people might not service the cooling system properly and end up with the deathcool phenomenon. I struggle whether I should do this or not. I am for the most part follow the manual type of guy except I will change tranny fluid every 50,000. Thereās no such thing as lifetime fluid.
When I first got a car with the dex in, I thought it should be taken out. I talked with the dealer and two private shops and talked me out of it. My dex has been replaced several times now and have had no problem for over ten years. You do need to keep air out but the green stuff just canāt compete.
There was a time when those who bought GM vehicles would bring their vehicles to me as soon as they were out warranty to flush out the Death-cool and replace with the green coolant.
I replaced an all neutral no forward or reverse transmission in a Blazer that when I started up to get the engine/trans up to temp to check the ATF level and then test drive, found the engine started overheating, found the rad was clogged, the cause was a leaking water pumpā¦ so because of Dex-cool turning to mud, a basic water pump with a slow leak that the customer keep topping off, it cost them a trans, rad, water pump, multiple flushes, and the t-stat, at the time (heater still worked)ā¦
And Iāve only seen Dex-cool cause rust/sludge/mud in a cooling in a short period of time only because air entered the cooling system some how.I never seen other coolants do that.
GM touted this coolant because it could go, (not would go) 5yrs/150,000 miles before needing service. This gave a false impression that cooling system was no longer a concern. And then GM changed the cooling systems to where there was no longer a pressure cap on the radiator, but moved it to the reservoir. This made the cooling system even more difficult to inspect. Even for the DIYerās.
Now, imagine someone who has this coolant in their vehicle, but doesnāt know a damn thing about cars. They could drive for months with a small coolant leak, (intake manifold gasket?), all the while letting air into the cooling system. And they end up with the Deathcool syndrome.
Iāve seen other coolants cause rust/sludge/mud in a cooling systems. But thatās usually caused by having too high a concentration of antifreeze, or by totally neglecting the cooling system for a long period of time.
Even some people who bought new GM vehicles were smart enough to know this. And thatās why they brought the vehicle to me after the warranty ran out to flush that crap out.
Why would you want to mix different coolants? Was the pink coolant not available where you were shopping? Is the savings by buying green coolant enough to be significant?
Perhaps you can, but Iām struggling to find out why you would. Whatās the benefit?